As usual, folks don't see the real problem.

Editorial by Dave Hayes

I have come to the inescapable conclusion that Paul Vixie is a misguided zealot who may have already fostered the Great Breakup of the once unified Internet.

As I was reading an article about Vixie and his "blackhole" campaign, I began to feel a deep sense of sorrow for the human condition. The internet is beginning its fragmentation, not unlike large masses of human beings split into many different countries. We just can't live together, it seems.

To assist in this process, Mr. Vixie seems to want to create a bastion of ISPs who do not talk to other ISPs. The only crime that these unwanted ISPs are guilty of is their unwillingness to succumb to his personal standard of righteousness.

It matters not what that standard is. It matters that it is being applied from one person, over many many other people. This is simply the equivalent of internet blackmail. I can cite at least one backbone provider (IAP class) that subscribes to this blackhole. This means that there are customers of customers that are affected, and probably do not even know it.

All this because people aren't using the net in the way that Mr. Vixie (and the rest of the cybermob) would like.

To make matters worse, this isn't even the real problem. The real problem isn't Spam, unsolicited advertising, or junk mail. The real problem is volume.

Assume the internet has N users, where N is large. If each user sent 10000 messages per day, the internet would overload. (Astute readers will recognize this argument's source.) This is mostly because current e-mail transport software simply cannot handle 10000*N messages in a single day, distributed or not. What's worse is that the transport software makes no attempt to -limit- users to any arbitrary number messages per day. The condition where there is a known limitation to the processable volume of email and yet no arbitrary per-user limit is enforced via the same software is called, in computer science terms, a design flaw.

That's right (especially for you naysaying anti-spam freaks out there) "spam" exists because of a design flaw in the SMTP transport system. Not that this is an unpardonable sin of technical ineptness, who knew that the internet would grow to such proportions?

The solution is fairly simple (and not without some technical complications). The goal is to limit each net user to some arbitrary limit of outbound mail messages in a single 24 hour period. This way, you aren't arbitrarily deciding appropriatness based on content (something most reasonable people would condemn under different circumstances), and you aren't allowing people to send 60,000 messages per day (which arguably costs someone else some arbitrary amount of money).

It surprises me that few of our old-time internet gurus (Paul Vixie markedly included) have not seen this answer. It's not surprising that a religious zealot would not see any obvious answer if it goes against their religion.

Could there be...a connection?