Perhaps these folks would also like to get involved with this project.
We've (http://www.vh.org/) been approached by the widernet group to provide some content, issues such as updating the information and copyright abuse crop up right away.
Long term, I think it's a better idea to focus on getting better connectivity then band aiding the problem with solutions such as these. Notice no one addresses the langauge barrier problem, I guess all interested parties are assumed to speak English?
The real thrust behind SPAM legislation is NOT to stop SPAM, but rather to legally define what is SPAM. Which means defining what is NOT SPAM.
Just like the National Do Not Call list, SPAM legislation gives certain parties the green light, based on how the legislation gets written. Because their stuff is NOT SPAM, the law says so. So Joe Consumer, heed the mighty marketing call and part with your hard earned money today!
Follow the money and it's pretty obvious who's pushing these laws.
I don't see how they deserve anything. They're already ahead by being bright enough to be first.
I really don't think Walmart is going to crush Netflix, have you been to a Walmart lately? I've never seen more dreary place labeled "Customer Service". As long as Netflix keeps their customer service where it should be, they'll be just fine. Heck, how much have they made already?
Why do you presume that Netflix DESERVES protection? Seems to me they have to EARN their survival. You think Walmart can pull off the same level of service as Netflix? Have you been in a Walmart checkout lane recently?
Netflix deserves nothing, they've already earned a bunch by being first and can continue by doing it right.
Wait, so your justification for patents of BUSINESS processes is that big BUSINESS is too big? And that little BUSINESS needs protection so it can grow up to be big BUSINESS?
and as far as i can see theyre working to make the lives of iraquis and afghans more secure and more prosperous.
You missed the point: Find out what the TERRORISTS are unhappy about. The majority of the Iraq and Afganistan were not involved in terrorist attacks, comforting them doesn't get to cause of the terrorists' angst.
People continue to see terrorists as just people who want to strike fear and cause chaos; what they fail to think about is WHY the terrorists have become so pissed off to go to such great lengths to get attention. You don't just wake up one day and decide flying into a building sounds like a fun thing to do.
Of course, the cynical would say the US media and government doesn' WANT anyone thinking about the terrorists other than to be afraid.
That is about the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Do you honestly think terrorists have the potential to kill humanity? No, I didn't think so.
The original point stands, as sad as 9/11 was, there are problems that cause more death every year that are more or less being ignored compared to the energy being wasted on "Fighting Terror".
(I agree with you entirely about "spam" already having a perfectly good definition: UBE. I suspect their weasel-words are due to the influence of the DMA and their allies who claim that spam is only a problem because of fraud and scams. No, spam is a problem because I'm being flooded by UBE. I don't care if it's fraudulent or not.)
I disagree, sidestepping the spam label makes perfect sense. Getting everyone to agree that such and such is spam would be next to impossible for ALL cases. As I've been saying for a while, the real problem is fraudulent headers; once that issue has been addressed the power goes back to the recipient to decide what email they want to accept, be it an ISP, end user or whatever.
This proposal works and in all the right ways. The sooner implemented the better.
Ok, let's go with that, for discussion sake. Suppose you do need a license to run a server. The main problem with SPAM is not knowing whose sending it. So how are you going to catch me to check my license?
We'll leave off the part about forcing US law on the rest of the world (good luck).
Almost a valid point. The people who wanted alcohol didn't prevent the passage of the law though, so they can't be "most" (leave our democracy workings aside for a moment).
There are a number of people that want to SEND spam, they are the ones who equate to your people that wanted alcohol and are the ones MOST of us wish to stop or at least be able to choose it ignore.
Are ONLY your friends going to be on your trust list? What about all the other email people receive, mailing lists, popular newsletters, so and so forth?
And it still doesn't answer the "don't accept the email in the first place" requirement. Still just a filter.
I agree with you about PIT, it would be very bad UNLESS properly implemented. Take DNS as an example of a system that can survive a massive DDOS, though DNS is suffering from adminstrative blockage these days (13 root servers? Why not 13,000?), but I digress.:)
With a solid lock on the source of SPAM (and by that I don't just mean an id at an ISP, I mean Joe Blow, 123 ISPAM Way, Areest me Here), it becomes easy to reject any messages from that source.
Anonymous is a hard issue. Personnally, I don't feel Freedom of Speech implies anonymous speech, I tend to believe a person should be responsible for their speech or shut up. Anonymous speech by definition means not being responsible for the speech. However, I suspect my position is mainly because I've never been in a situation that called for anonymous speech. Tough call there.
In my experience, most MTAs that matter already do this or at least record the connecting IP, not the hostname. sendmail I'm pretty sure usually warns the hostname is bogus.
qmail, of course, doesn't care what the hostname is.:)
It's easy to pass legislation to forbid something.
Enforcing it, however, is a whole different kettle of fish.
Perhaps you recall a small part of US history called Prohibition?
SPAM ( and I refer to fraudulent headers, abuse of open relays here as SPAM) is already breaking the law, it's called Fraud.
Opt-In means nothing unless you have a means to detemine whom is breaking the law. The real problem is tracking SPAM back to the source, which is a technical problem, not a legislative nor social problem.
SPAM is economical. Why? At the most basic level, because it is largely anonymous.
What's the ratio of SPAM-friendly ISPs to SPAM-targetting ISPs? Pretty low. So, how do spammers keep getting away with sending SPAM? Because it's nigh impossible to trace real SPAM (fraudulent headers and such) back to the actual sender.
This is what needs to be addressed (anonymous or fraudulent senders) and it is a technical problem, not a social one.
Everyone keeps using IPv6 as the ugly poster child.
Well guess what? I've heard more and more about IPv6 the last year. More and more projects are including support for IPv6. The ball has to at least be there before it can start rolling.
1. Blacklists already exist. Since they are optional, the problem still exists. Non-solution.
2. Anyone (ANYONE) can setup a smtp server. How long it remains up depends on a lot of factors, but that basic fact is why spammers exist and why there are servers for spammers to use/exploit.
3. If one could dictate how smtp servers are configured, then no more open relays. spam dies. But we can't, so spam lives.
A radical stance is required to change. Many say SMTP is here to stay. Oh, remember the little UUCP thingy? When did they stop saying "UUCP is here to stay" and why?
This method is good, but has its flaws, specifically "shotgun" spammers. Meaning those that just make up a list of names at a domain to spam; you'll get spam that appears to have been leaked when that isn't necessarily true.
Of course, I'd don't have anything better to suggest.:(
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps these folks would also like to get involved with this project.
We've (http://www.vh.org/) been approached by the widernet group to provide some content, issues such as updating the information and copyright abuse crop up right away.
Long term, I think it's a better idea to focus on getting better connectivity then band aiding the problem with solutions such as these. Notice no one addresses the langauge barrier problem, I guess all interested parties are assumed to speak English?
Tough problem, no easy solution.
From the article, that last minute cut (after many cuts already) was for offering Word separate from the rest of the Office suite.
That to me speaks volumes of how desperate Microsoft was to win and it sounded like the Munich council picked up on that as well.
The real thrust behind SPAM legislation is NOT to stop SPAM, but rather to legally define what is SPAM. Which means defining what is NOT SPAM.
Just like the National Do Not Call list, SPAM legislation gives certain parties the green light, based on how the legislation gets written. Because their stuff is NOT SPAM, the law says so. So Joe Consumer, heed the mighty marketing call and part with your hard earned money today!
Follow the money and it's pretty obvious who's pushing these laws.
I don't see how they deserve anything. They're already ahead by being bright enough to be first.
I really don't think Walmart is going to crush Netflix, have you been to a Walmart lately? I've never seen more dreary place labeled "Customer Service". As long as Netflix keeps their customer service where it should be, they'll be just fine. Heck, how much have they made already?
Why do you presume that Netflix DESERVES protection?
Seems to me they have to EARN their survival. You think Walmart can pull off the same level of service as Netflix? Have you been in a Walmart checkout lane recently?
Netflix deserves nothing, they've already earned a bunch by being first and can continue by doing it right.
Wait, so your justification for patents of BUSINESS processes is that big BUSINESS is too big? And that little BUSINESS needs protection so it can grow up to be big BUSINESS?
Oooookay!
and as far as i can see theyre working to make the lives of iraquis and afghans more secure and more prosperous.
You missed the point: Find out what the TERRORISTS are unhappy about. The majority of the Iraq and Afganistan were not involved in terrorist attacks, comforting them doesn't get to cause of the terrorists' angst.
People continue to see terrorists as just people who want to strike fear and cause chaos; what they fail to think about is WHY the terrorists have become so pissed off to go to such great lengths to get attention. You don't just wake up one day and decide flying into a building sounds like a fun thing to do.
Of course, the cynical would say the US media and government doesn' WANT anyone thinking about the terrorists other than to be afraid.
That is about the stupidest thing I've ever heard.
Do you honestly think terrorists have the potential to kill humanity? No, I didn't think so.
The original point stands, as sad as 9/11 was, there are problems that cause more death every year that are more or less being ignored compared to the energy being wasted on "Fighting Terror".
The key features to me on these boards are:
:)
Full L Enter Key
Full Backspace
Backslash/pipe were it should be!
It amazes me how few keyboards there are nowadays with this key pattern.
Gah. Am I the only one who refuses to buy from companies with extremely crappy websites?
(I agree with you entirely about "spam" already having a perfectly good definition: UBE. I suspect their weasel-words are due to the influence of the DMA and their allies who claim that spam is only a problem because of fraud and scams. No, spam is a problem because I'm being flooded by UBE. I don't care if it's fraudulent or not.)
I disagree, sidestepping the spam label makes perfect sense. Getting everyone to agree that such and such is spam would be next to impossible for ALL cases. As I've been saying for a while, the real problem is fraudulent headers; once that issue has been addressed the power goes back to the recipient to decide what email they want to accept, be it an ISP, end user or whatever.
This proposal works and in all the right ways. The sooner implemented the better.
I agree, it SHOULD be easily stopped. But then, open relays should be easily fixed as well.
*sigh*
We just can't win, can we?
A call back for mail servers? Interesting. Doesn't handle the open relay problem, but it might be a step in the right direction.
Hmmm. You mean something like this?
Since it's dated 2000, you can see how far we've gotten.So I would need a license to run mail server?
Ok, let's go with that, for discussion sake. Suppose you do need a license to run a server. The main problem with SPAM is not knowing whose sending it. So how are you going to catch me to check my license?
We'll leave off the part about forcing US law on the rest of the world (good luck).
Almost a valid point. The people who wanted alcohol didn't prevent the passage of the law though, so they can't be "most" (leave our democracy workings aside for a moment).
There are a number of people that want to SEND spam, they are the ones who equate to your people that wanted alcohol and are the ones MOST of us wish to stop or at least be able to choose it ignore.
Are ONLY your friends going to be on your trust list? What about all the other email people receive, mailing lists, popular newsletters, so and so forth?
:)
And it still doesn't answer the "don't accept the email in the first place" requirement. Still just a filter.
I agree with you about PIT, it would be very bad UNLESS properly implemented. Take DNS as an example of a system that can survive a massive DDOS, though DNS is suffering from adminstrative blockage these days (13 root servers? Why not 13,000?), but I digress.
With a solid lock on the source of SPAM (and by that I don't just mean an id at an ISP, I mean Joe Blow, 123 ISPAM Way, Areest me Here), it becomes easy to reject any messages from that source.
Anonymous is a hard issue. Personnally, I don't feel Freedom of Speech implies anonymous speech, I tend to believe a person should be responsible for their speech or shut up. Anonymous speech by definition means not being responsible for the speech. However, I suspect my position is mainly because I've never been in a situation that called for anonymous speech. Tough call there.
This solves nothing. Filters accomplish this and more already.
A. Nothing validates the whom the email is from, using that info is dubious at best.
B. You still accept the email in the first place, which is the REAL problem that filters currently don't solve.
In my experience, most MTAs that matter already do this or at least record the connecting IP, not the hostname. sendmail I'm pretty sure usually warns the hostname is bogus.
qmail, of course, doesn't care what the hostname is.:)
IP spoofing is still a problem of course.
It's easy to pass legislation to forbid something.
Enforcing it, however, is a whole different kettle of fish.
Perhaps you recall a small part of US history called Prohibition?
SPAM ( and I refer to fraudulent headers, abuse of open relays here as SPAM) is already breaking the law, it's called Fraud.
Opt-In means nothing unless you have a means to detemine whom is breaking the law. The real problem is tracking SPAM back to the source, which is a technical problem, not a legislative nor social problem.
SPAM is economical. Why? At the most basic level, because it is largely anonymous.
What's the ratio of SPAM-friendly ISPs to SPAM-targetting ISPs? Pretty low. So, how do spammers keep getting away with sending SPAM? Because it's nigh impossible to trace real SPAM (fraudulent headers and such) back to the actual sender.
This is what needs to be addressed (anonymous or fraudulent senders) and it is a technical problem, not a social one.
Everyone keeps using IPv6 as the ugly poster child.
Well guess what? I've heard more and more about IPv6 the last year. More and more projects are including support for IPv6. The ball has to at least be there before it can start rolling.
"If you build it, they will come."
1. Blacklists already exist. Since they are optional, the problem still exists. Non-solution.
2. Anyone (ANYONE) can setup a smtp server. How long it remains up depends on a lot of factors, but that basic fact is why spammers exist and why there are servers for spammers to use/exploit.
3. If one could dictate how smtp servers are configured, then no more open relays. spam dies. But we can't, so spam lives.
A radical stance is required to change. Many say SMTP is here to stay. Oh, remember the little UUCP thingy? When did they stop saying "UUCP is here to stay" and why?
This method is good, but has its flaws, specifically "shotgun" spammers. Meaning those that just make up a list of names at a domain to spam; you'll get spam that appears to have been leaked when that isn't necessarily true.
:(
Of course, I'd don't have anything better to suggest.