[IP] more on anti-*AOL plan* coalition
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dave Crocker <dcrocker@xxxxxxxx>
Date: March 26, 2006 2:22:54 PM EST
To: David Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Fwd: [IP] anti-*AOL plan* coalition
Dave,
I appreciate Cindy's response. However pursuing any sort of
constructive
dialogue is going to require that we be considerably more careful
about facts
and fears, and especially be careful to distinguish them.
First, the rejection. Dave asserts that it's improper for me,
personally, and apparently EFF, to voice any objection to any
proposal to try to respond to spam or phishing unless we also come up
with a complete solution to spam and phishing.
1. I referred to Cindy, not EFF.
2. I'll guess that Cindy's perception of my "requirement" is in
response to:
If it is so easy, Cindy, why haven't you promoted one and gotten it
used?
This was not about making criticisms, but about making overly-facile
assertions.
Cindy claims something is easy when it has been demonstrated not to
be as
evidenced by its absence, after some years of effort and very strong
market need.
I have no problem with criticism of what I say; I object
strongly to a suggestion that I have no right to comment in the
first instance.
So do I. Glad we agree.
My only question is who made such an inappropriate suggestion,
because it was
most certainly not me.
many overlays, there should be lots of inputs. This is, in fact, one
of my strongest objections to what AOL is doing here, and part of
what I meant when I said that there are "plenty of ways to do
'certified' or 'digitally signed' email without having ISPs choose
winners and charge per message."
1. AOL already has multiple vetting mechanisms. So the agreement was
merely
adding one more.
2. OK. So the transgression was AOL's failing to make multiple
additional
agreements at the same time? Unfortunately, organizations have limited
resources, and adding a single new mechanism is extremely difficult
and costly.
No competent operations manager would agree to the addition of
multiple
services at once, for (legitimate) fear of hurting system
reliability. I wonder
how AOL stockholders would feel about AOL taking on that much
operational risk
to their email service?
AOL is here choosing one input and one proprietary "trust overlay"
system -- Goodmail's -- and taking a financial cut of the money
earned from that overlay and input. My argument is that by doing so,
AOL is undermining the markets for both overlays and inputs, not
fostering it. AOL is also reducing their own incentives to rely on
other inputs, including their own whitelist and enhanced whitelist.
Until the AOL and Yahoo announcements, the email reputation market
has, at best,
shown modest acceptance and growth. By some measures, it could
reasonably have
been characterized as "languishing". Since then, it has gained center
stage.
This does not sound like undermining a market. It sounds like
kickstarting it.
The question of incentives is always a good one to ask. Again,
however, the
topic is rather more difficult and subtle than seems to be getting
acknowledged.
As a small example, I'll note that AOL's deriving revenue from a
third-party
trust service might be expected to encourage AOL to conform to the
quality
assurance requirements of that trust mechanism. This is a Good Thing.
So, it is important to look for ways an agreement can misalign
incentives, but
it is equally important to look for the ways it can align them.
I believe that this will result in real pressure on senders to
join Goodmail's system or face not getting their messages through.
They already face not getting their messages through.
Use of a reputation service provides a new option for improved delivery.
And if other ISPs follow suit, legitimate senders may be faced with
having to
navigate (and pay for) several different systems, further increasing
their costs and hurting their ability to speak to a willing audience.
This appears to be a concern about the impact of having multiple
reputation
services. Yet earlier the concern was for having only one.
I'm now confused about what is being required.
Certainly there is a need for standardizing the various interaction
mechanisms
used by different services. However the bricks-and-mortar world
flourishes with
multiple reputation services within a sector, so we should expect
that same
benefit in the Internet.
That said, there is always a concern that competing services will create
confusion or other problems. I hope, however, no one is suggesting
some sort of
legislated, single assessment service for any part of the community.
If they
are, they should cite some real-world history of such an approach
being viable.
My concern is based in part on the observation that
AOL will reasonably seek to maximize its profits and minimize it's
costs. Pushing senders into Goodmail does both and that's why I'm
skeptical of AOL's claims that nothing will change for senders who
don't choose Goodmail.
I don't recall seeing AOL claim that nothing would change for
senders. I'd like
to review their statement, if someone could point me to it.
Given the nature of the announcement that AOL made, I would certainly
*hope*
that quite a bit will change for senders.
Better delivery. Fewer complaints. Big changes.
My concern is also based on my very real
experience with Bonded Sender. Here's a similar report from Bennett
Hazelton about his Peacefire mailing list:
Unfortunately, Mr. Hazelton's article contains serious factual
errors. As a
small example: Hotmail never had a whitelisting service, although it
did have a
problem-fixing mechanism.
So the Hotmail/Bonded-Sender example is quite different from the
current situation.
My main concern here is about the risk that AOL
will undermine the market for some of the very things that Dave
suggests by choosing one proprietary system and pushing senders
into it on pain of not having their messages delivered to AOL
subscribers. I hope
this point isn't lost in the sturm and drang.
We agree that this is an important concern.
The counter-question, to any expression of certainty that things will
play out
in this unfortunate way, is why anyone believes that AOL's
subscribers would
tolerate that outcome, since it means that they would not be getting
email they
wanted.
d/
--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
<http://bbiw.net>
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