From: J.B. Moreno (planb@newsreaders.com)
Date: Sat Mar 17 2001 - 12:38:55 CST
On 3/17/01 10:21 AM, Erland Sommarskog at <sommar@algonet.se> wrote:
> "J.B. Moreno" <planb@newsreaders.com> writes:
>> And how is that different from kent@landfield.com.uglystuff.nosuchtld?
>>
>> The big difference being that with .invalid, you /know/ that it's wide open
>> and officially unclaimed. And you have a search term that can be used to
>> exclude articles...
>
> I think the point John is trying to make is that you should not have
> the right to post with an address that is someone else's when you
> removed .invalid.
I understand what he is trying to say, I just don't agree with it.
Suppose my domain was "spamhaters.com" and I had the address,
"nospam.john@spamhaters.com" -- because "john@spamhaters.com" was already
taken, am I supposed to be responsible when someone else takes my perfectly
legitimate address and removes the "nospam." and then send mail to
"john@spamhaters.com"?
Let's examine the orginal example of "kent@landfield.com.invalid" a bit more
closely -- OK, removal of ".invalid" leaves what looks like an otherwise
valid address, but what if it was "kent@landfield.invalid"; do the owners of
landfield.org, landfield.net, landfield.ca, landfield.com, etc all get to
say that the poster shouldn't have used their domain?
".invalid" says that the address doesn't belong to anyone, the fact that you
can derive a possibly legitimate address out of it if you play games,
doesn't change that fact. Unless we define one official munged address, say
"invalid@invalid.invalid", the harvesters are going to have something that
they can use as a starting point for creating an address, and that will
likely effect someone, even if it isn't the person whose addresses they used
as the seed.
As for business or other people doing background checks and finding similar
addresses with ".invalid" -- so what? What about people with similar names?
What about people with similar addresses already (the above "nospam."
example)? Just as we can't prevent harvesters from using the address as a
starting point for building other address, we can't prevent people from
jumping to conclusions about what the real address of the poster is.
-- J.B. Moreno