Subject: RE: [Asrg] Another criteria for "what is spam"...

From: "Peter Kay" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 15:53:14 -1000

Yes but we can't define bulk mailing as spamming. But we CAN define that
UNSOLICITED bulk email is spamming.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 3:04 PM
> To: Hallam-Baker, Phillip
> Cc: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [Asrg] Another criteria for "what is spam"...
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jun 04, 2003 at 03:57:28PM -0700, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
> > The problem I have is the fact I get 300 spams a day. The fact that 
> > those spams are also sent to 10 million or so others is not 
> relevant 
> > to me. My problem is the fact that *I* am getting the messages. I 
> > would have exactly the same problem if I was the only 
> person who got 
> > that quantity of messages.
> 
> Reality is that you get that quantity of messages because of 
> the fact of bulk mailings, and hence bulk mailings are 
> relevant -- at least to the extent that reality is relevant.  :-)
> 
> To put it another way, if bulk mailing was eliminated, your 
> spam problem, along with everyone else's, would be eliminated.
> 
> Kent
> 
> -- 
> Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
> Manager of Technical Operations, ICANN      lonesome."
> [email-masked],[email-masked]                    -- Mark Twain
>                p: +1 310 823 9358  f: +1 310 823 8649 
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> 

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---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 22:39:28 -0400

> UNSOLICITED bulk email is spamming.

Actually, I'm not that uncomfortable with defining any "bulk mailing"
as spamming.

I realize I won't get consensus on that here.

But then again few of you are ISPs expected to just come up with the
money for resources for every blitz by every fortune 1,000,000 company
who decides to unload on their (let's say for argument's sake)
legitimate mailing list hourly.

Special fares at United Airlines? Delta? Wham! Here comes 10,000 msgs
you frequent flyers!

Campbell's has a new recipe they want to share? Open wide!

NY Times, Wall St Journal, Motley Fool, Salon, etc want to send their
daily headlines and advertising payload? K'POW!

And don't tell me subscriber fees are supposed to cover this. There's
almost total disconnect as marketeers get savvier about exploiting
this medium.

That's like wishing your property taxes covered the postage for junk
paper mail. What a stupid idea that would be! Or that there should be
no postage paid by magazines because you subscribed to them.

This exercise is kinda like watching legislators make law, the OTHER
guy's use of tax money is a waste, but MY use of tax money is
essential to civilization!

Replace "tax money" with "ISP's resources" and you've got my point of
view.

This is why, without per-message fees, this system is doomed. It's
just a matter of time.

What we're doing here might postpone doom for a while by freeing up
resources for blessed floods of bull****, and those are mostly my (and
kindred) resources being freed so I have an interest in that
happening. But in my opinion not too far in the future the current
e-mail architecture will just collapse.

One reason why is because the day you stop or minimize spam the
so-called "legitimate" marketers from those fortune 1,000,000
companies will realize that their message will now get through and
will no longer be confused with those of total con-men and scams.

And those marketeers actually have money to spend. P&G spends $3B a
year on advertising, etc. Need I go on?

They're just waiting on the sidelines for you to build a nice, level
road for them to drive on, for free.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die    | [email-masked]           | http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202        | Login: 617-739-WRLD
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---

From: Dave Aronson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 08:54:17 -0400

Barry Shein <[email-masked]> wrote:

 >  > Yes but we can't define bulk mailing as spamming. But we CAN
 >  > define that UNSOLICITED bulk email is spamming.
 >

At least, not unless we can agree on what "bulk" means.  By the 
definition proposed so far (sending to > 1 recipient, by a largely 
automated means (not counting the automation necessary to send email at 
all, of course)), this very list is bulk.  So is every other.  So are 
any alerts anybody signs up for.  Where do YOU draw the line?

 > money for resources for every blitz by every fortune 1,000,000
 > company who decides to unload on their (let's say for argument's
 > sake) legitimate mailing list hourly.

If the ISP didn't put anything in the TOS about using too much bandwidth, 
it's their own damn fault.  You can be sure that something about it WILL 
be in there come contract renewal time, or the ISP will insist that they 
upgrade to a higher account type.

 > daily headlines and advertising payload? K'POW!

These sorts of things almost certainly already have very high bandwidth 
connections.  Sure, not as much as they would if they abused the system 
as you propose, but see above.

Also, unlike the normal hit-and-run spammer, these entities give half a 
damn about not pissing off the recipients, and about their brand 
reputation.  If they get tons of unsubscribes every time their 
emails-per-week exceeds some reasonable amount (as determined by the 
subscribers individually), you can bet they'd back off.

 > essential to civilization!

On that we can agree!  Just remember that it works on both sides of the 
table: "don't tax me, don't tax thee, tax that fellow behind the tree!"

 > This is why, without per-message fees, this system is doomed. It's

This system is indeed absolutely doomed, but I don't agree that fees are 
the only way to fix it.

-- 
David J. Aronson, Unemployed Software Engineer near Washington DC
See http://destined.to/program/ for online resume, and other info

---

From: "C. Wegrzyn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2003 09:08:07 -0400

This might not help but when I think of spam I don't focus on the sender 
(since defining bulk is a killer) but on the results. I'll bet almost 
all 'non-spam' emails involve an exchange between end-points - why else 
send email in the first place. Bulk or spamming is when you send out 
email and don't expect to get a response from the majority (define it as 
under 90% or 100% or whatever).

FWIW,
Chuck Wegrzyn

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 07:58:51 -0600 (MDT)

> From: Dave Aronson <[email-masked]>

> ...

By any sane definition, this mailing list is "bulk."

If the the operators of this list can produce evidence of a subscription
request for every subscriber, then they cannot be conviced in ISP
"court" of sending unsolicited bulk mail and so are innocent of
"spamming" no matter how many of us employ the "luser" unsubscribe
mechanism of screaming "SPAM!"

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]
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---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 08:08:57 -0600 (MDT)

> From: "C. Wegrzyn" <[email-masked]>

> under 90% or 100% or whatever).

Your message went to on the order of 1000 people, as will this.
I don't expect to receive a response from the majority.  Do you?

Many entities run bulk mail operations.  CNN's "news updates" are
certainly "bulk" regardless of how many of their subscribers respond.
Provided CNN can show that each and every target subscribed, whether
with
   - logs of an HTTP hit on a unique, unguessable URL sent only to
      the subscribing address,
   - a mail message carrying a unique, unguessable key sent only to
      the subscribing address,
   - some other mechanism that convincingly shows that the owner of
      the address and no third party or CNN did the subscribing,
then CNN's bulk mail is not "unsolicited" and so not spam.

---

From: Dave Aronson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 12:26:42 -0400

Peter Deutsch <[email-masked]> wrote:
 > >  > Actually, I'm not that uncomfortable with defining any "bulk
 > >  > mailing" as spamming.
 > >  >
 > > automated means (not counting the automation necessary to send
 > > email at all, of course)), this very list is bulk.  So is every
 > > other.  So are any alerts anybody signs up for.  Where do YOU draw
 > > the line?
 >
 > But mailing lists are not unsolicited, there's an implied consent in
 > your act of subscription, non?

Right, but Barry was speaking of removing the issue of consent from the 
definition of spam, 'defining any "bulk mailing" as spamming.'  I'm 
trying to get a sense of whether he really means that.  The alternative 
is that he was just using hyperbole, and there is, after all, some sort 
of alternate line he would endorse, between legit bulk mail and spam.

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 14:39:23 -0400

> any alerts anybody signs up for.  Where do YOU draw the line?

All of it, although still useful I suspect even subscription mailing
lists will have to evolve, probably into some sort of pull technology.

One problem, for example, are mailing lists (and so-called white-hat
bulk emailers) who never clean up their lists and just bounce user
unknowns at servers all day.

Why should they bother? There's little or no cost to them to just keep
sending to those defunct accts, the cost of maintaining the lists
would be vastly higher than just ignoring the bounces.

More and more I'm seeing "white-hat" bulk mailings from Fortune 100
companies whose return addresses are designed to not return, pointed
at hosts with non-existant or non-functioning MX's so you get to just
keep trying to return the mess of User Unknowns they generated every
30 minutes for 3 days or whatever until they finally time out.

As a parallel, it's not like the post office will deliver your paper
mail for free just because you asked the other side to send it.

The entire model is deeply flawed.

		 ...skipping...

 > table: "don't tax me, don't tax thee, tax that fellow behind the tree!"

Well, as an ISP I'm often that fellow behind the tree.

Particularly so long as this non-stop rush to see who goes broke last
continues.

 > This system is indeed absolutely doomed, but I don't agree that fees are 

Well, you know where your keyboard is, propose something else to
control scaling other than cost.

I fear that most people kinda stop at "but I don't agree that fees..."
for a reason, they know they don't like the idea of fees but don't
really have anything else to suggest as a model.

Unfortunately a lot of the problems in the world come down to either
baking more bread or organizing bread lines.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 14:59:20 -0400

> then CNN's bulk mail is not "unsolicited" and so not spam.

Ah, Vernon, you're so generous, let's rephrase this just slightly:

If CNN's recipient list meets the criteria you outline then the bulk
mailing must be delivered for free and without interference.

Who exactly is to provide these bottomless resources is not your
concern, resources must be provided because it'd be FAIR, and we all
know the world is free of starving children, people w/o proper medical
care, and victims of despots, because if it's FAIR then it's field of
dreams, the resources must appear.

So, if CNN behaves FAIRLY, then whatever resources they need must be
made to appear. Anything else would be, well, UNFAIR!

Ok, one might say, well, they don't really care, in this context, if
it's free per se, that's just a market consideration and orthogonal.

But then I'd reply that's contrived patter and what's meant is free,
or certainly independent of any realistic scaling. Who are we kidding?

Follow the rules we lay down and your reward is unlimited access to
mailboxes basically for free (let's not quibble the nanopennies.)

I'm only trying to point out that the "spam" problem is huge, much
more huge than focusing on "stuff we don't want" belies.

It's the old problem of everyone running around trying to stick
someone else with the bill.

Which is one main reason I'm suggesting we focus down on the illegal
and unethical (by which I mean "ought to be illegal if not") methods
the worst spammers use.

The main reasoning being that I think we can all pretty well
understand identity forging, open relays, viruses etc, as bad things
which need to be contained.

But on the bigger issue, with all due respect, I think the naivete'
being displayed here is alarming.

As I've said, those multi-billion dollar big company ad budgets are
just waiting for you (collective "you", "us") to solve all this and
clear them a free, smooth road to travel on.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 15:16:34 -0400

> of alternate line he would endorse, between legit bulk mail and spam.

I'm saying that focusing on the "consent" aspect is not only futile
but ultimately going to backfire.

Better to focus on the fraud aspects as a first step because they're
easier to agree on and define and, I hope, act upon.

Besides, w/o the various fraud aspects I suspect much spam is sunk, no
matter how you define spam.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2003 13:25:22 -0600 (MDT)

> From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>

> dreams, the resources must appear. ....

That and the following is equivalent to UPS whining about the cost of
delivering all of those packages.  Instead, the people who solicited
CNN's stuff should be paying you just as they also pay you for the
GBytes of dirty pictures they fetch with FTP and HTTP and the GBytess
of pirated MP3s they fetch with "file sharing" protocols.

Or do you run one of those ISPs that claims to provide something for
nothing?

> which need to be contained.

Focusing on those sounds ok, for a while.  What do you want to do about
them?  As far as I can tell, they're all against various laws.  New laws
passed by the IRTF or IETF are unlikely to be effective until the IETF's
request to purchase guns for the IESG is approved by the ISOC.
I doubt that the real lawmakers would pay attention to recommendations
from these parts, particularly after their generous campaign donors
drop a few hints, but the effort might not hurt.

If you are urging technical solutions such as authentication to
reduce forgery, perhaps you could start by fixing that your own
SMTP systems to do SMTP-TLS.

> clear them a free, smooth road to travel on.

Various things displayed here are alarming, but what bothers me about
our current exchange is that a businessman doesn't seem to want to
admit that he has customers and that providing the services those
customers want, including receiving mail from CNN, might not be free
for him to provide.

Without any undue respect, you need to stop and look for stubborn
infections of the old dot-bomb, new-economy, money-for-nothing syndrome.
If your customers spend to many Gbits/sec of your bandwidth on
baseball scores from CNN, the sane thing is to charge them more.

Yes, I intend the implication.   Those of your customers that receive
GBytes of mail, whether they consider it "spam" or not, should pay
you for your services.  If you want to keep them as customers, you
might also consider helping them to avoid unwanted mail with filters
or whatever else you consider effective.

---

From: mathew <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2003 18:14:54 -0400

> This is why, without per-message fees, this system is doomed. It's

I agree with this too. Of all the options discussed, the only one I see 
having any chance whatsoever of working is per-message fees, with some 
method to exempt friends.

Right now we have the situation that usage of resources is 
unconstrained by cost to the person using them. Can anyone think of a 
system like that which hasn't collapsed under the weight of abuse?

mathew

---

From: mathew <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 7 Jun 2003 18:31:33 -0400

On Thursday, Jun 5, 2003, at 15:25 US/Eastern, Vernon Schryver wrote:
> Barry Shein <[email-masked]>:
>> ...

Charging the recipient is never going to work.

Even assuming for the moment that we could magically solve the problem 
of unsolicited e-mail, such that users would only get charged for stuff 
they had actually asked for, there's an insurmountable problem: the 
companies who want to do marketing on the Internet will never go for it.

Reason being, nobody (plus or minus a handful of people) will pay to 
receive marketing messages. Which means that if your vision of 
receiver-pays happened, e-mail based marketing would die a rapid death.

Many non-marketing mailing lists would die rapidly too. How many 
mailing lists that you subscribe to would you still subscribe to if you 
had to pay by the message? Would you even subscribe to *this* mailing 
list if every e-mail was costing you money?

Users don't like per-message or per-minute receiving fees on services 
they pay for. Look at mobile phones--the US has lagged behind Europe in 
mobile phone usage because users must pay by the minute to *receive* 
calls.

How much junk mail would you agree to receive if you had to pay the 
USPS for received mail? In fact, early on the postal system was 
"recipient pays". That scheme fell apart in no time.

mathew

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 00:00:29 -0400

On Sat, Jun 07, 2003 at 06:31:33PM -0400, mathew wrote

> receiver-pays happened, e-mail based marketing would die a rapid death.

  Ana-one, ana-two, ana-three... awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.  In plain
English... too f###ing bad.

> mobile phone usage because users must pay by the minute to *receive* 

  I subscribe to IStop.com.  At http://www.istop.com/residential.html
they list the basic monthly bandwidth quotas, and surcharges for any
additional bandwidth.  I used to subscribe to Sympatico.ca.  At
http://www.bell.sympatico.ca/mainNavigation.do?currentPath=highspeedPath
they, too, list the basic monthly bandwidth quotas, and surcharges for
any additional bandwidth.  Even Sympatico's modest 10 gig limit isn't
going to be strained by any reasonable amount of confirmed opt-in mailing
lists like this one.  I'm not into file-sharing.  The only time I break
2 gigs in a month is when I download the latest linux distro.  Given a 10
megabyte inbox at the ISP, I'd have to run a cron job draining it every
7 hours, day in day out, just to download one gigabyte of email per
month, assuming that the inbox filled up every 7 hours.  That would cost
me $3.00/month at IStop, assuming I was already at or above my basic
bandwidth quota.  I'd run out of time to read that much junk mail long
before I ran out of money to pay for it.

> "recipient pays". That scheme fell apart in no time.

  I have a dirty secret for you... the end-user already pays.  It's just
not itemized in their bill.

-- 
Walter Dnes <[email-masked]>
Email users are divided into two classes;
1) Those who have effective spam-blocking
2) Those who wish they did
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