Well I found this a reasonably rational description of the problem and amusing at the same time so I thought I'd share it with you all.....

X-Sieve: cmu-sieve 1.3 Delivered-To: nanog-outgoing(a)merit.edu X-Authentication-Warning: world.std.com: bzs set sender to bzs(a)world.std.com using -f From: Barry Shein Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2000 15:59:25 -0400 (EDT) To: woods(a)weird.com (Greg A. Woods) Cc: nanog(a)merit.edu Subject: Re: surge in spam email (fwd) X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under Emacs 20.5.2 Sender: owner-nanog(a)merit.edu X-Loop: nanog

...

I think if *everyone* stood up at once and declared that open relays were bad for us all then there wouldn't be too much trouble because there'd be nowhere for frustrated customers to jump to! ;-)

Ya know, Greg, if everyone in China jumped off a 12 inch stool simultaneously it'd cause a tidal wave which would sweep over the entire United States.

Or maybe not.

But it's not worth losing sleep over.

I'm not really trying to be too sarcastic, but I think your world-view of what the net has become is anachronistic and the idea that some project like ORBS is going to harass every open-relay in the world, every workstation capable of forwarding mail for example, into behaving better is at this point in time kinda like the Chinese footstool tidal wave (is that from Dr Strangelove? whatever.)

No, we need a legislative approach, with some technical support to help increase the likelihood that spammers who break the law will get caught. But first it has to be illegal, or else it's all for naught.

Put it this way: I consider my house locked up even if I do have glass windows, and even if glass is rather easy to break.

If it were legal for a person of ill intent to break the glass to get into my house to rob me the first approach would not in my mind be to board up all the glass unless I really lived in some mad max anarchy.

I'd first want to see it made illegal to break into my property.

Then, with reasonable diligence, I can enjoy the sunshine and spend my time and money on more important things than trying to engineer it so it's impossible to break in.

Or at least I can do the cost/benefit analysis from the situation where it's illegal to break in, rather than just a stupid cat and mouse game as we're currently playing with spammers most of the time.

The Walrus and the Carpenter Were walking close at hand; They wept like anything to see Such quantities of sand: "If this were only cleared away," They said, "It would be grand!"

"If seven maids with seven mops Swept for half a year, Do you suppose," the walrus said, "That they could get it clear?" "I doubt it," said the Carpenter, And shed a bitter tear.

-- -Barry Shein

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