Now IS the breathing space. A complete solution (if such a thing is
possible) needs a problem definition. You know that I like the consent idea
- NOT because it gives us a "a 'perfect' definition of spam ... For a
particular system, any message locally determined to be spam.", but because
it enables us to work *without* a spam definition. Instead we have a thing
called consent which can be represented, transported, queried etc. We can
evaluate systems in terms of how well they support consent. We can worry
about edge/middle issues, anonymity and so on.
How to do all this - that's suitable matter for research - this may be the
long term way forward. This is not to say that all the work being done on
sender verification / content based filtering etc isn't worthy, of course
it is - that's what has given (is giving) us this breathing space.
We have no problems with researching consent as long as there is enough
people willing to do so. However, we want to refocus the RG away from
that, in order to be able to consider short and medium term solutions as
well.