Subject: Re: fyi.. House Committee Passes Bill Limiting Spam E-Mail

From: "Kurt Weber" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 16:39:28 -0500

Well, spam is already legal.

 Personally, I have nothing against the legitimacy of spam.  I don't like
it,
 but I do believe that it should be legal.  If they want to outlaw
 telemarketing and junk mail, then they can outlaw spam.  Besides, because
of
 the nature of the Internet, if you outlaw spam, then the same person could
 send it from a locale where spamming IS legal.  It's impossible to
eradicate
 spam through legislation.

 Regards,
 Kurt Weber
 [email-masked]
 ROW Software and Web Design
 http://www.rowsw.com

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Keith Moore" <[email-masked]>
> To: "Lillian Komlossy" <[email-masked]>
> Cc: <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2000 3:37 PM
> Subject: Re: fyi.. House Committee Passes Bill Limiting Spam E-Mail
>
>
> > yeah, the bill contains language like
> >
> > "Unsolicited commercial electronic mail can be an important mechanism
> > through which businesses advertise and attract customers in the online
> > environment."
> >
> > this bill isn't designed to limit spam; it's designed to make it legal.
> >
> > criminals.
> >
> > Keith
> >
>

---

From: Lillian Komlossy <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 09:28:35 -0400

Perhaps one of the solution would be to limit the amount of addressees one
email can go out to simultaneously. Imagine Joe Spammer would have to send
out his junk say to max 30 addresses at a time. Or even 100. It would not
impair normal users because we do not send mail to more than a few addresses
at a time - but it would make spamming a little more difficult.
I already hear the argument: There'd be "solutions" to circumvent this
limitation faster than it would be implemented. Still I think it is worth
the debate. What do you think?

Have a good weekend everybody!
Lillian

Lillian Komlossy || Site Manager || http://www.dmnews.com ||
http://www.imarketingnews.com || 212 925-7300 ext. 232 ||
mailto:[email-masked]

---

From: Jeffrey Altman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2000 14:09:06 EDT

> the debate. What do you think?

The premise is not true.  When planning parties or even
volleyball tournaments I frequently send out e-mail to several hundred
friends.  This is not spam.  Arbitrary limits are not the answer.

    Jeffrey Altman * Sr.Software Designer * Kermit-95 for Win32 and OS/2
                 The Kermit Project * Columbia University
              612 West 115th St #716 * New York, NY * 10025
  http://www.kermit-project.org/k95.html * [email-masked]

---

From: Bob Allisat <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2000 18:25:55 -0400 (EDT)

Kurt Weber <[email-masked]> writes:
> Personally, I have nothing against the legitimacy of spam.  I don't
> like it, but I do believe that it should be legal.  If they want
> to outlaw telemarketing and junk mail, then they can outlaw spam. 
> Besides, because of the nature of the Internet, if you outlaw spam,
> then the same person could send it from a locale where spamming
> IS legal.  It's impossible to eradicate spam through legislation.

 It is also impossible to differentiate between so-called
 spam and expressions of a personal political, social or
 artistic nature. All of which should be protected in any
 legitimate democracy. All to often our technical over-seers
 are all to willing to sacrifice precious liberties and
 freedoms in the interests of presumed network integrity.

 What, pray tell, is the use of any infrastructure if it
 cannot tolerate the full gamut of human communications?
 Including the crass, craven and (SHUDDERS) the artistic?
 Such a network is of no value at all. The harder and higher
 the standards you IETF people militate towards the more
 likely your precious work will be circumvented and bypassed
 as inadequate. There were other computer networks that 
 rose and fell besides the Internet. I was there and I can
 name a few of them and I suspect I will live to see the
 rise of still others. Cautionary thoughts me thinks(?).

 Alive and well and living somewhere in Toronto. Sort of.

 Bob Allisat

 [email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 10:58:30 -0500

It's easy to classify SPAM as "junkmail" or UCE but I think that leaves 
too much to interpretation these days.
Especially given the almost completely commercial applications of "the 
net" (gawd, I hate to even think of Sandra B. and her magic octet).
I think the answer could live in what is commonly referred to as a "pull" 
versus a "push" type of marketing.
If you take the time to ask people, in a non-obtrusive way, what they're 
interested in, then usually, enough people will respond to
help you "meet your numbers and get your trip" (or whatever motivates the 
source of information).

The trick (or tightrope that must be walked), is to find a middle ground 
with consumers.  How can enough information about you be gathered and 
analyzed (with your permission) to only (or for the most part) give you 
information that interests you.  Cookies?  not sure.  PKI "hooks"?  Not 
sure either.  Heck, I'm not sure what the difference is if you really 
think all "hippy" about what they're really both being used (planned) for.

The net has the potential to be a great vehicle for sales.  The only 
reason I say it has potential, in spite of its obvious success, is that I 
think there's a long way to go with regards to security and other legal 
issues.  These will all get resolved one way or the other, but once they 
are, this middle ground is where we should all be able to play as 
"consumers" AND "sellers" with product or information or opinion whatnot 
(what's the difference really).

----------------------------------
Randall Gale
Regional Director
Information Security
Predictive Systems
vox: 781-751-9629
fax: 781-329-9343
mailto:[email-masked]
http://www.predictive.com
----------------------------------

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2000 17:24:02 -0600 (MDT)

> From: "Donald E. Eastlake 3rd" <[email-masked]>
>
> While this may be important enough to have some discusion on the
> general IETF list, I would point out that there does exist an IETF
> working group in this area: RUN, Responsible Use of the Net
> <http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/run-charter.html>.  This working
> group produced RFC 2635 which was adopted by the IETF Consensus
> process.

> ...
> >Herein lies one of the major issues that ought to be sorted out before 
>>anyone takes any steps to regulate spam.  What is spam, exactly?  There seems 
> >to be a wide variety of notions as to what constitutes a spam.  Some 
> >people define it in its original context; i.e., unsolicited commercial 
> >email.  Others broaden the definition to include offensive or off-topic 
> >remarks on a public or private list.  Still others would include *any* email 
>>they didn't want to receive as 'spam. ...

There are surely better places to argue about spam.  If you can use
killfiles, the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup is a hotbed of
discussions of such as the definition of spam.

RFC 2635 does not really define email spam.  The following definitions
are common.  I list them not to start a long flame war, but to counter
the (surprising to me) ignorance about the issue.  If you disagree
with my blatant bias, please assume everyone else will and don't bother
correcting me.

  1. unsolicited bulk email, or email at least some of which is received
   by many people who did not explicitly or implicitly ask for it
   (e.g. by foolishly giving their addresses to sleazy vendors that
   don't say they won't spam.)

  2. unsolicited commercial mail even if not bulk.

  3. unsolicited promotional including commercial mail, also even if not bulk.

  4. anything someone doesn't like.

  5. various definitions from kooks and sleazy merchants and advertisers
   trying to carve exceptions for their missives or trying to paint as
   kooks or fools all who don't like unsolicited advertising.

Among people with technical and administrative clues, #1 is the very clear
consensus.  In it, "bulk" is intentionally vague, but almost no one who
favors #1 is willing to argue against any definition of "bulk" between
half a dozen and a few gross.  The messages that comprise a spam spew
defined by #1 need be only essentially identical instead of byte-for-byte
the same, partly because spammers like to "target" their drivel, partly
because they try to evade spam filters, and mostly because they're
incompetent at everything including sending bulk email.  When you're
running systems, it's usually easy to painfully easy to know when a message
is "bulk" because your systems will often hiccup, your logs will overflow,
and you'll get complaints from many targets.  On the other hand, people
with operational responsibilities rarely want to get involved in the
judging of content that the other definitions require--at least not after
a little real world experience.

#2 is favored by many individuals who have never had operational
responsibilities, because it is usually impossible for an individual spam
target to know instead of merely reliably guess whether an unsolicited
message is one of a bulk blast, and because they're often not gun-shy
about judging content.  #2 is also favored by CAUCE and many other
self-described charitable and political organizations who presumably hope
to send unsolicited notes promoting their causes and soliciting funds.
(Or perhaps CAUCE advocates #1 but with an exception for non-profit spam;
I forget.  That is one cause for the previously mentioned distrust of
CAUCE.  Another is the continued, paid involvement of a major CAUCE figure
with AllAdvantage.com, which some people view as an unrepentant,
irredeemable solicitor of spam because they say AllAdvantage.com continues
to pay spammers money.)  #3 is commonly advocated by individuals without
operational experience, but who dislike political and charitable spam as
much as other advertising.  #4 is commonly proposed by spammers as a straw
man to show how impossible it would be to regulate or prohibit spam, as
well as by people who haven't thought about the problem.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]

---

From: "Robert G. Ferrell" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 10:07:09 -0500 (CDT)

>	The possibility remains, however, that this solution might not be
>popular with the people in the business of producing such advertisements. 

Aye, there's the rub.  

Most of the unsolicited commercial email I receive that I would 
classify as true 'spam' is shotgunned indiscriminately to people with no 
apparent common interests other than having an email address. It seems to 
me that enforcing any sender-originated controls over this sort of 
communication will be tough.  Spammers for the most part know they're being 
annoying; they just figure the small percentage of people who do respond make 
the effort worthwhile, especially if they're able to achieve a certain level of 
anonymity using spoofing software or anonymous remailers.  These folks are 
unlikely to conform with any standard that inhibits their ability to hit as many 
people as possible with their message.

Cheers,

RGF

Robert G. Ferrell, CISSP
========================================
 Who goeth without humor goeth unarmed.
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