Trial accounts (Re: MAKE SPAM ...etc...)

Thu Aug 22 17:58:46 UTC 1996

A recent article in Network World ("Shared Logic:  How free should the
Internet be?" by Marc Myers, 8/12/96, p. 28), drew an analogy from early
"townships" and how they relate to the Internet.  Nathaniel Hawthorne
once observed that all successful townships built a church and a jail
prior to any other construction as tools for enabling others in the
community to pursue their belief systems out of "harm's way."

If Usenet, mailing lists & conferences (such as "nanog") are the equivalent
of the early churches (places to congregate and learn how to apply one's
belief system to everyday life), then perhaps such an authoritative
"blacklist" would be the equivalent of a "jail" for those that insist
on violating the principles that the majority of us feel make the Internet
successful...

Of course that brings up all sorts of issues of defamation (being on the
list unfairly could hurt one's reputation with customers, etc.), due-
process (how do you get off the list or on in the first place), etc.  I
would imagine that getting somebody to just "volunteer" to do such a list
"officially" might be difficult!

It _is_ appealing though...

$0.02 (YMMV)

Ed

On Thu, 22 Aug 1996, Michael Dillon wrote:

> On Thu, 22 Aug 1996, Paul A Vixie wrote:
> 
> > > I doubt many (esp. large providers) will start filtering IP/SMTP
> > > traffic because (1) filters suck precious CPU, (2) they'd have to
> > > maintain frequently changing filter lists, (3) and they'd increase
> > > potential liability for traffic monitoring/filtering.
> > 
> > (1) a Null0 route works fine, and costs no additional CPU.
> > (2) i'm going to start a WWW page to register "bad" nets.
> > (3) several nationwide ISPs _are_ blocking moneyworld's net.
> 
> One good thing about point (2) above is that if there is an authoritative
> list of bad nets run by a respected and clueful admin such as Paul is,
> then it becomes much easier for admins everywhere to just download his
> router config parameters automatically every week like (dare I say it?)
> transferring a DNS zone file.
> 
> And since the person maintaining the list of bad nets is both clueful and
> respected we could be reasonably assured that if a bad net turns good it
> will promptly be removed from the list.
> 
> What concerned me was that if people add blockages to their routers when a
> very visible problem occurs, over time more and more sites get blocked but
> nobody will ever go in and clean them up or even check if they should be
> cleaned up.
> 
> And if the net that is blocked ends up being transferred to another owner
> at some point in time, then that owner now has a "contaminated" Internet
> address. And the upstream NSP who allocates this address block also has a
> the contamination to deal with.
> 
> However, if there is some kind of public and coordinated effort to deal
> with this issue then perhaps we can avoid the contamination (by the weekly
> updates) or we can at least maintain some records of who is blocking what.
> If a bad site turns good then admins can be emailled or notified somehow
> to remove the blockages.
> 
> Michael Dillon                   -               ISP & Internet Consulting
> Memra Software Inc.              -                  Fax: +1-604-546-3049
> http://www.memra.com             -               E-mail: michael at memra.com
> 
> 

Ed Morin
Northwest Nexus Inc. (206) 455-3505 (voice)
Professional Internet Services
edm at nwnexus.WA.COM