On Tue, Jul 16, 2002 at 05:21:17PM -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote: > On 7/16/02 3:55 PM, "Jay R. Ashworth" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'm voting in favor of the lynch mobs you mention later. > > > And this is a *perfect* case that supports what has been my assertion > > all along -- you non-Libertarians out there, cover your ears and sing > > -- *it's the recipient's problem*. This case is exactly the > > illustration I want: I couldn't have written one better from scratch. > > But without rules, you can't teach the recipient what's right (with a cattle > prod, if necessary), and without rules, the lynch mob has no binding > authority.
Where, by "rules", here, we mean "rules about what it acceptable mail"? Why, that's up to the recipients. To quote Jubal Harshaw: "Who's name is on that envelope, Nurse? ... Oh: not yours." > > It's obvious that the answer is: setting up rules *would* *not* *have* > > *helped* *here*. > > Nope. But those rules are what allows you to go and make an example of the > poor schmuck, in hopes that it'll keep the next person from making the same > mistake. Wtihout the rules, there is no map you can use to teach people how > to stay out of the tiger pits. That sentence seems to assume that the majority of the people *falling in* the tarpits are people doing it by accident. I don' think that and I don't think *you* think that. When mail is outlawed, only outlaws will send mail. > > So what are you going to do? > > > > Outlaw Outlook? > > Don't blame outlook here. Lots of mail clients do this 'temporary caching'. Stipulated, and NS6 does it too, though I think that Moz may not. It *is* configurable, at least, in Netscape. I've never had to turn it off, cause none of my clients are that dumb. But Outhouse *did* originate the idea, so far as I'm aware. > > The answer is that there is no answer. > > The answer is there IS an answer. Just not a complete or fully satisfying > one. > > The answer is multi-faceted: > > 1) rules that explicitly and unambiguously call out what is and isn't > acceptable. > > 2) education systems to help users understand the situation and learn how to > deal with it appropriately. > > 3) information that explains (and legally limits your liability for) the > limits of what you can and can't do given all this technnology, so > subscribers understand what you're doing and what you can't do anything > about but (1) and (2) above. > > 4) a cattle prod for when all of the above fails. > > 5) patience of a saint, reaction times of a ranger. You forgot to capitalize that. :-) > > Automatically verifying PGP sigs as a whitelisting technique is merely > > one approach that springs to mind. There are many more. > > Sorry, doesn't really solve the problem. I posted a url to a note I wrote on > this to barry a few minutes ago. By which I meant, "sigs of people in your address book." No, this doesn't solve the "stupid user" problem... but you don't *solve* that with technology. You solve it with a LART. > > Yeah, but the Outhouse and OE teams aren't ever going there, and > > they're your problem. > > Hint: this wasn't a windows box, and it wasn't a microsoft product. IT AIN'T > MICROSOFT. Lots of clients do this now. Stipulated, but they're 80-90% of the market. I think even skewing for "non-Windoze users send more mail, you would still be about 70%, intuitively. > > At some point, if you're going to *have* a mailbox, you *have* to take > > responsibility for it. > > Yes, but if you're going to distribute email, that doesn't remove your > obligation to do what you can to protect the user from abuses in that > distribution. BOTH sites and obligations and responsibilities. Chasing spammers is one thing. Chasing people who directly harvest your listmanagement machine in person seems quite another. *That* you can't do on a case by case basis? Are you getting harvested every 5 minutes? > > Do you have documentary evidence, Chuq, that web harversters are the > > *only* way that *a majority* of the spam-complainers addresses could > > have gotten on those lists? Have you created test-accounts? Not 1 or > > 2; a couple dozen, in different places? > > The person who did this has come clean to me. I know exactly what he did. > It's about the only reason I've let him live. He hasn't always been, well, > sending me christmas cards, but he's been fully cooperative. No, I mean in other cases. You're using webharvesting, it seems, as your major motivation here; it doesn't seem to me -- please don't take this wrong -- that there's evidence that it's really a big enough problem to solve (for people who don't send 40M pieces of email an hour). Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] Member of the Technical Staff Baylink RFC 2100 The Suncoast Freenet The Things I Think Tampa Bay, Florida http://baylink.pitas.com +1 727 647 1274 "If you don't have a dream; how're you gonna have a dream come true?" -- Captain Sensible, The Damned (from South Pacific's "Happy Talk") _______________________________________________ Mailman-Developers mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman-21/listinfo/mailman-developers
