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Re: [anti-spam-wg] Proposed New Charter

  • From: Brian Nisbet <brian.nisbet@localhost
  • Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:57:12 +0100

Peter/Patrik,

Please do let Richard and I know any queries, suggestions or
general feedback you may have on the text below.

The WG procedures would not be changed by this change in focus.
.SE has given e-mail a lot of thought recently. Anti Network Abuse is
such a huge area to work with, and there is now a tendency to not
focus on e-mail as such at all. So this might be another step to the
death of e-mail. Remember Usenet News?

I believe that there should be a focus on trustworthy (more secure,
robust, whatever) e-mail somewhere, but all I see is more focus on the
wider issue on spam (on web, wikis and forums), trojans and
botnets. There is the risk that we lose e-mail in the confusion.


I fully support Patrik's view.

It's better to stay in focus of a well-known problem then trying to solve the more general problem of network-related abuse. Expanding the focus might even ( i'm speculating here) involve the agenda of RIAA and then shureley consensus would go down the drain.

Keep the anti-spam-wg as an spam-fighting group. Let other interests start their own group.

The fear that e-mail abuse may be "lost in the noise" is one that has
been in previous discussions on this topic and I can only say the same
thing that has been said previously, that spam is still one of the
most obvious and prevelant forms of network abuse, however it is
becoming harder and harder to consider the spam issue without looking
at some of the root causes, which brings us to the wider issue of
network abuse.  In addition there are ways in which the network is
being abused that were not there when the WG was set-up, so it seems
very much like a natural evolution.  Also, having a separate working
group for botnets etc. etc. really isn't going to scale.

One of the comments that has been made elsewhere is a requirement to
state that we are talking here about network-*level* abuse, so we
would not be talking about cybersquatting or the hosting of illegal
content.  It was never intended that the charter/WG address such
issues, but I will be aiming to state it specifically in the
proposed charter.

Brian.