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

["Peter Kay" <peter@titankey.com>]

> 
> My personal favorite definition, these days, is
> 
>    Unsolicited Bulk Mail (UBE)
>    

This is good, short and simple.  

> 
> And we need to define bulk properly. This will be difficult. 
> If I send an unsolicited message to 2 people, does it 
> qualify? What about 10 people, 100, 1000? Why? Why not?
> 

To me, BULK email is email which is programmatically sent out to > 1
person. Programmatically here means by means of automated systems, i.e.
mailmerge processes. So, yes, if I do a copy/paste of my entire contact
list, paste them in my email, and announce my new company, I'm doing
bulk email.   

> So we then need to define unsolicited properly. We must make 
> sure to permit me to make contact with someone for the first 
> time. Not all cold calls are bad; in fact they are essential 
> to many desirable aspects of social intercourse. We need to 
> make sure that we define "permission" properly -- as a kind 
> of opposite to unsolicited -- and so we can then enjoy 
> wonderful debates about details such as double opt-in. And so 
> on. Still, I think the question of "unsolicited" is 
> well-enough understood to make it possible to get community 
> rough consensus on a technical definition that the 
> engineering community can work with.
> 

A definition of UNSOLICITED, I believe, is the core of the issue and the
problem, primarily because it will force us to address the eye of the
storm: 

is Internet email inherently trusted or is it untrusted?

Is email considered unsolicited until the recipient decides it is
solicited? Or is it considered solicited until the recipient decides it
is unsolicited?

I think this is the big question, ladies.

And I would say that today's spam problem is because SMTP was born in an
environment where email was inherently trusted. SMTP protocol is AWASH
with trusted processes.  Not the least of which is clear text
transmission.

But because the Internet went commercial, suddenly SMTP found itself in
an environment where email (IMHO) is inherently untrusted.  And spam is
what you get when you put a protocol meant for scholars and scientists
in the hands of capitalists.

Peter


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