On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 Michael.Dillon@btradianz.com wrote:
Perhaps this is the time to find a new general solution rather than continuing to tack extensions on the existing email service?
None of the email replacement proposals I have seen are likely to get any significant deployment because none of them is sufficiently better than SMTP. Without a compelling incentive it won't happen because network effects strongly favour staying with what the majority of people use.
I don't have the answers but I think the 10 years of failure to put a dent in spam have shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that Internet email is broken by design and bandaids are not going to fix this, no matter how many different bandaids are applied.
One of the most important features of email is that it allows you to receive messages from people you have not previously communicated with. That, combined with the fact that email is cheap, makes spam inevitable whatever technical infrastructure you use. It is not a failure of SMTP. Another way to see that spam is not caused by weaknesses in SMTP is by observing that it occurs in other protocols: usenet spam, blog spam, wiki spam, spim, etc. Wherever there is an audience there will be spam. Tony. -- f.a.n.finch <dot@dotat.at> http://dotat.at/ BISCAY: WEST 5 OR 6 BECOMING VARIABLE 3 OR 4. SHOWERS AT FIRST. MODERATE OR GOOD.