Errors-to: owner-drums@CS.UTK.EDU
To: Eric Thomas <ERIC@SEARN.SUNET.SE>
Cc: drums@CS.UTK.EDU
Subject: Re: getting started 
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 01 Jun 1995 01:23:55 +0200."
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 1995 10:10:42 +1000
Message-Id: <1041.801965442@munnari.OZ.AU>
From: Robert Elz <kre@munnari.oz.au>

    Date:        Thu, 1 Jun 1995 01:23:55 +0200
    From:        Eric Thomas <ERIC@SEARN.SUNET.SE>

    Since noone  can  mandate that  "if  you  don't do  X
    you  can't gate  to  the Internet",

This is way off topic of this list (and has been for ages),
but one last message.   This is true - but perhaps the list
owners of the internet could agree to simply delete anyone
whose mailer or mail gateway does any of these absurd things,
perhaps even testing when a potentially dubious address is
to be added, and refuse requests from recipients whose mailers
misbehave.   (Just send a carefully constructed message to
a bogus address, and see where the bounce comes, if it returns
to the correct place, add the user, if not, refuse them - this
would even be easy to automate).

The inability to subscribe to any internet lists (and no-one
can mandate that any particular user must be allowed on any
particular list) might just get some of those users so angry
that they insist on mailers, or mail gateways, that operate
rationally.

kre

ps: I have run at least average sited mailing lists, and have
seen none of the problem you describe, though that may be because
the kinds of people likely to be on the type of list I'd run are
probably unlikely to be using MS mail (or similar).