Murkowski anti-spam bill could be a problem for ISPs

Mon May 26 08:51:38 UTC 1997

The problem with spam is not the inability of persons and companies to
create policies, but to enforce those policies due to to the inability to
identify spam, and measures taken to prevent its identification. We do not
need government to create policies for us, and the goverment has no
additional ability to enforce policy except through the use of force
(police, courts, guns).

Unauthorized use of mail relays is already illegal -- no explicit law is
necessary to make it so.

Forgery of headers to falsely implicate an innocent party is already
illegal -- no explicit law is necessary to make it so.

I oppose any explicit goverment regulation of the Internet, good intentions
or not. The governments hold no particular control over the Internet itself
(except US, which cannot practically excercise it) -- geographic borders
are too easily circumvented. Regulation based on the geographic location of
information and equipment creates an influence that opposes efficiency in
Internet traffic, routing, caching, etc.

The top-level power in the Internet derives from the delegation TLD's, IP
space, and the policies and peering contracts of the default-free tier 1
providers. This is global and unescapable. Where it involves purely
technical issues to insure the continued viability and operation of the
Internet, this is where regulation should derive from. It must be
technical, unbiased and non-judgemental.

Putting aside where and who regulates, the only thing that is necessary to
solve them problem is as follows:

* reinforcement of the illegality of unauthorized use mail relays
* reinforcement of the illegality of header forgery to implicate an
innocent party.

And in the effort to allow the identification of spam, a required SMTP
header:
precedence: [ high | normal | low | bulk | uce ]

This will allow policies to be enforced, and maintain the freedom of
creating that policy.

	Matt