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

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

While I agree w/ you, I think its best to keep the definition short,
black and white.

How's this:

Spam is defined as unsolicited bulk email

Bulk email is defined as the transmission of 2 or more emails via a
primarily automated process.

Unsolicited email is defined as email where the recipient has not
implicitly or explicitly approved of receiving email from the sender.

Sender can mean an individual or an organization.

A recipient implicitly approves of receiving email from a given sender
if the recipient has previously sent email to the sender and the
recipient has not explicitly requested to not receive further email from
the sender.

Peter


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Barry Shein [mailto:bzs@world.std.com] 
> Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2003 1:23 PM
> To: asrg@ietf.org
> Subject: Re: [Asrg] Another criteria for "what is spam"...
> 
> 
> 
> At this point if we could just get rid of the spamming which 
> is best characterized by its illegal/gray-area behavior I 
> suspect the problem would become much more manageable even if 
> not completely solved.
> 
> That's one PR problem with all this, the more we focus on the 
> message (email whose contents I don't want) the more we're 
> opening ourselves to accusations of just being 
> anti-commercial zealots.
> 
> Who can argue with something like:
> 
> 
> 
> ALTHOUGH spam covers a wider set of unwanted email it is certainly
> (bulk) email which uses illegal and/or ethically questionable 
> methods to ensure its delivery including but not limited to:
> 
>     a) Exploitation of open relays and proxies for transmission.
> 
>     b) Forged and often purposely misleading header information.
> 
>     c) Creation and use of computer viruses for transmission.
> 
>     d) Encoding of the message and header information with the intent
>     to deceive filters and/or recipients.
> 
>     e) Inclusion of phony removal and/or affiliation information.
> 
>     f) Highly inappropriate demography (e.g. sending explicit material
>     to children, making no attempt to prevent that.)
> 
>     g) Misleading and deceitful subject and other presentation
>     lines designed to trick someone into opening the mail.
> 
>     h) Obscuring any possibility of identification of the sender
>     and/or beneficiaries of the mail.
> 
> etc.
> 
> I PURPOSELY DIDN'T CRAFT THAT to be finely-honed language so 
> don't start objecting that you see holes in some of the 
> wording w/o further clarification, of course, not my point.
> 
> I just wanted to keep it short and easy to consider, designed 
> for knowledgeable colleagues, not hostile skeptics.
> 
> MY POINT IS, a list like that is easy for legislators, the 
> media, etc to get behind and difficult for a so-called 
> white-hat bulk mailer to quibble with in contrast to 
> definitions which focus on the repetitious, unsolicited, 
> promotional nature of spam. The latter make spam sound like a 
> lot of other annoying-but-tolerated advertising.
> 
> Obviously it'd be important to stress that this is just a 
> first step trying to deal with the worst of the problem and 
> not intended to be exhaustive.
> 
> Finally, and frankly, I think if we could just accomplish 
> that much we'd put the majority of the real dirtbags out of 
> business, and then can tune further. They can't tolerate 
> accountability of any sort.
> 
> -- 
>         -Barry Shein
> 
> Software Tool & Die    | bzs@TheWorld.com           | 
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