(This document is written assuming the reader is reading it upon being
pointed here by a reject message from my mailer.  Those of whom this is
not true should keep this in mind when reading it.)

I have had to adopt a very draconian "one strike and you're out"
policy, recently, for hosts that send me spam and which I don't
recognize as being worth staying in touch with despite that.

I acknowledge that a more neighbourly approach to this would be to try
to contact hosts, give them a few chances, etc.  I used to do that, but
the time and stress load became too much for me.  I started just
deleting the spam, but the volume levels have been creeping up since
then.

I see the fundamental problem with spam as being a failure of Internet
governance; authority is delegated without the concomitant
responsibility being imposed.  Any (human-layer) system involving a
mismatch between responsibility and authority grows abuses, which
increase until one of three things happens: (1) the mismatch is
corrected; (2) the system collapses; (3) an equilibrium is reached
where the level of abuse is concomitant with the level of the mismatch.
(Since no human system can ever match responsibility and authority up
perfectly, (3) is the usual case, though in the better instances the
mismatch is minor and the resulting equilibrium level of abuse is low.)

In the case of Internet governance, the mismatch appears total, and it
appears to run all the way to the top.  ICANN has, as far as I can
tell, been doing a splendid imitation of King Log on the subject,
despite my having been put in touch with a few people internal to them
and explaining the issue to them.  This includes showing no signs of
correcting the mismatch.  So I expect (2) to happen.

This means that all anti-abuse efforts are, at best, delaying actions.
I am not a crusader; I do not have the personality to sink time and
energy into an ultimately futile delaying action.  So I have been
getting out of fighting on-net abuse since I came to this realization.

I have to admit the possibility that I am wrong in my view of Internet
governance.  However, as far as I've seen, nobody has even _tried_ to
present alternatives to any of the chains in the reasoning laid out
above, despite my presenting it fairly publicly on mailing lists on a
handful of occasions.  Even if I _am_ wrong, as long as I think I'm
right, my reactions will occur as if I were right, so it is still a
valid reason for me to stop sinking time and energy into antispamming.

All of which is to say, I have no resources to put into trying to get
anyone to clean up their spam act.  So, if you spam me, and I don't
recognize you, I'll block you almost reflexively.  Contact me through
some other channel if you want to discuss this with me.

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