Re: "White" List (Was: Blacklist)

Bruce Speyer (speyer@mcc.com)
Fri, 16 Dec 1994 13:37:08 -0800

Christopher J. Dennis writes:
>
>This new blacklist just adds even *more* cynicism to the Net. Isn't there
>enough of it already? If I could just build a system that could input this
>purely negative quality and output money, and I hooked up to the Net... Let
>me just say that all of the Forbes 100 couldn't touch my wealth. Such things
>as world hunger? Forget it- problem solved.
>
>A "whitelist" is a great idea. Why not focus more on the positive, and not
>the negative. Give education, not defecation! (You're welcome to quote me
>on this last one, if you have the.. er..."hardware")
>

I'll show my stripes as an old-timer here. :-)

Mark Fox at the Univ. of Toronto proposed the Internet Better Business Bureau
to ARPA/NIST/NSF over two years ago (at CMU back then). TEXAS-ONE which I
work on proposed to ARPA and NIST back in May, 1993 to do that for the state
of Texas and has funding to do that but hasn't yet cause it is a fulltime job
for several people with the need to coordinate lots of ongoing and earnest
working groups and we just haven't gotten to it yet. Marty Tennebaum at EIT
proposed the same thing for CommerceNet to ARPA/NIST and they have had a
working group for over a year now attempting to set ISP standards- its slow
going cause it is a really tough objective. The quality IETF BOF has been slow
going now for about a year.

The whitelist is a great idea but it easily at least 100 times easier to do a
blacklist than to setup measurable quality standards. But it is worth that
effort and will be incrediably significant to the growth of our industry.

Let's keep looking for opportunities and ways to work on this together.
Bruce