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Re: [Asrg] MTP draft

2003-03-04 15:34:21
From: Brad Templeton <brad(_at_)templetons(_dot_)com>

...
But they didn't.  For example I might meet you at a conference and
find you interesting.  Later I might type your name into google, find
your e-mail address and add it to my list to invite you to my party.
...

You are on very thin ice, because exactly that is what many spammers
claim to justify their spam.  Their definition of "meeting at a
conference" includes finding your name on the roster, but you can't
get them to admit it.

...
We are not, after all, out to stop every email we might find
annoying ...

true, but you need a better way to distinguish your actions from
what spammers do.


...
However, I am defining stranger as "somebody you voluntarily initiated
contact with."  I think that's not subjective.  You either did or
didn't.  Yes, it might sometimes take a bit of work to determine
(mostly on the voluntary question) but you, yourself would never
be in doubt.

In practice, bulk mailers will have an interesting notion of "meet."
I'm not worried about junk mail that comes from buying or registering
products on-line.   That's noisesome, but insignificant.

The definition becomes vital because of course the system of
punishment -- private or legal -- is based on it.   People must
not only not have legit mail never blocked, they must never be
even afraid to send it.  That's the chilling effect doctrine.

That is true only if you care about not chilling unsolicited bulk
mail.  I see nothing wrong with freezing it.


If I meet you at a conference, and you say anything but "go away",
then we are not strangers, and I know that for sure.   Yes, we
might end up remembering things differently but we have ways in
our systems to deal with that sort of question.

"Meet at a conference" is extremely subjective and assymetrical.  I
never remember most of the people I "meet" and conferences, because
I expect to "meet" hundreds and perhaps thousands, for various notions
of "meet."  I'm not talking about the obvious problems like giving a
talk to 2000 people and putting your address on your first slide, but
just mixing in that audience of 2000.  Many of the people I think I've
"met" wouldn't agree, and vice versa.

                                                 What we have a
hard time dealing with is one person saying, "You bought version 1,
surely you were asking to be told when version 2 was out" and
the other saying, "No, I didn't."

There are no practical problems with those cases.  In practice, you
assume that you'll be told not only about version 2 but reminded to
purchase more copies of version 1.  Buying version 1 usually involves
an explicit and unavoidable solicitation for junk mail.


Exactly what transactions make you other than a stranger?  How about
visiting a web site with an old browser that leaks mail addresses?
What about walking around a trade show with a name tag that has your
mail address?

I doubt there are any browsers out there like that. 

There were.

                                                     Anyway, if there
were, why not?   Again, mathematically there are only a few thousands
of companies and people who are not strangers to you, while there are
billions who are.   That's so many orders of magnitude.

I deal with only a few companies, but I glance at a lot of web pages
when winnowing search engine results.

                                                          If a
simple definition cuts the numbers who might spam by this much, it's
more than sufficient.

If that were true, then spam would not be a problem today, because
only a very few spammers generate almost all spam today.  Each of us
dealls with or "meets" far more companies and people than there are
significant spammers today.


                       Especially combined with an unsubscribe rule.
Such a rule would imply that if you knew 3,000 companies, you would
at most get 3,000 unwanted mails, and probably far, far less.  That's
2 weeks of spam for me!

I think there are fewer than 1500 serious spammers today.  Since email
spam started, I think there have been fewer than 30,000 serious spammers.

Of course, the doomsday spam scenario is 0.1% of the ~20,000,000
companies in the U.S. (not to mention vastly more in the world) sending
you a quarterly reminder of their existence.


Vernon Schryver    vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
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