Anti-spam measures

Mike and LIR members,

At 3:13 pm +0100 2/1/98, Mike Norris wrote:
>The below is a belated summary of the the discussion of spamming
>on the lir-wg list soon after RIPE 28.  I'm copying it to John
>Martin of TERENA as input to the BoF he is kindly organising
>during RIPE 29 later this month.

Many thanks for this. [N.B. I'm sure most of you already know, but for
those that didn't, there was also a BoF at the last IETF. Results can be
found at: http://www.imc.org/ietf-ube-bof/ ]

>It is difficult, having seen the range of opinions expressed,
>to see a consensus about concerted action involving intervention
>in the mail transport mechanism, even in the European region.
>of spammers and dynamically blocking their routes, both of which
>are technically possible and already implemented in places.

However, it appears that many of us have been thinking the same thing for
some time: the time for at least *some* deployment is here. The purpose of
the BoF we proposed is to look at deployment of *existing* measures, as
judging by conversations I have had with people, they can't afford to
experiment with new-fangled anti-spam measures but, on the other hand, many
are confounded by the myriad of tools available. If we can agree,
therefore, I would like us to try to engineer this BoF towards some
achievable short-term goals. [But then the purpose of having this BoF in
the first place is to determine if this is feasible or not ;-) ]

I'll produce a draft agenda real soon but in the meantime, any suggestions
are more than welcome.

Regards,

John