[governance] Blogpost: Gmail Hell Day 4: Dealing with the Borg (Or “Being Evil” Without Really Thinking About It

[McTim]

On 2/28/12, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:
> McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> what action and by whom?
>
> I have in recent postings suggested two possible strategies for
> addressing the kind of problem that Mike had with Gmail, together
> with actors able to take such action:
>
> a) The problem could be addressed by empowering end users to switch
> email service providers without changing their email addresses. I
> suggested that CCTLD operators would be able to make a category of
> inexpensive third-level domain names available for this.

Google and KENIC have already done this in Kenya, but I digress.

How would this alleviate a situation like M.G.s?

>
> b) The problem could be addressed by creating a standards-track RFC
> that promotes better behavior

Please specify what behavior needs to be better.  IIUC, user is POPing
years of his gmail into outlook.  How can you legislate/write an RFC
about that?  If i am offering a free webmail, and someone tries to POP
12 Gigs of data off it,  I'm going to have a script that automagically
shuts down that behavior until a human can look into it!

 by specifying MUSTs and SHOULDs that
> will, when followed by companies like Google, resolve the problem.
> This would obviously be an action to be taken at IETF. (If contrary to
> my expectations, a good RFC is created but not followed, I said the
> issue could still be escalated by submitting the RFC to ISO/IEC and
> then legislative action to declare conformance to the resulting
> legally required for a category of companies.)

I think that's just adding another layer of bureaucracy to fix a
problem that doesn't exist.


>
>> IF (and it's pretty big IF IMHO) email is a public utility
>
> This is a question of definition of the term "public utility" to a
> large extent -- email and any other service that can without
> fundamental problem be provided from anywhere in the world (provided
> there is good Internet Protocol transport layer connectivity) should
> certainly economically and legally be considered to be not in the same
> category of public utilities as traditional public utilities like
> the provision of water, electricity and traditional telephone service
> that involve digging ditches or hanging wires on poles to connect
> end users to the service.

am glad we agree!

-- 
Cheers,

McTim
"A name indicates what we seek. An address indicates where it is. A
route indicates how we get there."  Jon Postel

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