Re: Akamai

[Darren Reed <avalon () caligula anu edu au>]

In some mail from Paul Schmehl, sie said:
> --On Wednesday, June 16, 2004 11:53:23 AM +1000 Darren Reed 
> <avalon () caligula anu edu au> wrote:
> > This is a whole new play ground for organised crime, mostly thanks
> > to Microsoft.  You've got millions of PC's around the world that
> > are largely, in one way or another, susceptible to computer virii,
> > making them open targets for use as minions.  And the perfect seed
> > for spreading them is the databases of email addresses used by
> > spammers...
> If networks simply took responsibility for the traffic that comes from 
> them, this problem wouldn't exist.  It's completely trivial to find 
> infected hosts on a network through passive monitoring.  They should then 
> be disconnected until they are properly cleaned and secured.
>
> Unless networks begin doing this routinely (including ISPs), legislation 
> will be introduced to "solve" the problem, and then we will all be much 
> worse off.  There's nothing like a law to completely screw things up.

That depends upon whose pockets the legislators responsible live in.

In America, the legislation seems loathe to do anything that impedes
people making money and companies will lobby senators, congressmen to
ensure this stays the same (c.f. comments about Microsoft and others
trying to ensure that the FCC doesn't decide that VoIP people deserve
the same kind of basic service as POTS.)

In other countries, you might find the legislators are more influenced
by organised crime and so you're not likely to get as much assistance
in combatting the root cause of these problems.

But I'm sure that ISPs would argue that being forced to take responsibility
for the traffic that comes from them is an excellent example of legislation
geting in the way and screwing things up.

Darren

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