On Mon, Mar 31, 2003 at 03:42:14PM -0500, Jason Stephenson wrote: > Jeff Kinz wrote: > > The emails are getting tooo long - I'm condensing from here on in. > > If I am not spamming why can't I use the methods explicity approved by the > > IETF? Why must I change my method because one or two ISP's refuse to > > behave in the proper cooperative fashion that has been the standard of the > > internet (Almost) since its inception? > > You can. You just can't send mail that way to AOL. AOL has made a choice > that they have every right to make. Now, you just have to live with it.
This means every time I want to send an email to an aol address I have to reconfigure sendmail, restart it , send the email, then unconfigure sendmail and restart it again. Gee that didn't waste any of my time. :-) > Look, I still fail to see how you are harmed by AOL's decision. You can > send mail to AOL's customers. You can still send mail to the majority of > email servers on the Internet. Is your life in danger? Does it > jeopardize your health or welfare? It wastes my time. : This means every time I want to send an email to an aol address I have to reconfigure sendmail, restart it , send the email, then unconfigure sendmail and restart it again. Gee that didn't waste any of my time. :-) > > > > > On Mon, Mar 31, 2003 at 12:09:12PM -0500, Jason Stephenson wrote: > > Condensed" AOl is not part of the internet , they are a gated community" > > > > AOL's community IS part of the internet but this action is restricting the > > spontaneous flow of communication to the endpoints of that part of the > > network. > > > > Restricting that flow will prevent emergent characteristics from > > coming into being. What AOL is doing is retrictive. In order > > for the network to be valuable the communications must be as uninhibited > > as possible. > > > > Your claim in the next paragraph that "requiring AOl to accept mail from all > > IPs" is restrictive is so wrong it boggles me. > > > > How can unconstrained connectivity be restrictive? Is black white and white > > black? Did I wake up in Alice in Wonderland this morning? > > You may have, this is a LUG mailing list after all. :-) And its on the internet :-) > >>AOL, as even the small part of the 'net that they are, is participating > >>in the emergent behavior of the 'net. Their decision to block IP > >>addresses is just a part of that behavior. And so is my reaction to them. > > No - their behavior is killing a small portion of the net and making it less > > valuable and less emergent. > > I think your whole argument on "emergent" behavior is specious at best. > I'm merely throwing it back in your face. When talking about emergent > behavior, you're talking about a system with agents each acting > independently. These agents perform actions which lead to other actions > and reactions in other agents. The idea is that without any intervention > from outside, these actions self-organize into behavior that appears to > be intelligent. It really has no place in this discussion, but if you're > going to insist then I'll argue it with you. > > I'm looking at the Internet as the whole of the system, all of the > users, ISPs, software, protocols. Each one is an agent acting within the > system. One of those agents, AOL, has made a decision which affects > another agent, Jeff Kinz. Now, Jeff Kinz appears to want an outside > agent to stop AOL from behaving that way. This intervention would wreck > the dynamic of the Internet as I see it running. AOL as an agent is free > to behave as it pleases. > Scientifically, there is no "harming" of > emergent behavior. Scientific neutrality in obervation is admirable. But in this case we are the agents being experimented upon. We will not be dispassionate. > Agents operate as agents operate. Their behavior is > either viable or it isn't. However individual agents are harmed by other agents all the time. This affects the viability of the harmed agent. > > There is no limiting of emergent behavior. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > Emergent behavior happens regardless of what you do or don't do to ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > promote it or hinder it. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ These statements are deeply wrong . It is very easy to destroy a network or an environment so that no emergent behaviors can happen. Formalizing communications is one example. Preventing change is another. Stopping communications is yet another. Preventing information from being generationally archived is yet another. How much exposure have you had to these concepts? I can send you one of my papers.. :-) > > Most of the internet seems to work "well enough". as soon as there is > > an artistic license source implementation of a properly working > > authentication system that ability could be fairly quickly added > > to the internet. Probably even faster than IPV6 :-) > > True, but now, you're requiring people to learn PKI, if that's the way No, I'm not - "People" don't "know" SMTP and yet they use it all the time don't they? > > They are under no obligation to accept mail from anyone, not even you. They certainly are. If they accepted email from no-one how long do you think they would stay in business? You are trying to say there is no legal requirement for them to accept email from anyone. This will eventually change as society comes to realize that ISP will need to follow some of the end user open access requirements that the common carriers have to follow, albeit translated to the internet rather than telephony. "Access to information shall not be abridged" Bujold. circa 1997? (Time for a consitutional congress anybody?) > Actually, you might be an unknown number if your ISP says your in a > dynamic pool, even if it isn't implemented that way. I just thought of > this now. Can I have the number "6" and a striped hat please? (Music from the prisoner plays in the background... :-) ) > >>> > >>>At the very least AOL should accept SMTP from registered domains. I can > >>>understand not accepting it from semi-anonymous dynamically assigned IP's. > >> > >>Ah, yes, but see my previous message. You are probably in violation of > >>your ISP's TOS for registering a domain on their IP block. To most > >>people's thinking that constitutes running a server. It's the only > >>reason you'd want to do so. > > > > > > Actually I want to maintain and control my own email identity. Now it will > > never have to change. And again - I am not in violation of MY TOS. > > Yes, but it isn't *your* IP number. It was assigned to your ISP. If they > don't want you to register a domain name to it, they could terminate > your agreement if you do. Even if your TOS doesn't explicitly state > this, they would likely pull the old no servers thing and use the domain > name registration as evidence that you're running servers. That's my > point here. They could say that but if I'm only accepting email to me at kinz.org how could they substantiate it? > Unless your ISP says its OK, I'd be careful about this. This is the main > reason I went with the ISP I did and chose DSL over cable. The two ISPs > that I've had for DSL, both here and in KY, basically said, you're > paying for the line, you do what you want, and they said it in writing. > > > > > > >>Ah, yes, but AOL and its customers would be hurt if they didn't make the > >>decision that they made. > > > > hmmmm - I'm going to undamage myself by causing harm to innocent parties > > instead of going after just the people who harmed me. > > > > Nope. This fails the simplest morality check. > > But how are you or innocent parties being harmed? Quantify the damage > and we'll talk. I'm sure AOL can very easily put a price on what spam > costs them. Can you put a price on what it costs you to use another > server to send mail to AOL? I know there are other ways to measure this > than money, but money is all a court is going to care about. Certainly - I work from home a lot. This uses time that I would have spent doing billable work. Each incident would hit my billable time for about $20 bucks, a minimum billable time unit. A valid calculation method for damages I have seen used in many cases. Especially when backed up by a diary/journal. > Certainly. Everything has a cost. I think part of the problem we're > having in this discussion is that we're looking at the world from two > very different points of view. You seem to see the world as black and > white, good and evil, harmful and not harmful. You seem to see these This is an incorrect supposition. I do not see the world this way at all. (AOL and Gates maybe.... :-) ) I do state my arguments assertively when arguing for a position however. > things as absolute, as was implied by your Alice in Wonderland remark > above. In other words, what is bad for one person is bad for all and > what is good for one is good for all. I don't see the world this way at > all. Of course, there is good and bad, but what is good for one isn't > always good for all. True > Any action that you take is going to harm somebody > somewhere. Only true sometimes. > Everything has both good and evil in it. There is nothing > that is absolutely good or anything that is absolutely bad. Not always true. > > With your proposed changes, you will harm innocents along with the > spammers. It's a compromise. Everything is a compromise. You just don't > happen to like the current compromise because it seems to affect you > more than it affects others. I see your proposed compromise as doing > more harm than the present one, I agree with your assesment, but only for the short term. Extending the AOL principle of "restricted interaction" into the future where I'm sure AOl and other large ISP will implement ever more intrusive and restrictive polices will ahrm all of us a great deal more than fixing the spam problem in a more positive and directed fashion. This is just the first slip down a long and slippery slope. > > It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to make it a little bit harder. > > Once the economics are changed spamming stops by itself. > > Yes, this is true. Right now, almost the entire cost of spam is born by > the recipient. To a lesser extent, this true of legitimate email, too. > > I was interrupted while writing this email. I started it over an hour > ago. Anyway, I'm bowing out now. It's clear we disagree. Which is fine. Whew... thanks - I was getting RSI... :-) -- Jeff Kinz, Open-PC, Emergent Research, Hudson, MA. [EMAIL PROTECTED] copyright 2003. Use is restricted. Any use is an acceptance of the offer at http://www.kinz.org/policy.html. Don't forget to change your password often. _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
