Subject: Bulk Unsolicited Mail BOF (spam)

From: Paul Hoffman / IMC <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 Dec 1997 13:08:46 -0800

Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE, better known as "spam") is certainly a hot
topic. There will be a BOF at next week's IETF meeting in DC to discuss
what we need to do next about this. The agenda is copied below. Please note
that speakers must submit presentations before the meeting.

--Paul Hoffman, Director
--Internet Mail Consortium

>From <ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf/97dec/spam-agenda-97dec.txt>:

Bulk Unsolicited Mail BOF (spam)

Tuesday, December 9 at 1015-1115
================================

Chair: John Klensin <[email-masked]>

DESCRIPTION:

Bulk unsolicited email (so-called "spam") is widely 
believed to be a problem in today's Internet, especially 
when the distribution methods used conceal the origins of 
the sender and exploit the computer and network resources 
of otherwise-uninvolved third parties.  Many, perhaps most, 
of the issues associated with spam are political and legal, 
e.g., whether or not it should be permitted, how it is 
precisely defined, and whether the use of third-party 
facilities is appropriate or constitues theft of service. 
Those political and legal issues cannot be effectively 
addressed by IETF and will not be discussed in this BOF.

However, for the user who would prefer to not receive such 
traffic, or the MTA operator who would prefer to not relay 
or expand it, some technical measures may be feasible.  
This BOF will review the possible technical mechanisms, 
including the potential for protocol changes that would 
better control unsolicited or unauthorized mailings, and 
determine whether a working group on the subject should be 
recommended to the IESG.

Since, where this topic is concerned, ideas are many and time
is short, anyone wanting to express an opinion should prepare
either a position statement (in ascii text) or a short (not to
exceed five minutes) presentation in HTML format and email it
to [email-masked] prior to the start of IETF.
Relevant contributions from those who expect to be present at
the BOF will be posted to http://www.imc.org/ietf-ube-bof/ and
given priority for BOF time and discussion (unless there is
extra time, those who do not submit materials in advance
should not expect to be heard at the BOF).  Presentations
which are submitted will be available on a projector.
Contributions that do not represent technical / engineering
proposals, and particularly those that propose legislation or
retaliation, will not be posted.

As is usual with IETF sessions, discussion will be much better
(and there will be more time for it) if materials are reviewed
by all participants in advance.   If there is little time
relative to the number of presentations, the chair will assume
that the BOF participants will have read all of the materials
on the web page.