John is going to pop up instantly whenever I, or perhaps others, I can only follow me, suggest that we need a fresh approach to spam and related. He has done this for literally 20+ years going back to the days of the IRTF/ASRG ca 2003. The paper, or a similar paper, he flogs he also has offered as "mathematical proof" that bitcoin cannot possibly work 15 or so years ago. Perhaps we have different notions of "work". But I want to ask: John: Do you have any conflict of interest which might motivate you to shoot down even the most generally worded proposal regarding spam et al as quickly as you can type? At best my take is he wants to shut down any discussion, fast. So maybe we need to hear from new or at least encouraging voices because the current technological approaches aren't working no matter how much we tweak them over and over as evidenced by even the past few days' commiseration right here on nanog. In a sentence: Let's figure out how to put these spammers et al out of business. I've watched them for nearly 30 years and believe their business model is fragile and brittle but isn't going to be subdued by layering on yet another blind, general-purpose, verification layer. It's possible this might be a threat to some so-called "legitimate" bulk emailers who are currently getting an enormous free ride on the current architecture at the cost of end-users' attention time and those who have to provide the ever-growing infrastructure to carry their boondoggle*. * By the old business rule: If it's not worth anything to you it's CERTAINLY not worth anything to me! On August 16, 2025 at 13:56 nanog@lists.nanog.org (John Levine via NANOG) wrote:
It appears that Barry Shein via NANOG <nanog@lists.nanog.org> said:
I still maintain a solution to most spam lies in the economic and business realm, not the technical realm of layering on yet another filter tho even an economic approach would require some sort of technical enforcement tho very different in nature.
Most spam is already illegal. But it is hard to coordinate a response when the harm per individual spam is low and it's the cumulative effect that is a problem.
R's, John _______________________________________________ NANOG mailing list https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog@lists.nanog.org/message/R2PLEFOH...
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