[ih] Email reliability

[John Gilmore]

Dave Crocker via Internet-history <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
> The email community has rather singularly resisted being clear and consistent about this point.

Email was one of the very first Internet services to "go viral"; no
wonder its standards are a hodgepodge of fifty years of evolution in
many directions.

The only reason that Google and Yahoo have any power to impose this
month's evolution in (enforcement of) email standards, is because the
formerly widely federated email service is now dominated by a small
number of huge companies.  Particularly when acting in concert (in
restraint of trade?), they can afford to say "screw you and your
previous email standards, if you want to communicate with the billions
of users whose communications we hold captive @gmail.com or @yahoo.com,
you will have to do exactly what we say."

This consolidation was also partly driven by anti-spammers (as well as
by surveillance capitalism).  I know of many organizations who used to
run their own email servers; EFF.org was one for years.  Many eventually
decided that the level of endless hassle from anti-spam organizations
blocking their email deliveries for no good reason, was a reason to
fire their sysadmin and abandon their email delivery to one of the
majors (Microsoft in EFF's case).  At least these orgs tend to have
their own domain names, unlike most of the captives, so they can change
email providers and MX records if one proves too abusive.

Third party anti-spam orgs have for decades had the attitude that if you
won't run your mail server in any detailed way that they dictate, then
your completely legitimate email will not get through at their
customers' sites.  They see their job as to block spams, so if a few
innocents are harmed in the process of blocking spams, "they don't care,
they don't have to" (as Lily Tomlin said about the Bell System
monopoly).  They took steps to shield themselves from legal liability
for their slipshod actions that affect others' communications, and
largely succeeded.  Now the majors are following in their footsteps.

	John