[thelist] Serious antispam measures

[Ken Schaefer]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: "Wesley Mason" <wes at pmason.karoo.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [thelist] Serious antispam measures

Don Park recently blogged a very interesting idea, I'm not saying its
perfect or would work, but very interesting:

<quote>
Given that more spams originate from certain countries than others, I
wonder what would happen if total bandwidth capacity of each country is
choked by percentage of spam in outgoing e-mail. For example, if
Korea's bandwidth capacity is X and 70% of e-mail originating from
Korea is spam, then Korea's bandwidth is limited to 30% of X.
</quote>

http://www.docuverse.com/blog/donpark/EntryViewPage.aspx?guid=53769d2a
- -7012-4f5d-84c3-9dd1e31e8aa0
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Multiple problems with this:
a) who is going to do the "throttling", considering that the infrastructure
is largely privately owned?

b) why would anyone invest in intercontinental links, when it could be
"throttled" at any time, by unpredictable degrees because of originating
spam? The people that run a cable between, say Korea and the US have no
control over local ISPs. There's no way they'd spend a billion or two laying
a decent specced cable.

c) the internet doesn't consist of a single route from (a) to (b). You
throttle one link, the traffic just squeezes through other links as routers
reconfigure to determine the next lowest cost route.

d) that leaves aside any consideration of the problems of measuring
"originating spam". BTW, it is commonly accepted that most spam originates
in the US. :-)

Cheers
Ken