Re: Fwd: Re: Digital Island sponsors DoS attempt?
I was using legitimate in the sense of 'e-mail that the receiver wanted to receive'. ...
So this now boils down to "if the sender and receiver of a packet/session/etc are both interested in having it take place, then noone in the middle shall be allowed to deliberately prevent this from occuring." What would you mean by "deliberate" in this case? If "e-mail between consenting adults" was blocked because some NOC person was trying to stop a DDoS attack that happened to use the same source or destination address as the "consenting" e-mail was coming from or going to? Should that be illegal? If not, then why wouldn't a mailserver operator trying to block spam be allowed to do the same thing?
I also think it's very important to get past the 'who pays' argument. It's a good argument from a technology point of view, or from the individual's point of view, but it doesn't work in the abstract.
On the contrary this argument is at its best in the abstract.
Worst case is someone will develop and popularize (or legislate) a settlement system where the sender can pay for the entire transaction.
A law allowing someone to make micropayments to the telco I get my T1 from, and to the vendor I buy replacement drives for my RAID box from, and so on, and which further _required_ me to have my costs offset in this manner, is beyond rational consideration and I refuse to even discuss it. Requiring that my inbox have a determinate bank account attached to it so that these micropayments can be made to me without any explicit contract between myself and potential senders is on the borderline of irrationality: we could discuss it but I don't think we'd get anywhere in finite time. This leaves the requirement that I enter into an agreement before costs are shifted in my direction. That's where we are right now. And that's why the "who pays" argument is at its _best_ in the abstract.
On Sun, Oct 28, 2001 at 03:08:36PM -0800, Paul Vixie wrote:
So this now boils down to "if the sender and receiver of a packet/session/etc are both interested in having it take place, then noone in the middle shall be allowed to deliberately prevent this from occuring."
Yes, i would think so. If both parties want it, and both pay for their part, no one should interfear in the middle.
What would you mean by "deliberate" in this case? If "e-mail between consenting adults" was blocked because some NOC person was trying to stop a DDoS attack that happened to use the same source or destination address as the "consenting" e-mail was coming from or going to? Should that be illegal? If not, then why wouldn't a mailserver operator trying to block spam be allowed to do the same thing?
I'll defer the illegal question for the moment, and merely say that yes, I believe it is wrong. I'll accept him potentially delaying the e-mail, but tossing it due some other problem is very much a bad idea. To borrow a current analogy. Consider if the postal service announced today that to stop the spread of anthrax they were just going to burn all of the mail currently in the system. After all, it's for the greater good.
A law allowing someone to make micropayments to the telco I get my T1 from, and to the vendor I buy replacement drives for my RAID box from, and so on, and which further _required_ me to have my costs offset in this manner, is beyond rational consideration and I refuse to even discuss it.
Requiring that my inbox have a determinate bank account attached to it so that these micropayments can be made to me without any explicit contract between myself and potential senders is on the borderline of irrationality: we could discuss it but I don't think we'd get anywhere in finite time.
Oh, I think the bean counters and legislators could get somewhere quickly. Do the settlements payed between RBOC's and CLEC's have anything to do with costs? Nope. Someone has decided it costs $0.06 (or whatever it is) to terminate a call. If it costs you less, good for you, if it costs you more tough luck. They could easily legislate that mail servers must be registered, and each e-mail results in a $0.06 fee transfered from sender to receiver. If it costs you more tough, and if it costs you less good for you. You'd need a license to run a mail server, in which case you'd have to have the clearing house infrastructure, or you could contract the mail server service to your ISP. You'd have an open account, and your balance would go up or down with your ratio of e-mail. It "works" in the telco world. It could be argued it's not much more complicated for ISP's than managing BGP relationships and billing customers. Most importantly I can see accounting people and legislators being all for it. I think this is about the worst thing that can happen. But, if you argue to capitol hill that you're eating someone else's costs I'll bet they find a way to compensate you before they find a way to just prevent it, since most of them think business is good, in any form. Note, I'm waiting for this to happen with cell phones. As people move from land lines to cell phones which can't be tele-solicited today I can see a cell provider offering a value add service where the telemarketer can pay an additional fee to cover the costs of the call. It's 1-800 in reverse, billing the sender. More $$$'s for cell providers, and if telemarketers find it's the only way to reach people I'm sure they will pay to do it. Once the receiver isn't being charged for the calls I doubt and legislative body would block it. -- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/ Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request@tmbg.org, www.tmbg.org
On Sun, Oct 28, 2001 at 06:26:43PM -0500, Leo Bicknell wrote:
On Sun, Oct 28, 2001 at 03:08:36PM -0800, Paul Vixie wrote:
So this now boils down to "if the sender and receiver of a packet/session/etc are both interested in having it take place, then noone in the middle shall be allowed to deliberately prevent this from occuring."
Yes, i would think so. If both parties want it, and both pay for their part, no one should interfear in the middle.
Sure, but the sender of a SPAM message selling kiddie porn, VIAGRA, Gas Masks and a discount on Viagra, etc hasn't asked me if I want it. And if I tell him, NO I don't want it, they will send it anyway. Or at the very least tag my address as valid, sell it to someone else who will send me stuff I don't want.
To borrow a current analogy. Consider if the postal service announced today that to stop the spread of anthrax they were just going to burn all of the mail currently in the system. After all, it's for the greater good.
Don't confuse gov abilities with those of private entities. Private companies can refuse to accept traffic from those that they wish. (ramble about how recep comp works in the telco world)
It "works" in the telco world. It could be argued it's not much more complicated for ISP's than managing BGP relationships and billing customers. Most importantly I can see accounting people and legislators being all for it.
Really, the CLECs are now being paid by the ILECS for call termination. Wow, I must really be out of the loop now.......
On Sun, Oct 28, 2001 at 06:26:43PM -0500, Leo Bicknell wrote:
Note, I'm waiting for this to happen with cell phones. As people move from land lines to cell phones which can't be tele-solicited today I can see a cell provider offering a value add service where the telemarketer can pay an additional fee to cover the costs of the call. It's 1-800 in reverse, billing the sender. More $$$'s for cell providers, and if telemarketers find it's the only way to reach people I'm sure they will pay to do it. Once the receiver isn't being charged for the calls I doubt and legislative body would block it.
I see some serious issues here. Cell phones are not geographically linked as land-lines are. There is a variable cost in delivering the call to the phone. If I take my at&t cell phone, get them to send me the GSM card so while I'm traveling in europe/africa/wherever I can get calls the last thing I want is to be +/- 6 hours and be woken up. In the same vein it's illegal for them to make unsolicated calls unless they are during the hours of 9am-9pm. If I live in Eastern time and am traveling and in Hawaii and they call me at 9am Eastern and i'm just getting to sleep that would open them up to litigation. (the problem is that even though calls to cell-phones are illegal by telemarketers they must call more than 2 times in a year). I've also had friends that have moved from one coast to the other and kept the same cell phone# as there is no difference in their costs either way and want to keep their friends/family on the other coast as a local call. I'd rather see a solution whereby they are forced to deliver caller-id of their marketing firm or company name. This way I can continue to decide to take the call. Unless i'm expecting your call and know you don't show up on caller-id you are not likely to be answered unless i'm feeling like entertaining myself. It would be not too complicated to add-in sending the name along with the numerical caller-id info. - Jared (this is getting very off-topic, setting reply-to:) -- Jared Mauch | pgp key available via finger from jared@puck.nether.net clue++; | http://puck.nether.net/~jared/ My statements are only mine.
participants (4)
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Jared Mauch -
John M . Brown -
Leo Bicknell -
Paul Vixie