[ih] Endliss misconceptions about Email reliability

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 16-Jan-24 12:26, Dave Crocker via Internet-history wrote:
> On 1/15/2024 3:22 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
>> "Is there any organization or authority (ISOC, IETF, FCC, ISO, PTTs,
>> governments, UN, whatever...) who accepts responsibility for the
>> viability of email?"
> 
> At Internet scale, No.
> 
> Nor for the Web.
> 
> Nor for operation of any other application-level service.

And is this really different from snail mail? There's the International Postal Union, but living in NZ with frequent need to communicate with the rest of the world, one thing the pandemic showed me is that the international snail mail system is not viable under stress (and it hasn't fully recovered even now).

Certainly the international snail mail system has never taken responsibility for the contents of mail, unless you pay extra for courier service, registered mail, recorded delivery, or whatever. And we'd greatly object to governments routinely checking the contents of snail mail.

Finally, we still need those "No junk mail" stickers on our physical mailboxes, and they still don't work reliably.

The analogy is stronger than I realised when I started this reply.

    Brian