Network Working Group F. Anonymous Request for Comments: DRAFT-LOL-0001 November 2026 Category: Experimental (Aspirationally Informational) The Received-Land Header Field Abstract SMTP's Received: header records which servers handled a message, but says nothing about the ground beneath them. This document defines Received-Land:, an appendable trace field that records the territory each datacenter hop occupies, so the recipient's MUA can synthesize a land acknowledgment from the full delivery path. Status of This Memo This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for examination, experimental implementation, and evaluation, and for the general improvement of everyone's inbox. This document defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet community. It has not been reviewed by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), has not received public review, and is not a candidate for any level of Internet Standard. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it is not available from anywhere. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2026 the persons identified as the document author. All rights reserved. All lands acknowledged (see Section 8). Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3. Territory Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3.1. Epoch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3.2. Boundary Datum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3.3. Layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3.4. Overlapping Claims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3.5. Ordering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3.6. Recognition Status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3.7. Usual and Accustomed Grounds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3.8. Facility Siting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 4. Synthesis at the Recipient . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 5. Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 8. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Anonymous Experimental [Page 1]
RFC DRAFT-LOL-0001 Received-Land Header Field November 2026 1. Introduction Email crosses an average of 4-9 hops, each sitting on someone's ancestral homeland. Until now, this information was discarded at the speed of light. The key words "MUST," "SHOULD," and "MAY" are to be interpreted as in RFC 2119 [RFC2119], except "MUST" means "MUST, but sincerely." 2. Syntax The field is defined using the ABNF notation of [RFC5234]. Received-Land = "Received-Land:" 1*SP territory ";" SP "epoch=" epoch [";" SP "datum=" datum] [";" SP "via" SP facility] CRLF territory = <nation-name> / "UNKNOWN-PLEASE-CONSULT-LOCAL-ELDERS" Each relay MUST append one field and MUST NOT reorder, edit, or "clean up" existing fields. Relays MUST NOT resolve unknown territories by defaulting to localhost. 3. Territory Resolution 3.1. Epoch Territory is measured as of a stated epoch. Implementations MUST NOT assume a default epoch. Candidate epochs include pre-contact, pre-treaty, treaty-signing, treaty-ratification, treaty-as-actually-honored, and "last Tuesday." 3.2. Boundary Datum Boundaries MUST be expressed relative to a declared datum. Ancestral boundaries are not required to coincide with treaty boundaries, which are not required to coincide with reservation boundaries, which need not coincide with county lines, which were drawn by a different committee on a different afternoon. 3.3. Layers A single facility MAY sit on ancestral territory, treaty-ceded land, usual-and-accustomed grounds, an allotment, a parcel in fee simple, and a lease to a hyperscaler, simultaneously. Relays MUST NOT collapse layers for brevity. Anonymous Experimental [Page 2]
RFC DRAFT-LOL-0001 Received-Land Header Field November 2026 3.4. Overlapping Claims Where multiple nations hold overlapping claims, the relay MUST emit all of them in order of... see Section 3.5. 3.5. Ordering Order of acknowledgment is determined by a working group, which shall be formed. 3.6. Recognition Status The relay MUST NOT infer a nation's legitimacy from federal recognition status, which has been granted, rescinded, and pending for periods exceeding the lifetime of most mail servers. 3.7. Usual and Accustomed Grounds Fishing, hunting, and gathering rights that persist outside reservation boundaries MUST be tracked separately and MUST be honored, which this document has no mechanism to enforce. 3.8. Facility Siting Where a datacenter occupies land that has been ceded, re-ceded, allotted, sold, resold, rezoned, and leased back, the relay SHOULD emit the full chain of title. Implementations with chains longer than 998 characters SHOULD fold the line and apologize. 4. Synthesis at the Recipient The final MTA concatenates all fields into a paragraph. The MUA SHOULD render it before the message body, above the unsubscribe link and below the "Sent from my iPhone" footer. For paths of more than 12 hops, the MUA MAY truncate to "and many others," which is a known interoperability hazard. 5. Example Received-Land: Territory-A; epoch=pre-treaty; via edge-relay-01 Received-Land: Territory-B; epoch=treaty-ratification; datum=NAD83; via mx-pool-7 Received-Land: UNKNOWN-PLEASE-CONSULT-LOCAL-ELDERS; epoch=unspecified; via mystery-box-in-closet 6. Security Considerations * Spammers will acknowledge land at industrial scale. Mitigation: none. They already have DKIM. * Header bloat may exceed the 998-character line limit [RFC5322]. Implementers are advised to wrap lines, then wrap them again. Anonymous Experimental [Page 3]
RFC DRAFT-LOL-0001 Received-Land Header Field November 2026 * A malicious relay could forge acknowledgments. Receivers SHOULD verify via DNSSEC-signed _land._domain TXT records. * Anycast routing means a packet's path is non-deterministic, so acknowledgments may be probabilistic. The IETF takes no position on probabilistic reverence. 7. IANA Considerations IANA is asked to create a registry of territories. 8. Acknowledgments The authors, in the course of drafting this document at a location they believe to be within the Salish Sea watershed, wish to acknowledge, to the fullest extent permitted by the page margins, that the Seattle area and its surroundings are the ancestral and continuing homelands of the Coast Salish peoples, and in particular the Duwamish (Dkhw'Duw'Absh), the Suquamish, the Muckleshoot, the Snoqualmie, the Stillaguamish, the Tulalip, and the Puyallup peoples, as well as other nations, bands, and families whose names are omitted here only because this author ran out of verified spellings and not because they are less deserving of being spelled. The authors further acknowledge that these lands were the subject of the Treaty of Point Elliott (1855), the Treaty of Medicine Creek (1854), and the Treaty of Point No Point (1855), the terms of which were negotiated under conditions of profound asymmetry, translated through Chinook Jargon, a trade pidgin never designed to carry the weight of land cession, and honored selectively thereafter. The authors acknowledge that the Duwamish Tribe, whose people hosted the city that bears the name of their leader Si'ahl, remains without lasting federal recognition, a process that has itself outlasted several versions of SMTP. The authors acknowledge the rivers, the salmon, the cedar, the tides, and the ancestors, living and otherwise. They acknowledge the datacenters that now rest upon floodplains, orchards, and former fishing grounds, drawing power from rivers that once ran uninterrupted. They acknowledge the Internet Engineering Task Force, which is not on this list but has been in a lot of meetings about it. 9. References 9.1. Normative References [RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>. Anonymous Experimental [Page 4]
RFC DRAFT-LOL-0001 Received-Land Header Field November 2026 [RFC5234] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234, DOI 10.17487/RFC5234, January 2008, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5234>. [RFC5322] Resnick, P., Ed., "Internet Message Format", RFC 5322, DOI 10.17487/RFC5322, October 2008, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5322>. Author's Address F. Anonymous Somewhere within the Salish Sea watershed (boundary datum unspecified; see Section 3.2) Anonymous Experimental [Page 5]