A Zero Spam Mail System [Feedback Request]

Fri Feb 22 16:28:08 UTC 2019

On 22 Feb 2019, at 9:58 AM, Miles Fidelman <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net> wrote:
> 
> On 2/22/19 10:07 AM, John Curran wrote:
> 
>> On 22 Feb 2019, at 7:08 AM, Miles Fidelman <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net> wrote:
>>> On 2/22/19 12:03 AM, John Curran wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Either way, until such time your solution is deployed widely enough to significantly impact network operations, it’s unlikely to be a particularly relevant topic for discussion here.
>>>> 
>>> Notable exception:  DMARC.  Broke email lists everywhere - including those that folks use to solve problems on the net. Heck, it broke the ietf email list.
>> Indeed - while a self-inflicted injury on its customers, the network effects of massive operating scale effectively transition the problem space from private actor to public…
>> 
>> hence not an notable exception, but an actual example of "deployed widely enough”
> 
> Hmmm....  But wasn't the initial impact of DMARC that so few senders of email had implemented it? 

If you (or your email service provider) deploy an optional solution (e.g. DMARC p=reject) that prevents you from receiving email from mailing lists sending in conformance with existing standards, then that’s your choice.

Expecting that others will automatically change their behavior (such as wrapping email from mailing lists) isn’t reasonable - you’ve effectively decided (or let your provider decide) that you don’t want existing communications to work for some categories of standard-compliant email.   The alternative is ‘Internet Coordination’, but that requires actually coordination before making major changes that will break things. 

> Also, the impact wasn't just on customers, but on trading partners & communities - communications being a two way street and all.

One doesn’t communicate with folks who chose (or let their service provider chose) not to receive email accordingly existing standards. 
In any case, irrelevant to the dombox situation, unless/until someone actually deploys at a scale large enough to require consideration. 

/John