OT: Delirium...

[Philip Prindeville <ph...@redfish-solutions.com>]

Well, I was off on Vancouver Island for nearly a week, and didn't take a
laptop with me...  Clearly it caused some major trauma because I had the
following hallucinatory idea:

I was thinking about the issue in which sending spam isn't a crime in a lot
of countries, or if it is that it's poorly enforced.

Then I thought of SPF, Domain-Keys, and ways to enforce authenticity
using existing laws...

And came up with this idea.

What if we had a TXT Record in the DNS for a domain that looked like:

@            IN TXT       "XYZZY 123 456  (C) Copyright 2006 Redfish
Solutions, LLC"

And then had hosts participating in this scheme generate outgoing mail as:

X-Yes-Its-Really-Me: XYZZY 123 456 (C) Copyright 2006 Redfish Solutions,
LLC"

and uses the presence of this copywritten key to match the appropriate
string
in the DNS as proof that the sender is who he says he is.

Then if the scheme were widely adopted (we could have an applet or script
that generated a random string and primed the DNS with it or could be easily
cut-n-pasted into the DNS configuration... the MTA could of course extract
the string easily, as could anyone else for verification), then it would
be a
leverage point if someone started forging emails.

While sending spam might not be a crime in all civilized countries,
copyright
infringement is.

Is that too "out there?"

-Philip

Re: Delirium...

[jdow <jd...@earthlink.net>]

From: "Mike Jackson" <mj...@barking-dog.net>

>> Well, I was off on Vancouver Island for nearly a week, and didn't take a
>> laptop with me...  Clearly it caused some major trauma because I had the
>> following hallucinatory idea:
>>
>> I was thinking about the issue in which sending spam isn't a crime in a 
>> lot
>> of countries, or if it is that it's poorly enforced.
>>
>> Then I thought of SPF, Domain-Keys, and ways to enforce authenticity
>> using existing laws...
>>
>> And came up with this idea.
>>
>> What if we had a TXT Record in the DNS for a domain that looked like:
>>
>> @            IN TXT       "XYZZY 123 456  (C) Copyright 2006 Redfish
>> Solutions, LLC"
>>
>> And then had hosts participating in this scheme generate outgoing mail as:
>>
>> X-Yes-Its-Really-Me: XYZZY 123 456 (C) Copyright 2006 Redfish Solutions,
>> LLC"
>>
>> and uses the presence of this copywritten key to match the appropriate
>> string
>> in the DNS as proof that the sender is who he says he is.
>>
>> Then if the scheme were widely adopted (we could have an applet or script
>> that generated a random string and primed the DNS with it or could be 
>> easily
>> cut-n-pasted into the DNS configuration... the MTA could of course extract
>> the string easily, as could anyone else for verification), then it would
>> be a
>> leverage point if someone started forging emails.
>>
>> While sending spam might not be a crime in all civilized countries,
>> copyright
>> infringement is.
>>
>> Is that too "out there?"
> 
> IANAL, but I think it would depend on what is copyrightable, and how much 
> text can be quoted and still be considered fair use. IIRC, you can quote 
> ~250 words under US law, which would be too long and cumbersome for your 
> suggested system. Then you might run into user problems that would construe 
> (correctly or incorrectly) that the system is claiming copyright of their 
> written material. But nice try though  :)

Habeas.
{^_^}

Re: Delirium...

[Mike Jackson <mj...@barking-dog.net>]

> Well, I was off on Vancouver Island for nearly a week, and didn't take a
> laptop with me...  Clearly it caused some major trauma because I had the
> following hallucinatory idea:
>
> I was thinking about the issue in which sending spam isn't a crime in a 
> lot
> of countries, or if it is that it's poorly enforced.
>
> Then I thought of SPF, Domain-Keys, and ways to enforce authenticity
> using existing laws...
>
> And came up with this idea.
>
> What if we had a TXT Record in the DNS for a domain that looked like:
>
> @            IN TXT       "XYZZY 123 456  (C) Copyright 2006 Redfish
> Solutions, LLC"
>
> And then had hosts participating in this scheme generate outgoing mail as:
>
> X-Yes-Its-Really-Me: XYZZY 123 456 (C) Copyright 2006 Redfish Solutions,
> LLC"
>
> and uses the presence of this copywritten key to match the appropriate
> string
> in the DNS as proof that the sender is who he says he is.
>
> Then if the scheme were widely adopted (we could have an applet or script
> that generated a random string and primed the DNS with it or could be 
> easily
> cut-n-pasted into the DNS configuration... the MTA could of course extract
> the string easily, as could anyone else for verification), then it would
> be a
> leverage point if someone started forging emails.
>
> While sending spam might not be a crime in all civilized countries,
> copyright
> infringement is.
>
> Is that too "out there?"

IANAL, but I think it would depend on what is copyrightable, and how much 
text can be quoted and still be considered fair use. IIRC, you can quote 
~250 words under US law, which would be too long and cumbersome for your 
suggested system. Then you might run into user problems that would construe 
(correctly or incorrectly) that the system is claiming copyright of their 
written material. But nice try though  :) 

Re: OT: Delirium...

[Gene Heskett <ge...@verizon.net>]

On Monday 03 April 2006 14:16, Philip Prindeville wrote:
>Well, I was off on Vancouver Island for nearly a week, and didn't take
> a laptop with me...  Clearly it caused some major trauma because I
> had the following hallucinatory idea:
>
>I was thinking about the issue in which sending spam isn't a crime in
> a lot of countries, or if it is that it's poorly enforced.
>
>Then I thought of SPF, Domain-Keys, and ways to enforce authenticity
>using existing laws...
>
>And came up with this idea.
>
>What if we had a TXT Record in the DNS for a domain that looked like:
>
>@            IN TXT       "XYZZY 123 456  (C) Copyright 2006 Redfish
>Solutions, LLC"
>
>And then had hosts participating in this scheme generate outgoing mail
> as:
>
>X-Yes-Its-Really-Me: XYZZY 123 456 (C) Copyright 2006 Redfish
> Solutions, LLC"
>
>and uses the presence of this copywritten key to match the appropriate
>string
>in the DNS as proof that the sender is who he says he is.
>
>Then if the scheme were widely adopted (we could have an applet or
> script that generated a random string and primed the DNS with it or
> could be easily cut-n-pasted into the DNS configuration... the MTA
> could of course extract the string easily, as could anyone else for
> verification), then it would be a
>leverage point if someone started forging emails.
>
>While sending spam might not be a crime in all civilized countries,
>copyright
>infringement is.
>
>Is that too "out there?"
>
>-Philip

No, but I'd expect it would take a netwide RFC to enable it, and of 
course the commercial interests wouldn't touch that idea with a 100 
foot pole..

-- 
Cheers, Gene
People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word
'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's
stupid bounce rules.  I do use spamassassin too. :-)
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.

Re: OT: Delirium...

[Kelson <ke...@speed.net>]

Philip Prindeville wrote:
> And then had hosts participating in this scheme generate outgoing mail as:
> 
> X-Yes-Its-Really-Me: XYZZY 123 456 (C) Copyright 2006 Redfish Solutions,
> LLC"
> 
> and uses the presence of this copywritten key to match the appropriate
> string
> in the DNS as proof that the sender is who he says he is.

This sounds a lot like the original scheme for Habeas <www.habeas.com>, 
which used a copyrighted haiku that licensed senders could put in their 
email headers.  Habeas would make sure they weren't spammers, filters 
could check for the haiku as a sign of non-spam, and when spammers used 
the haiku, they'd take them to court for copyright infringement.

It worked for maybe a year.  Then spammers started forging it on a 
massive scale, using botnets so Habeas couldn't just add the IPs to 
their list of known infringers (and had a hard time tracking them down). 
  In the end, they abandoned the haiku and switched to an IP-based 
whitelist.

-- 
Kelson Vibber
SpeedGate Communications <www.speed.net>

RE: Delirium...

[Don Levey <sp...@the-leveys.us>]

Philip Prindeville wrote:

> 
> What if we had a TXT Record in the DNS for a domain that looked like:
> 
> @            IN TXT       "XYZZY 123 456  (C) Copyright 2006 Redfish
> Solutions, LLC"
> 
> And then had hosts participating in this scheme generate outgoing
> mail as: 
> 
> X-Yes-Its-Really-Me: XYZZY 123 456 (C) Copyright 2006 Redfish
> Solutions, LLC"
> 
> and uses the presence of this copywritten key to match the appropriate
> string
> in the DNS as proof that the sender is who he says he is.
> 
> -Philip

Reminds me of Habeus...
 -Don