Re: LYNX-DEV RMS Titanic

[Al Gilman]

  From: Michael Warner <address@hidden>

  Comment #1: 'Subscription' is irrelevant.  Anyone can post to the list
  without being subscribed, no?
  
True, one does not presently need to be a subscribed recipient of
lynx-dev mail to post to this distribution.  On the other hand,
the "subbing" that Jason referred to was at the sending end: entering
the lynx-dev posting address in the distribution of another stream.
That is relevant.

  Comment #2: Any email address which appears in a Usenet newsgroup or
  in a web page is subject to automated harvesting and subsequent
  sale/use by the people who compile them into multi-thousand-address
  spam mailing lists.  Hence the increasing use of 'remove-to-reply'
  elements in Usenet From: headers.
  
I hope we can come up with better solutions.

  As far as maliciousness goes, at least this guy used what appears to
  be a valid return address, which for me moves him out of the category
  of 'Truly Evil' and into the 'Clueless' realm.  Most of the email spam
  I get has headers mangled from heck-to-breakfast, making it obvious
  that the perpetrators realize their hated and reviled status.
  
As I said earlier, there needs to be an organized central
activity that accepts spam examples via email, analyzes them, and
applies the data analysis to constructing legal action against
those who systematically abuse the net.  It is easier to
establish that forging headers is a manner of tort than to
legislate that unsolicited commercial advertising is illegal.

  Wish I had a solution to offer, but alas...
  
I have a concept of a higher level of defense, when we decide we
care enough to do it.  One way to be gracious to people on the
street while warding off the spammers is to have the following,
somewhat cumbersome, flow:

        - posts to lynx-dev from subscribed members go through 
        automatically
        - posts from non-subscribers are manually reviewed and
        authorized by a cadre of volunteers

Note that this combines well with the idea to segregate off a
separate list for first-line user support.  The distribution
which handles lynx-dev posts from non-subscribers and for
reviewing requests that come to address@hidden should
probably be the same group.  This requires a three-continent
staff and a certain amount of groundrules and admin setup.  If
the people on lynx-dev feel that this subdivision of the list can
be made to be an improvement, and we get enough volunteers for
the helpers duty, then we can look at what to do with the server
sites.

--
Al Gilman
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