Friday, May 23, 2003

William Gibson, speaking to the Director's Guild of America. The whole speech is extraordinary. [Scott Rosenberg's Links & Comment] Several insights worth thinking about. The one that connects most to what I've been thinking about (in my words): content-aware video technology will make moving images as editable by any of us as text. In the same way as we create text by reassembling fragments of previous texts, we will be able to create new movies by reassembling pieces of a vast library of moving images. Will we become as fluent with imagery as with words? 10:51:02 PM

A new proposal in the House of Representatives promises to slap the worst bulk e-mailers with prison terms and millions of dollars in fines. [CNET News.com] Is this just atmospherics from big ISPs that some representatives find useful to accommodate? If they really wanted to control spam, they could start blocking outgoing port 25 packets except from end customers to the ISP mail server. Customers wanting to send port 25 packets directly to the outside would have to pay significantly for volume. To curb rogue ISPs, big ISPs could block any incoming port 25 packets except those from designated sources such as the mail servers of well-behaved ISPs. Authentication could be used to maintain a chain of trust between ISPs and their wholesale customers. If an ISP sees too much port 25 traffic from a wholesale customer, it starts charging for volume. Soon, wholesale customers with open relays would track down and plug the holes. Rogue wholesalers would end up on rogue ISPs that would themselves lose their port 25 privileges to other ISPs. In summary, I hold you responsible for all port 25 traffic you send me, and I'm ready to start charging for volume if spam starts flowing in. As an extreme, all port 25 traffic will be charged for at a much higher rate than other traffic at peering and access points. If this requires a narrow waiver of anti-trust or anti-collusion legislation, that's where legislative action would be useful. As it is, I can't avoid the feeling that ISPs are just pretending to hate spam to placate spam victims. The public would be left with the enforcement bill, and the ISPs would draw any benefits to their image and bottom line without spending anything except lobbying fees. 9:38:28 PM