spam control again

[josephc at etards.net]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2003, Jerry Feldman wrote:

> On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 20:57:37 -0400 (EDT)
> josephc at etards.net wrote:
> 
> > Disseminating child pornography, bribary, slander, and extortion are
> > all illegal acts regardless of whether they are done over the Internet
> > or in the "real world". Anti-spam laws would be laws specifically
> > applied to the Internet and are in a different class.
> Not true. They are only illegal acts when some government makes them
> illegal. There may be some countries that allow child pornography.
> Bribery is also not illegal in many parts of the world, and in some
> places, expected.
> But, the common types of crime are generally accepted worldwide as
> crimes. But, if a person in Costa Rica extorts you, how are you going to
> proscecute when there is no extradition treaty.

Sorry, I lacked a qualifying statement. Those activities are illegal in 
the 
US, regardless of the medium they are perpetrated over. Any anti-SPAM law 
enacted by a state or congress would be the largest piece of 100% Internet 
focused legislation, to the best of my knowledge (please correct me if I'm 
wrong)

> 
> > I was a little too wordy in my last emails so I think I need to hone
> > down my point a little better. My contention is the anti-spam laws are
> > not required to help fight spam and we should put our efforts into
> > furthering knowledge of existing, effective solutions. 
> I do agree with this. I think we already have methods available to us to
> control SPAM. What is needed is a method where all senders of email must
> provide some type of authentication. So, if company xyz sends out bulk
> unsolicited mail following the standards, that email is not blocked, but
> if Johnny Scriptkitty sends out some SPAM taht does not contain the
> authentication, it can be blocked. 
> 
> 
There is a solution that has popped up in the last few weeks that is 
described 
here: http://projects.puremagic.com/greylisting/

You can follow the link for description of the concept, but I think 
"Greylisting" may be just what Jerry has in mind.

-joe