On Sun, 29 Jun 2008, John Levine wrote:
We already see this in the email world, where a self-appointed cartel like the MAAWG can decide technical rules and policies, bypassing both IETF and ICANN.
As an active participant in both the IETF and MAAWG, and a former member of the ICANN ALAC, I can assure you that MAAWG would be delighted to stop publishing its own BCPs about email and abuse management, reflecting the experience of the largest mail systems on the planet, if the IETF or ICANN would get their heads out of their navels and do so. A mail system configured according to current RFCs would be useless, since nobody would be able to find the trickle of legit mail in the torrent of spam, even assuming the mail system didn't melt down from the load.
I configure rDNS on every email server I managed, even if I find the rule stupid and unfair, because I have no choice.
All those mean old ISPs are, in case you hadn't noticed, delivering the mail you send them for free. If you find it too much trouble to configure your DNS in accordance with STD 13, which has been around for over 20 years, I expect they'll also find it too much trouble to try and tell your mail apart from the 99.999% of no-rDNS hosts that are spambots.
Spam sucks, complaining about it won't make it go away. Indeed, the reason we're making so little progress against it is that far too many people just complain and expect someone else to solve the problem.
I for one am happy MAAWG and other less public groups are out there. Nature abhors a vacuume and if one is there it will be filled. Gadi.
R's, John