Internet Task Force Shuts Down MARID Anti-Spam Working Group

Internet Task Force Shuts Down MARID Anti-Spam Working Group:
"Citing a lack of agreement on basic issues in the discussions of the working group, the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) has disbanded the MARID (MTA Authorization Records In DNS) working group. The group had been working to create a standard for mail authentication for the fight against spam, mail worms and other e-mail abuse.

The group's short history has been fraught with controversy. The most recent crisis was over intellectual property claims by Microsoft over technologies in some of standards under consideration, and the Microsoft license to those claims. Open source advocates and many others rejected the terms as burdensome and incompatible with their own licensing practices. "

But there has been more disagreement than consensus in the group in other areas as well. Advocates for similar methods of authentication have continued to argue strenuously for their favorite approaches, many of which may be covered under the claims of Microsoft in their patent applications.

There have been other problems. Recently it was noted that the name "Sender ID," which had been used by the standards documents for many of the proposals, has a trademark claim by a company that does related work.

In an e-mail to the working group, the co-Area Director Ted Hardie said that effort to formulate a single standard was hampered by a lack of real-world experience with the proposals. The directors recommended that the work of the various proponents move forward to Experimental RFC status, and that actual tests of the proposals proceed. They hope this experience will clarify some of the debates in the group.…

Questions may also be raised over potential actions by the US government. In June the FTC rejected calls to create a Do-Not-Spam registry and noted that it couldn't work without a system of authentication. The FTC report actually contemplates mandating a system of authentication if the industry doesn't agree on one after a period of time.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1649763,00.asp?kc=ewnws092304dtx1k0000599