[PLUG] Spam, SMTP, and 'net censorship (was Sudden drop in spam recently?)

[Tim]

> Verizon isn't restricting users unreasonably. Verizon is requiring
> authentication for to relay outgoing mail, which most people would
> consider a fairly reasonable thing to do.

Ever tried running your own mail server?  Been doing it from years at
home.  Works great if my ISP doesn't get in the way.  I find relaying
through an ISPs mail server invariably creates serious delays and
problems.  This is asside from the fact that now I can't encrypt my
mail to trusted mail servers via things like STARTTLS.

Will Verizon next decide to protect the rest of the Internet from me
by checking to see if my mail looks like spam?  Perhaps start
collecting email addresses I send to so they can sell them to
"legitimate" marketing lists?  Seems far fetched, but what's to stop
them?

>From Verizon's point of view, it may very well make sense, but maybe
the bigger problem is the lack of options for users.  You can't use
alternative ISPs with FIOS and Cable.  Slow Qwest DSL or colo is all
that's left.  It's becoming an increasingly restricted market place.


> I do think IM2000 is interesting, but that replacing the current email
> system with it or something else is actually a much bigger problem
> than the technical design of such a system.
> 
> These sort of internet conversations often wind up with somebody
> pasting the cynical form describing why so and so's proposal for
> fighting spam or change to our email architecture will fail. It has an
> uncanny truth to it.

"It's hard, so we shouldn't try."  Is that a fair summary?  If one
could reduce the volume of spam by an order of magnitude, would that
not be worth it?

Oh but think of all of those poor spam filtering companies that would
be out of work...

tim