On 2004-02-16T12:58-0500, Sean Donelan wrote: ) On Mon, 16 Feb 2004, Daniel Reed wrote: ) > On 2004-02-15T17:33-0500, Sean Donelan wrote: ) > ) Why don't IRC operators require authentication of their users? ) > ) Why don't SMTP operators require authentication of their users? ) The operator of the anonymous service should deal with the consequences ) of maintaining that anonymitity. ISPs authenticated their users. But And in large part, we do. I am an IRC Operator on a large IRC network, called EFnet, and I do report abuse whenever it occurs in my presence. Unfortunately, I have never received an affirmative response from an ISP after reporting such abuse; never received a request for additional information; and certainly never seen the problem host cease to be a problem after reporting. I am perhaps one of the few operators still interested in abuse reporting; many have simply resigned themselves to finding abusers using constantly- evolving techniques and simply banning them from the network when they are found. This helps us in the short term, but is only an arms race in the long term. It is a commonly held belief that any type of subscription service will be repeatedly evaded through technical innovation; the fix must come from the providers. The problem appears to be that many network operators do not think of themselves as anything beyond commercial network providers. Many appear loath to take any effort above and beyond ensuring their users' bills are paid regularly, or their budgets are kept low, etc. Many will have RFC 2142 contacts, but appear to discard incoming mail. Some, such as Charter Communications, do not even have these mandatory addresses (mail is not accepted for <abuse@charter.com>). ) Restuarant operators are responsible for the safe preparation of the food ) they serve and the cleanliness of their resturants. It is not up to the ) highway department to prevent sick people from visiting your restuarant ) or to monitor the trucks transporting food on the highway. And on the other hand, it is the CDC that would perform an outbreak isolation, not the restaurant staff. The CDC would also trace who the infected person had contact with and take steps to verify their health, etc. The restaurant could not possibly hope to have the resources or training to effectively deal with people walking in off the street carrying a deadly pathogen, and still have enough resources to provide a decent service. -- Daniel Reed <n@ml.org> http://naim-users.org/nmlorg/ http://naim.n.ml.org/ The pursuit of pretty formulas and neat theorems can no doubt quickly degenerate into a silly vice, but so can the quest for austere generalities which are so very general indeed that they are incapable of application to any particular. -- Eric Temple Bell, Mathematician