[ietf-dkim] Re: reductio ad hominem

[Steve Atkins]

On Dec 7, 2007, at 9:20 AM, Scott Kitterman wrote:

> On Friday 07 December 2007 12:00, John Levine wrote:
>>> If you believe that any random MTA has an equal right to emit mail
>>> claiming to be from my domain, then I think there's little left to
>>> discuss.
>>
>> Twisting other people's arguments to make them sound absurd is not  
>> helpful.
>>
>> For example, since you want to forbid all third parties from sending
>> mail, please explain why you want to forbid newspaper mail-to-a- 
>> friend
>> services.  Why are you opposed to press freedom?
>
> Nothing says they have to use my domain name to do it.  It's  
> completely
> orthogonal to the point.
>
>> PS: The non-absurd version of this is, where did we conclude that the
>> DNS operator's rights to a domain name always trump every other
>> possible use?
>
> I disagree.  What I stated is the logical conclusion from the  
> statement.
> Either domain owners have the right to control the use of their  
> domain names
> in email or they don't.
>
> If they do, then Mike's point stands.
>
> If they don't, then phishing is inherently OK.  There really is no  
> middle
> ground.

Fallacy of the excluded middle.

Just because it's OK for people to use some variant on a webmail
interface to send mail "from" their email address does not make it
OK to criminally steal passwords or credit card details.

We're getting a reasonable survey of logical fallacies
today. Entertaining, but not terribly useful, and there's at least a
couple of dozen more to collect to get the full set.

Could we move on to some more reasonable lines of argument?

Cheers,
   Steve