In message <000601bd9550$bd5db800$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
"Kief Morris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> The central mailing list information clearing house would likewise
>> and inevitably become the subject of heated debate and, most likely,
>> raging hostility.
>
>Although I'm not generally a paranoid anarchist, I object to the idea of
>making setting up mailing lists a bureaucratic process. Right now anybody and
>their dog can set up a mailing list without having to go through some kind
>of application process.
Right. And therein lies the problem. As you may have noticed, there are
a LOT of _irresponsible_ people running around on the net these days setting
up abusive opt-opt mailing lists. They generally are lumped under the
major heading of ``spammers''.
>Having such a process will discourage grass roots,
>non-technical, non-official type people from setting up lists.
It will also discourage spammers from spamming, which is the whole point.
Others (it is hoped) will be undeterred.
>One thing
>that has always made the Net strong is that anybody can become a publisher.
Yes, and as long as they *don't* do it right in my face (or in my mailbox)
and without my consent, I have no problem with that. But it is undeniable
that we _do_ have a problem in the Internet with people who want to publish
in a irresponsible in-your-face kind of way and is abusive. There is no
doubt about that. Now the only question is ``How do we control THEM without
getting to much in the way of other, legitimate publishers who use legiti-
mate non-abusive mailing lists?''
>It also opens up the door to those who would like to regulate such things.
>Once you've decided that it's OK to ban mailing lists for one reason -
>because of spammers - it's easy to start tacking on new reasons to ban
>them...
Well, since you mentioned it, yes.
The one other criteria that _I_ would use to decide which lists are legit
and which ones aren't is that the list must also use a default-negative-
response subscription validation protocol.
(I have ranted at length about the evils of subscription bombing attacks
on the list-managers list frequently in that past, so I won't repeat myself
on that subject taodya, but I will just say that I considerd all mailing
lists that fail to have a responsible subscription validation protocol in
place are a danger to themselves and to others and ought rightly to be
excluded from the polite parts of net-society.)
> - next it's software piracy, then child porn, then adult porn, then
>profanity, then anything anyone finds offensive.
Sorry. I for one am not buying this ``slippery slope'' argument. It has
been pointed out time and time again (in various mailing lists and newsgroups)
that abuse _on_ the net is a very different thing than abuse _of_ the net.
Spam and mailbombing and subscription bombing are forms of abuse *of* the
net. Profanity and/or calling someone else a bad name may be considered
abusive by some, but these things are clearly not going to degrade the
usability of the medium itself, whereas spam and mailbombing _do_ have that
effect.
>This scheme would put
>the mechanism in place to make this easy to do, and you know politicians
>will latch onto it.
No. I don't know any such thing. Most of them can't find their keyboards
with both hands and most haven't the vaguest idea what we online folks do
here on the net, so I have no reason to believe that they would suddenly
take some morbid interest in mailing lists and how they operate on the net.
>> Let's say that I set this all up next week. Just suppose. Can I see a show
>> of hands of how many of you mailing list administrators would actually sign
>> up, get an official handle for your mailing list and get a public/private
>> encryption key pair?
>
>Sorry, not me.
>
>Again, the strength of the Net is that it gives power to individuals. Yes,
>that makes the Net is a messy place, because not all individuals are good or
>responsible.
If it were just messyness, then nobody would give a damn.
Unfortunately, E-mail spam clearly contains the potential to make the entire
worldwide E-mail system completely *unusable* for anything *except* bulk
junk advertising.
>But I don't like the idea of taking power away from individuals,
The idea I put forward wouldn't really have the effect of taking away anyone's
liberty. You would still be allowed to scream your bloody lungs out in the
wilderness, but nobody might be listening when you do... in particular if
you refuse to follow any of the standard protocols of polite discourse and
discussions that are acceptable by the rest of society.
This is no different from saying that yes, you *can* try to run a mailing
list which always sends mail out on port 17025 (rather than port 25) but it
then bomes likely that you won't garner much of an audience. Still, you
are free to make the choice to defy convention if you like. Be my guest.
-- Ron Guilmette, Roseville, California ---------- E-Scrub Technologies, Inc.
-- Deadbolt(tm) Personal E-Mail Filter demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/deadbolt/
-- Wpoison (web harvester poisoning) - demo: http://www.e-scrub.com/wpoison/
