[This message with my ISP-related hat off and my Usenet newsgroup moderator hat on.] John writes:
Despite postings to the contrary, this is an extremely difficult problem to solve in the absence of authentication. While the current ad-hoc methods of managing such bulk advertising are not perfect, they may be far better than the quick fixes being proposed.
Just as a warning, some of us on the recieving end of more than our fair share of net abuse (the collected Usenet moderators) are starting to get more than a little short fuzed about this. There was a strong move last week by numerous moderators to demand that spammers real name, address, and phone number be released by ISPs following abuse events, presumably to make the sort of ad hoc counterattack which seems to be the only effective response today more effective. I argued against it, for the obvious reasons for anyone who's an ISP (customer confidentiality being a very touchy issue...), and the moderators are back to simmering without a coherent policy. That particular proposed solution aside, something is going to have to be done about the problem. Not so soon that we do the wrong thing, but there has to be an industrywide public acknowledgement that certain behaviours are abusive to the net as a whole and are not acceptable. -george william herbert gherbert@crl.com moderator, sci.space.tech & sci.space.science