From: Brad Templeton <brad(_at_)templetons(_dot_)com>
...
Now in general we can exempt the small volume stuff as one solution,
since again mathematically it is unlikely to cause the problem we
wish to fix - flooded mailboxes and servers.
...
Spammers send bulk mail to people who don't know them from Adam.
I don't. If you get a lot of complaints about me you can judge
me as lying, that's how it's done in the real world.
yes.
and that makes your definition the same as "unsolicited bulk" in practice.
...
That's why I argue the definition must be the intersection definition
still strong enough to attack the problem. A definition that nobody
thinks is blocking legit mail, so everybody can be 100% behind
punishing those who violate it.
Yes, but the problem with your "meeting" or "strangers" definition is
that while in practice it devolves to "nasty bulk mail I don't want,"
the letter of it's definition it is based on a notion that is fuzzier
than "unsolicited bulk." Having your badge caught by a camera while
someone wearing it is standing on the edge of a trade show booth's
carpet would count as a "meeting." (Ever loan or borrow a conference
badge?) You couldn't gainsay the marketoon's camera's computer unless
there were a lot of complaints, but then you're in the UBE case.
Rules that say one thing but mean something else are bad, even if the
literal words and effective meanings are related.
No, your party invites are still not UBE, because they're not
unsolicited. I can prove that by asking all of yoru targets if
your mail was unsolicited junk they didn't want.
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.
BOy, I sure have heard a lot of people disagree with that!
I suspect instead that you've heard a lot of disagreement from relatively
few who like to fight or "LART" or count coup on spammers more than
they want to stop spam. To that end they define spam as "any mail I
can LART".
I deal with only a few companies, but I glance at a lot of web pages
when winnowing search engine results.
Sure. But if they all spammed and you could get off right away,
how bad would it be? And if they could find your address it would
only be a tiny few.
Tiny compared to 20,000,000 N.American corporations but not compared
to what I should have to deal with. It's not a big deal to look at
a few 100 web pages in a day. Should I expect to have to unsubscribe
to 5,000 streams of spam, 1 for each of the 50 outfits represented on
each page? Think about asking a product comparison outfit about
digital cameras. You can easily "meet" than 100 stores on a single
web page.
And if you were really concerned you could
use tricks to hide your address.
That's true but irrelevant to whether the stuff is spam. I should
not need to hide. If I do need to hide, then it certainly is spam!
I don't know of a single instance
of spamming people who just visited a web site.
I've not heard of any recent cases, but there were creditable
reports. I've forgotten exactly how ancient versions of Netscape
blabbed mail addresses.
That I've not heard of recent cases and think it is impossible does
not mitigate the problem with your definition. "Meeting" is too
nebuolous. Should you need to unsubscribe to 100 streams of spam
after walking through a shopping mall, being seen by smart cameras in
100 stores, matched to the TIA database of faces to get your name,
and then your mail address found via Google? You'll say those are
not "meetings," and I'll say every case where you admit a "meeting"
happens also involves a reasonable case for soliciting bulk mail.
(Note that said "reasonable" and not the contract signed in blood that
spammer fighters claim is required.)
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.
Do you mean spammers, or spam companies providing services to spammes?
Either or both.
The current and historic spammer populations are incredibly tiny compared
to the total populations. I never cease to be amazed by the contrast
between the talk of American individualism and that only 0.01% of spam
targets reports spam while only about 0.0001% send it.
Since Spamford's day, I've been fairly religious about adding spammers
to my blacklist. Before I stopped being the mail gatekeeper for that
(then) Fortune 500 outfit 5 years ago, my blacklist had only about
3000 entries. I started over and now have only about 4517 entries.
If you assume I see only 10% of spammers (almost certainly too low),
and if you notice that spammers average several domain names each,
you get order-of-magnitude 10**3 current and 10**4 total spammers.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
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