The Moral Majority and The Promise Keepers and other fundamentalist groups sit on white horses waiting to ride in and save us from ourselves. What is being said below needs to be considered. Firstly, Paul mentioned the need to have strong checks and balances. What does that mean and how do we keep him honest and ensure "we are using our powers for good"? It's well and fine to say that "the Nanog Group" is watching but in reality is there any bite in that statement. Do we have an audit and appeal system to ensure rules are applied equally and fairly? Next once the bulk mail protocol is in an RFC I would expect the RBL to be disbanded certainly. What worries me is that some other moral content issue is sitting on the fire and we are fanning the flame by providing method to the madness. As easily this started out on spam, spam and spam we could see a rise in some other groups interest in deciding "content issues" for others. Some thought needs to go into how to limit some of this vary type of methodology. One idea would be to set up a "working group" to develop subscribed to operations guidelines and principals for ISPs. The group could have a charter and systems for addressing issues like this now and in future. They could have built in review mechanisms and audit systems. Police ourselves or be policed! The frontier work Paul and company have done is great but needs to be formalized. Chris MacFarlane Manager, Data Operations ACC Telenterprises Canada 4162132023 cmacfarlane@acc.ca cjm@ican.net -----Original Message----- From: Daniel Karrenberg <Daniel.Karrenberg@ripe.net> To: nanog@merit.edu <nanog@merit.edu> Date: Tuesday, October 28, 1997 6:41 AM Subject: Spam Control Considered Harmful

I am worried about the tools we are developing and deploying to control spam.

Some of them are esentially centralsied methods of controlling Internet content. Paul's anti-spam feed for instance prevents users of some providers from seeing spam. The user has no choice; they cannot opt to receive spam other than by switching to another provider. Even worse: they may not even be aware that they are "missing" some content.

Combatting spam is considered a Good Thing(TM) by almost everybody here, including myself. However the same technology could just as easily be used to do Bad Things(TM). Even worse: if it works it demonstrates that *centralised control* of the content of Internet services like e-mail is

*feasible*. This will give some people ideas we may not like, and sometime in the future we may ask ourselves why we have done this. The end does not always justify the means. I hope that methods like the anti-spam feed will not be taken up widely. Please consider the consequences before you use them.

I stress that I do not question the morality or good intentions of those involved. I am just concerned about the almost ubiquitous and apparently unreflected zeal that spam seems to evoke and the danger of it making us accept methods we would otherwise despise. I would prefer to see more work in technology that is less centralised and gives the users a choice of the content they wish to see. Yes this may be harder to do, but the consequences of deploying the easier methods may be just too severe.

Waehret den Anfaengen (beware of the beginnings)

Daniel

PS: I hope this is more coherent than my contribution at the meeting yesterday when my brain failed due to jet-lag while my mouth was still working perfectly ;-).