Subject: RE: [Asrg] 1. Inventory of Problems - Input Needed

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 19:52:21 -0800

> AD wrote:
> >   I believe that social issues (like lying about opt-in) should be
> > outside of the scope of this group.  
> 
> Right.

Lying about opt-in is not a social issue, the inability to detect lying is a
protocol defect which is easy to cure.

All that is required is for the mailing list to obtain an authentication
code value from the user during the opt-in process. This value can then be
returned in each message sent, proving that the recipient did opt in and
that the message concerned should therefore be whitelisted.

I can circulate the draft again if people are interested in finding
solutions.

We are dealling with a criminal deterence/criminal prosecution problem here.
All problems will appear to be 'social' because that is what spam is, a
social problem manifest in technology.

What should be outside the scope of the group is purely social solutions,
but even there I am skeptical as there being a genuine exception. The
lawyers seem to be being quite effective in reducing the rate of growth of
spam, so why not consider technology to help the lawyers do their work?

	Phill 

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From: Yakov Shafranovich <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 23:22:52 -0500

> that the message concerned should therefore be whitelisted.

So this would be kind of like C/R except for the consent token would be 
returned together with each list message. Can the CRI proposal be 
adjusted for this perhaps?

> I can circulate the draft again if people are interested in finding

Please, we would love to see it.

> spam, so why not consider technology to help the lawyers do their work?

I would have to agree with Phillip that the social aspects of the spam 
problem cannot be ignored. While we are considering mainly technical 
solutions, nevertheless social, economic, legal, etc. issues come into 
play as well, and many times will affect technical issues. Therefore, it 
would be hard to say that we should not consider social issues at all, 
rather as in Phillip's example we should look at social issues and see 
how they can fit with the technical issues.

Yakov

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From: "Jon Kyme" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 2003 08:51:37 +0000

> > protocol defect which is easy to cure.

It is too a social issue :-). "lying" must surely imply an intention to
deceive - which needs a deceiver, a deceived and the relationship between
them. This is social. That a protocol doesn't support the evaluation of
'opted-in' assertions - that's the technical problem. Lying isn't the root
problem - it's a consequence. A technical defect that is exploited is the
problem. This is not just hair-splitting - the lie is a surface feature,
we're interested in the underlying problem.

[snip]

>Therefore, it 

I expect that we'll find that it's generally the case that a social issue
(good / bad) will depend on a technical point. So I'd suspect any use of
psycho/social (or legal?) terminology implies a weakness (temporary) in
technical definition. In this instance
the psycho/social "Lying about opt-in" is subsumed in the more technical
"Inadequate opt-in
	- no actual opt-in
	- deceptive opt-in
	- single opt-in without confirmation"

(Actually, the more I think about it, the less I'm sure that I know what
"deceptive opt-in" means. Is it something like "unverifiable opt-in
assertions"?)

We must *consider* social aspects - and by this method identify technical
issues. I guess this is personal, but I really don't see the advantage in
much talk about "lying" when we've already got "Inadequate/deceptive" which
may be more powerful and inclusive. I believe this will always be the case
- emotive language will add nothing except redundancy and may make the job
more difficult.

Regards,
JK

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