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

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 08:55:53 -0700

> I think it would be important to note that it is AUTOMATED.

That is why I proposed unwanted and indescriminate.

The problem the user wants solved is unwanted email

It is not possible to solve that problem perfectly since there is no way for
the sender to know the user's intentions and there is a lot of ambiguity.
But that is the real world.

What the sender can do is to only send mail that is likely to be wanted.
Bulk email can be wanted, but it is very unlikely that more than a tiny
fraction of a million unsolicited emails for manhood enlargement are going
to be wanted. It is the indiscriminate side that is the problem.

Fixing on the 'bulk' aspect is only solving the problem from the ISP's point
of view. From the users point of view the fact that the email was sent to
ten or a million other people is irrelevant. The problem is that she does
not want it and the message was send indiscriminately knowing that this was
the case.

This also means that indiscriminate challenges sent by C/R systems also
qualify as spam.

It is easier to design anti-spam systems that block bulk mail. But I think
it is important that people don't get away with anti-spam mechanisms that
actually create spam.

Note that my definition does not work as a legislative definition. There the
issue is what can be measured and proved in a court of law. There can be no
'anti-spam' law, only laws that make certain types of spam illegal. Think of
legislation as simply another type of anti-spam software. Unsolicited Bulk
Commercial Email is fine for legislation, but that is the description of one
particular spam filter, not of the problem the users want us to solve.

		Phill
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---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 15:12:37 -0700

On Wed, Jun 04, 2003 at 08:55:53AM -0700, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
[...]
> ten or a million other people is irrelevant.

The volume of spam (whatever the definition) is its primary irritation
(I wouldn't care about spam if I only got one nigerian scam a year), and
bulk mailing is the primary cause of that volume.  Hence, "bulk" is
indeed quite relevant to the individual. 

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
Manager of Technical Operations, ICANN      lonesome."
[email-masked],[email-masked]                    -- Mark Twain
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