From: Brad Templeton (brad@templetons.com)
Date: Tue Jan 16 2001 - 12:43:18 CST
On Tue, Jan 16, 2001 at 12:28:10AM -0800, Russ Allbery wrote:
> 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.
I mention the EFF view simply because many IETF members will pay attention
to it.
>
> 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.
USENET was designed with no authentication of any of the headers, so I
am not sure what you mean.
NNTP-posting-host is an ad-hoc header that was put in by some injector
authors without consideration of the privacy issues. When considering
how to standardize such activities, it is exactly the right time to bring
up the privacy consequences of the design.
> > 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.
I simply point out there are less privacy restricting methods to do it.
The actual right way to do it is digital signature, so that policies about
anonymity and pseudonyms can be made on a per-newsgroup or per-hierarchy
basis. Making it on whole net basis is wrong and making it on a per-site
basis is even worse. It is groups that change character based on what
level of anonymity they provide, and saying that this depends instead on
what site you post from is not of much value, unless you are going to
bar the sites that don't put in nntp-posting-host equivalents.