Subject: [Asrg] spammers and telemarketers

From: "Jed Margolin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 13:40:41 -0800

Many people have different definitions of spam.  Since spammers seem to be
the Internet manifestation (or infestation) of telemarketing it might be
instructive to see how the U.S. Government defines telemarketers:

From  http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/15/6106.html

U.S. Code  TITLE 15 > CHAPTER 87 > Sec. 6106.

"The term ''telemarketing'' means a plan, program, or campaign which is
conducted to induce purchases of goods or services by use of one or more
telephones and which involves more than one interstate telephone call.

The term does not include the solicitation of sales through the mailing of a
catalog which -
        (A) contains a written description, or illustration of the goods or
services offered for sale,
        (B) includes the business address of the seller,
        (C) includes multiple pages of written material or illustrations,
and
        (D) has been issued not less frequently than once a year,
        where the person making the solicitation does not solicit customers
by telephone
        but only receives calls initiated by customers in response to the
catalog and during
        those calls takes orders only without further solicitation."

The FTC has recently issued new rules which, among other things, will
require telemarketers to transmit a valid Caller ID.

They are also setting up a national Do Not Call List. (A national email Do
Not Spam List would be a bonanza for spammers.)

I would like to add:
   1. If the email return address is phony, it's spam.
   2. If the email comes from a domain where the email address for the
Administrative Contact person is phony, it's spam.

And, finally, it's been suggested that some ISPs and free emailing services
benefit financially from spammers (much as the telephone companies benefit
enormously from providing service to telemarketers), so I still want email
stored on Sender's server and not mine.

Jed Margolin

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From: Matt Sergeant <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 22:26:12 +0000 (GMT)

> telephones and which involves more than one interstate telephone call.

Just so long as we don't limit the definition of spam to linking to goods 
or services. That rules out Nigerian Scams, and also the wierd 
"Uncertainty Probability is Untenable" guy (though that was worth getting 
for humour value, the first time around).

I'm still quite happy with the monkeys.com definition: 
http://www.monkeys.com/spam-defined/

Matt.

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From: Ted Gavin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 19:57:06 -0500

On Wed, 12 Mar 2003 13:40:41 -0800, "Jed Margolin"
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>the Internet manifestation (or infestation) of telemarketing 

While I understand the premise, I feel the need to point out the
dangerous flaw in that statement. Spammers are not like telemarketers.
They're not even close in terms of practical impact.

In telemarketing, the cost of the marketing effort is borne by the
marketer. The recipient bears only the inconvenience and the soft
costs (time, lost opportunity, etc...).

With spam, the marketer bears nearly zero cost, while the recipients
(and the interim networks) bear the majority of the cost. In fact,
since the spammer generally only experiences fixed costs and
little-to-no variable costs (which is also entirely unlike a
telemarketing operation which is opposite that), the more messages a
spammer sends, the closer their cost per message gets to zero.

Ted