Carl Cerecke writes: > Jason Greenwood wrote: > > Being a libertarian myself, I detest the thought of the government > > getting involved in trying to legislate spam... > > But technological solutions (which you proposed in a previous email) to > what is essentially a social problem are most likely doomed to failure. > > Cheers, > Carl.
I'm not sure that it's entirely and only a social problem. If the designers of SMTP etc. had been thinking about how things ought to work in a large world filled with irresponsible people, rather than the small cosy world of DARPAnet, then they may have designed systems where sender verification and tracing was more possible. Something like this could work: http://cr.yp.to/im2000.html although widespread adoption is almost inconceivable --- it's like the telephone, not much use if there's only one of 'em, and as long as the current infrastructure does a 'good enough' job no-one will move over --- even though people are increasingly spending more time deleting spam, implementing spam solutions, and missing legitimate mail, 'good enough' could be a very marginal level of usefulness. There would have to be a widespread shift to make this work, otherwise if you want the benefits of email, you'd end up still having to interact with the old system. Perhaps some leadership from central government would help :] As I said, I don't have any difficulties in principle with legislation designed to address the spam problem. I'd greatly prefer a minimalist approach then a heavy-handed one in this area, though --- personal liberties are not only important to libertarians. Legislation like Hollis suggests might be good. I'm quite fond of the 'ADV:' string in headers, myself. If this were widespreadly enforced, spammers couldn't complain about the customers who want spam not getting it, and it would make it easy for the rest of us to get rid of it. Really all these peices of legislation are doing are forcing spammers to be as honest as the rest of us are when we send email. I don't try and make my linux advocacy look like a letter from your aunt or an offer of a date from a cute girl. A.
