On Fri, 26 Oct 2001, Scott Francis wrote:
Intentions matter not at all. Only results of said traffic, the consequences of which are borne entirely by the receiver. If the receiver doesn't want it, the receiver should not have to receive it.
This is not how things are done elsewhere, so I don't see why it would have to be on the net. Also, how do you intend to inform everyone about everyone else's wishes in this regard? And it seems to me that if I send someone a request and they honor that request (to echo back the packet) this doesn't really indiciate that these kinds of requests are unwelcome. There are several ICMP messages that would convey this sentiment much more clearly.
Unless you're willing to come out and state that being connected to the Internet is a de facto agreement to receive anything and everything somebody wishes to send you
It is, "de facto". If you know that doing something has a certain result, and you do it, you can't really be surprised that the result ensues. Connecting to the net means you'll receive packets. If you don't like this, don't connect or filter out the unwanted packets. What we really need is something where you can have a system close to the source block the unwanted traffic. This would help a lot against all those stupid bandwidth-hungry worms.