Motion for a new POST NSF AUP
Ladies and Gentlemen...... A couple of interesting points have developed as a result of the latest 'spam event'. The first one is debatable, but I would like to comment, that my mailbox received 'one spam message' (which I deleted in a few milliseconds) that generated hundereds of 'anti-spam messages'. Causal to the 'spam' I would like to refer to the anti-spam messages as 'son-of-spam' :-) Second, it is somewhat clear that as long as we have 'spam' we will have a causal event 'son-of-spam' . Neither 'spam' nor 'son-of-spam' are welcome e-mail in most in-boxes, and I assume by the responses, many people find 'son-of-spam' just as annoying as 'spam'. Given that both sides of the coin are correct (in their own perception space) as we have seen, I would like to put this on the table to the network: Should we define an new 'postNSF AUP' that addresses what types of messages are Acceptable Use of the Internet? Should transit and end user providers require customers to agree to 'the new "agreed upon someday" commercial AUP'? Could we even agree on what a new AUP would look like? Most everyone agrees that spam and son-on-spam are a waste of precious bandwidth, time, and energy; and unacceptable messages detract everyone from more important daily issues and ideas. I motion we create a working group to develop a draft POST NSF AUP. ------------------------------------------------------------------ We all agree we need to manage what type of messages are acceptable use of the net..... Can we make POST NSF AUP a reality? Any seconds to the motion? Tim -- +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Tim Bass | #include<campfire.h> | | Principal Network Systems Engineer | for(beer=100;beer>1;beer++){ | | The Silk Road Group, Ltd. | take_one_down(); | | | pass_it_around(); | | http://www.silkroad.com/ | } | | | back_to_work(); /*never reached */ | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
From: Tim Bass <bass@linux.silkroad.com> Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 10:54:40 -0400 (EDT) A couple of interesting points have developed as a result of the latest 'spam event'. The first one is debatable, but I would like to comment, that my mailbox received 'one spam message' (which I deleted in a few milliseconds) that generated hundereds of 'anti-spam messages'. Causal to the 'spam' I would like to refer to the anti-spam messages as 'son-of-spam' :-) Second, it is somewhat clear that as long as we have 'spam' we will have a causal event 'son-of-spam' . Neither 'spam' nor 'son-of-spam' are welcome e-mail in most in-boxes, and I assume by the responses, many people find 'son-of-spam' just as annoying as 'spam'. Given that both sides of the coin are correct (in their own perception space) as we have seen, I would like to put this on the table to the network: I disagree, strongly. I think anti-spam messages, sent to the postmasters of the respective ISP's that provide service to the spammers, is perfectly acceptable. Otherwise, there is no cost to the ISP's for providing service to the spammers. As a matter of course, whenever I receive a spam, I will generally send a complaint to postmaster at the originating site, or perhaps to the ISP, if I can determine it. In fact, I'm thinking about automating this procedure, to decrease the amount of time that it takes for me to send the complaint. If everyone who receives a spam sends one (1) complaint to the ISP, the ISP would quickly get the idea that spammers are not to be desired on the Internet. Other people have talked about enforcement; as near as I can tell, this is the only kind of enforcement on the Internet that will really work. Any AUP that discourages people from using this type of enforcement mechanism, is in my opinion, a step in the wrong direction. (And this doesn't even take into account the first amendment arguments about people being able to complaint to ISP's about spammers which the ISP's are responsible for.) If the argument is that people shouldn't be sending son-of-spam messages to the mailing lists, that I can agree with whole-heartedly. But I do believe that ISP's that host C&S-style spammers deserve to have their mail hosts overloaded with individual complaints. One complaint per individual receiving a spam should be plenty to cause an ISP to become overloaded. :-) - Ted P.S. Perhaps ISP's should consider writing into their customer's contracts some legal language saying that if the ISP receives too many complaints, that the customer is liable for the cost of processing the complaints caused by that customer --- the ISP can decide to waive the fee if the complaints are caused by some mail forgery or other legitimate misunderstanding.
participants (2)
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Theodore Ts'o -
Tim Bass