Ted Ts'o writes,

What I don't understand is, why are people complaining? We're just seeing people exercise their sacred right to free speech..... all over this mailing list. After all, isn't this what you were working towards?

Heh. I agree with Ted. Try taking the same advice we'd give someone who received a offensive anonymous note: quit your bitching & moaning, you losers! Yeah, yeah, I know, volume attacks are of a different kind than offensive content. But my own belief is, if our software is broken, we shouldn't blame the doofus who comes along and tickles it. If we end up having a problem of volume harrassment, we should expect to have to PROTECT OURSELVES with some half decent mailing list software. For instance, something that accepts mail only from subscribers or that shunts large messages (or excessive number of messages from a single person) to the moderator for review. The fact that we have stupid software is our own fault. To me, this has the same feel to it as the current flap about anonymous newsgroup postings. The right answer, in my opinion, is to use news distribution software which can filter out anonymous postings (and, in order to enable that, and prior to the availability of "real person" cryptographic certificates, to ask that all remailers provide a special header line). What these solutions have in common is that we ask people to protect themselves, rather than requiring everyone else to adhere to their notions of good behavior. Which brings to mind the potential problem that 99% of everybody may choose to participate exclusively in "real person only" groups. Any hints at a solution to that one? How about if we try to convince people to participate in "pay as you go" groups using digital postage? That would solve many of the problems, in a way that is less offensive to the freedom-loving among us. -- Marc Ringuette (mnr@cs.cmu.edu)