From: Charles Lindsey (chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Jan 16 2001 - 05:31:05 CST
In <20010115102948.B9212@main.templetons.com> Brad Templeton <brad@templetons.com> writes:
>The only "should/must" required is the requirement that people not put
>in deliberately unmailable addresses and not mark them as such, since
>this breaks the replying function. The replying function is part of
>the USENET system, even if the medium it calls upon is the independent
>e-mail system.
>There are no requirements that the user's client warn him, but it is a
>good recommendation.
Then that is clearly a case for an "Ought".
But there is the separate question of what happens if the user's client
persists regardless. Presumably, posting agents connect to MTAs as well as
to news injectors (or maybe it is the news injector that, for convenience,
handles the connection to the MTA). The TLD ".invalid" is defined in RFC
2606, which is of a "Best Current Practices" status, with some backup from
IANA. Since it was published only in 1999, the emails standards (DRUMS)
have not caught up with it yet, so there are no SHOULD/MUST NOT attempt to
deliver requirements laid down yet, though that was clearly the intention,
so as to avoid wasted DNS lookups or SMTP attempts.
So our document will probably be the first to mention RFC 2606 and
".invalid" explicitly. The question then is, can we, or should we, say
something like "User agents MUST/SHOULD NOT attempt to send email to the
TLD '.invalid'". One could argue that genuine interoperability did arise
there, and I think that is what Brad is asking for. Or do we just say, in
the NOTE, that any attempt to send such email will likely lead to a
refusal by the MTA.
Note that all this is in addition to the issue of warning the User, which
is clearly an "Ought" matter, as indicated above.
>>
>>
>> I don't see why. By and large Usenet users much prefer to be able to tell
>> exactly where an article has come from, for all sorts of killfiling and
>> spam-fighting reasons. The NNTP-Posting-Host is much used for this
>> purpose, and people seem to like it.
>The reason why is that one can attain the same result -- in fact a better
>result -- through the use of a token that doesn't track the user except
>to the authorized admins.
>My identity, as a poster, if I wish to use a pseudonym, is none of your
>business, as long as you can track spammers.
Your identity, as a poster, is at the mercy of whoever does your
injecting. If you want to be anonymous, then you had better find some site
that will respect your anonymity. Because the injecting site has to take
responsibility for what you do, and therefore they get to choose how much
of your identity leaks out.
Most sites choose to use the NNTP-Posting-Host in its normal manner (a few
encode what is put there). Most users welcome this open approach. As is
usual on the Internet, your right to be anonymous is balanced by my right
not to listen to you. Generally speaking, that leads to the evolution of
customs and conventions which, by and large, allow communications to
continue.
But no way is the IETF obliged to follow the EFF line. Our job is to
provide the tools to do things in the various ways that people seem to
want. After that, customs and conventions will evolve naturally.
-- Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------ Email: chl@clw.cs.man.ac.uk Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl Voice/Fax: +44 161 436 6131 Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K. PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5