On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 08:59:16PM -0500, Keith Moore wrote:
To a recipient, spam is mail he finds annoying, doesn't want to receive, and
To an ISP, spam is what violates its AUP. Alternately, it's what customers
To a sender, spam is whatever someone else is doing. No spammer sees himself
The purpose of a definition of spam is to use legal tactics against
it, typically in contract law, but also possibly in statute.
That's because you must be clear on what it is you're going to punish,
so people should be able to know when they have violated the rule,
or been the subject of it, and so a fair and impartial body can
objectively determine it.
To that end, a legal definition of spam must include nothing but spam,
and will not include all things that you think are spam.
That's because, to get people to agree to enforce it, they do not
wish to be in the position of punishing that which they think is
legitimate mail, nor do those who are creating the system want to
be in the position of chilling legitimate communications.
(In the USA and some other nations, laws are constitutionally required
to block nor chill any legitimate communications, and to be precise,
and to be the least restrictive means possible to solve the problem.)
That least restrictive means test is also a good one to borrow.
Should the global system have a narrower definition, as it must,
this does not preclude private systems from working to stop things
not covered by that definition as best they can.
Thus if a system based on national law, new protocols, or pooling of
MX servers only stops bulk mail above volume X form parties matching
description Y, and you want to add onto it a system which blocks
based on content (Viagara) or intent (advertising) or source (blacklists)
then you are in no way stopped from doing so. Indeed you can
even make the system big as the population that wants it.
However, for a system to be implemented by the IETF or similar body,
a much narrower concensus is required, as this will be the default
for much of the E-mail system of the world.
That's a pretty heavy burden. E-mail is all based on private
property, and thus not subject in many cases to 1st amendment and
related protections from private action, but we as architects of
such systems must think of that as a bug, not a feature. We should
not be glad that we don't have to worry about that pesky first
amendment.
Do people disagree with these principles? If so, let us know.
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