Subject: RE: 7. Best Practices (was RE: [Asrg] Trustic anti-spam system closes down because it doesn 't work)

From: "Bob Wyman" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 14:21:39 -0400

Yakov Shafranovich wrote:
> Within a consent framework, the individual administrator
> or developer would choose which sources of information to rely on.
	It should be recognized that if someone other than the actual
recipient of mail is making the decisions about how mail is to be
filtered, then there exists a possibility for inappropriate filtering of
messages (or censorship). Thus, I'm somewhat concerned when you suggest
it is "admistrator or developer" who would choose what "sources of
information" to rely on. I believe the individual should always be
provided a means to override or block any such third party decisions
about what they should be seeing.

	A classic example of adminstrators filtering too many messages
by "accident" and/or due to their lack of understanding the context in
which messages were exchanged was Prodigy's decision (back in the late
80's) that people couldn't use "bad words" in discussion forums. The
result was that you weren't able to use the word "bitch" in a forum that
discussed breeding dogs... Prodigy had incorrectly determined that all
uses of the word "bitch" were inappropriate. The individuals who were
discussing dog breeding would not have made this decision.
	Merely giving choice to users doesn't actually solve the
problem. I can imagine, for instance, a religious, political or business
leader who insists that all of his followers/employees and their
families must use a particular "rating service" in order to protect them
from "inappropriate" messages. This would be a case where external
pressures are put to bear to effectively remove the individual's choice
by means of forcing them to "choose" according to the dictates of a
third party.
	Yes, these are social issues -- not technical ones. However, we
should be aware of the social impact of the technologies that we
advocate or evaluate.

			bob wyman

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From: Yakov Shafranovich <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2003 14:37:53 -0400

>about what they should be seeing.

Allow me to correct myself:

"Within the consent framework, the individual administrator, developer and 
END-USER would choose which sources of information to rely on"

>.........

Consent policies of administrators and the user's organization do affect 
the end-user, and the end-user may not always have the ability to change 
their policies. While each end-user may define his or her own consent 
policy, upstream providers such as the user's organization, his ISP, his 
ISP's ISP, etc. can restrict those policies based on their own. Even entire 
countries such as China or Saudi Arabia can have a country-wide consent 
policy affecting all end-users.

Giving the end-user a choice whenever possible is an interesting idea. 
Where would be the correct place to state it: consent framework, 
requirements document or elsewhere?

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From: Daniel Feenberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Aug 2003 17:24:56 -0400 (EDT)

> about what they should be seeing.

The individual, through his choice of ISP or DNSBL, makes the
determination of the mail policy. It is wrong to ignore the user choice of
ISP, and claim that the ISP or DNSBL decision is censorship by a third
party. The constant drumbeat of "censorship" cries is merely an attempt to
prevent users from obtaining help in rejecting spam, and given the
technical difficulties involved in do-it-yourself spam reduction, can only
be classified as pro-spam propaganda. 

As long as the user chooses the ISP or DNSBL, censorship is not happening.
I should add, that the user is the one paying for the service - not the
one writing the message. This is the old IBM definition of the user, and
the correct one in this context.

Daniel Feenberg