responding to DMARC breakage

Miles Fidelman mfidelman at meetinghouse.net
Sat Apr 12 22:31:42 UTC 2014


Dave Crocker wrote:
> On 4/12/2014 2:38 PM, Jim Popovitch wrote:
>> On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 1:12 PM, Miles Fidelman
>> <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net> wrote:
>>     someone needs to get a legal opinion wrt
>> the DMARC group's effort to have all mailinglists change their From:
>> address.
>
>
> "The DMARC group" (presumably referring to the dmarc.org informal 
> consortium that created DMARC) is conducting no such effort.
>
> The action taken this past week was an independent effort by Yahoo.
>
> dmarc.org had nothing to do with it.
>
> The DMARC specification is quite clear about the limitations of its use.
>
> Nothing is aided by the confusing the very basic different between a 
> specification and the choices actors make in applying it.
>
Dave, it's not that clear cut.  Standards bodies have been held liable 
for negligence, as have participants in standards making processes (just 
did a little googling of case law).  Trade associations have been held 
to be in violation of antitrust law.

I would expect that the right lawyer might have a field day painting the 
"informal consortium that created DMARC" as colluding in violation of 
anti-trust law, and perhaps criminal conspiracy.  At the very least, 
"creating a public nuisance."  And that's before we even consider civil 
torte liability.

I also expect that someone could make a good case against Yahoo for 
"knowingly caus[ing] the transmission of a program, information code, or 
command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damages 
without authorization to a protected computer” in violation of the 
Computer and Fraud Abuse Act - for publishing their p=reject policy, and 
possibly for hotmail, comcast, etc. for criminal conspiracy in honoring 
that policy.  (Kind of like a DDoS attack, or domain hijacking.)

But then, I'm not a lawyer, just an engineer and sometime policy wonk 
(who just had lots of fun working with some very smart lawyers on a bid 
protest).

Hmm... I wonder if anybody who's suffered serious economic damage as a 
result of this wants to bankroll some lawyers?  Could be fun. (And given 
the amount of pain this has inflicted on me, personally, I wouldn't mind 
sharing some of the pain.)

Miles Fidelman

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.   .... Yogi Berra





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