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

[michael gurstein]

Gmail is NOT a free service...

The ad in my gmail screen for travel medicine services just as I'm about to
leave on a trip to Brazil would I think give a rather direct lie to that
dead parrot.

M

-----Original Message-----
From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org
[mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of McTim
Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 6:07 AM
To: governance at lists.igcaucus.org; Norbert Bollow
Subject: Re: [governance] Blogpost: Gmail Hell Day 4: Dealing with the Borg
(Or "Being Evil" Without Really Thinking About It


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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