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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: sorbs.net
On Tue, 15 Mar 2005, Paul Vixie wrote: Mortgage agreement is not the best choice for comparison on how blocklistsIf it *actually* worked right, why do I *ever* encounter people that don't even know what block lists they're using?As MAPS found out during some early legal imbroglios, it is very easy to convince a judge that at least one ISP has subscribed to a blackhole list without understanding the full effects that this choice would produce. The whole "click to agree" (or "press F8 after scrolling to the last page") thing from software vendors is no better. There's no way a judge (nor, one assumes, a jury) will ever believe that everyone who signalled agreement, understood. The last couple of times I've signed closing papers for a house I've had to write several times "I agree, and I understand english" longhand and then sign my name -- but I don't think that'd hold up to a challenge of nonunderstanding, either. are used, its slightly different concept. Blocklist use is example of delegating responsibility which is common and rooted in our political system (and concept is in use both by government and private businesses). Since one person can not possibly make a decision about each and every detail of their life (although libertarians claim otherwise) we choose to delegate responsibility for certain tasks to certain other people or organization that specialize in those areas. This is both more manageable and as far as overall costs are concerned. By delegating the task we accept the consequence that somebody else would be making decision on our behalf on this particular subject but this is done by choice and either each person participates in directly choosing who would be doing the decision or accepts decision make by majority social group he's in or delegates making decision on who would be doing involved to somebody else (delegation chain). In terms of use of blocklists, the end-user directly delegates responsibility for making decisions about which emails are good or bad to his ISP. In parcticular if user uses email with ISP's domain name than in fact ISP has full rights to make decisions about their domain and user has to accept it by default as he/she just buys partial use with that domain, but if user has his own domain, then he/she makes decisions by buying mail hosting service and delegating responsibility regarding how email is delivered has to be explicit as part of such mail hosting service agreement. Now ISP then delegates responsibility further by choosing select list of organizations they believe are better qualified to make decision if the source of the email is good or bad - these are blocklist operators, so there exists delegation chain from end-user to blocklist operator (just like there exist delegation chain about regulations regarding telecom services which we buy, thse regulations are made by FCC which is in turn chosen by the government and approved by the parliment to which end-users deligated this reponsibility by selecting it). In each case by delegating responsibility you accept consequence that somebody else would make a decision and you have to live with such consequence, such as that those others may occasionally be wrong (and if they are wrong too often you can be vocal about it and they either change based on your comments or you make different choice). If you do not like all this, feel free (with your own domain name) to not use filtering service and make decision about every email by yourself, however the problem is that you'll spend more time on that that you could be spending on something else more productive and as such this time in fact does cost you something even if it provides you better granularity and direct access to the decisions. At the same time by delegating responsibility you accept (often free) service provide by blocklist and it is usually more cost-effective (both to each individual and definetly to society costs in general). -- William Leibzon Elan Networks [email protected]
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