From: Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 16 2001 - 02:28:10 CST
Brad Templeton <brad@templetons.com> writes:
> It is my view, and the EFF's view, that this assumption should be given.
Please remember that organizations do not have standing within the IETF
process (see extensive discussion on the main IETF list over the years).
I for one am interested in your opinion and am not interested in the EFF's
opinion, just like I'm not interested in Microsoft's opinion, Cisco's
opinion, or the US government's opinion. If *people* have opinions, they
can participate as individuals.
> Systems should be designed to protect the privacy of their users from
> the start, and that privacy should only be removed when there is a very
> compelling reason to do so, and no less invading means to attain the
> goal.
Usenet was not so designed. You're talking about this as if we're
inventing a new protocol and not standardizing an existing one. I think
that changes the focus of the discussion somewhat.
> In this case, the value of spam tracking is real, but it can be done
> using a token that doesn't let the public track a posting to a real
> person, only the local admins.
I agree, provided that token has hierarchical structure, but like other
good ideas that have been proposed on this list, someone needs to write
and deploy code. Just because something sounds like a good idea doesn't
mean that it should replace existing widely-deployed solutions in a
standards-track document, in my opinion.
> In fact, one might argue that there is a more compelling argument to
> stop the spam at its source, and not only have the token, but simply say
> that injectors SHOULD throttle the posting volume of any given user or
> network of users.
If everyone did post filtering, the need for transit filtering would
diminish greatly, I agree. I don't think it's particularly realistic to
expect this to happen.
-- Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>