Subject: Re: [Asrg] 3. Requirements and what is spam

From: Brett Watson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 21:28:25 +1100

Forget about defining "spam". At its broadest, "spam" is just "anything that I 
deem inappropriate for my inbox". In its narrower forms, "spam" is just a 
common specific instance of that, like "unsolicited bulk email", but the 
specific instance is not necessarily a pure subset of the general instance. 
The general instance has the benefit of satisfying all comers; the specific 
instance has the benefit of being recipient-independent.

In my view, the owner of a particular inbox is the proper authority on what is 
appropriate for that inbox, and anything which plans to be a solution to 
"spam" should therefore deal with the problem in its broadest sense. Is there 
a compelling reason to deal with recipient-specific instances of the problem 
(even common ones), rather than the problem in general?

The focus should be on how to empower mail *recipients* to set their own mail 
policies and make everyone else deal with it, as contrasted with the current 
situation in which the *senders* have the upper hand. Why should I, as a mail 
recipient, allow anything in my inbox that I don't want? A perfect 
implementation of such an ideal is almost certainly impossible, but that's 
the target we should be aiming for in the fight against "spam". (No doubt 
this implies a research direction, such as overcoming the ability of the 
sender to lie with impunity, hence the spirit of LMAP.)

It's possible that the fight against the general case will involve the 
development of many specific countermeasures (rather than a single general 
one), and the ability of recipients to choose which countermeasures they 
apply, but there is no question in my mind that the ASRG should approach 
"spam" in its broadest sense.

Regards,
TFBW

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