Re: Internet management, was ICANN opens up Pandora's Box of new TLDs

* John Levine · * Sun Jun 29 14:44:23 2008

>We already see this in the email world, where a self-appointed cartel
>like the MAAWG can decide technical rules and policies, bypassing
>both IETF and ICANN.

As an active participant in both the IETF and MAAWG, and a former
member of the ICANN ALAC, I can assure you that MAAWG would be
delighted to stop publishing its own BCPs about email and abuse
management, reflecting the experience of the largest mail systems on
the planet, if the IETF or ICANN would get their heads out of their
navels and do so.  A mail system configured according to current RFCs
would be useless, since nobody would be able to find the trickle of
legit mail in the torrent of spam, even assuming the mail system
didn't melt down from the load.

> I configure rDNS on every email server I managed, even if I
> find the rule stupid and unfair, because I have no choice.

All those mean old ISPs are, in case you hadn't noticed, delivering
the mail you send them for free.  If you find it too much trouble to
configure your DNS in accordance with STD 13, which has been around
for over 20 years, I expect they'll also find it too much trouble to
try and tell your mail apart from the 99.999% of no-rDNS hosts that
are spambots.

Spam sucks, complaining about it won't make it go away.  Indeed, the
reason we're making so little progress against it is that far too many
people just complain and expect someone else to solve the problem.

R's,
John