Keith Moore wrote:
Guiding General Principles: - spam is UBE (unsolicited bulk email)
I don't think we're going to end up with a single uniform definition of spam.
I believe we have to, insofar as we need to limit the scope of what the
"S" in ASRG means. Of course, some people will call the nagging email
from the SO, about forgetting their lunch, spam. But that's just plain
wrong.
If we don't limit our scope, we'll just be in an endless rathole.
The thing we're primarily concerned about is that activity/behaviour
which endangers the future of email. The behaviour that turned striker
into a smoking crater.
Sending 1:1 email isn't it. Having a salesman for widgets pick your
email address out of a mailing list about widgets and suggesting "you
might be able to solve the problem you asked about by buying our XYZ
widget" isn't it. Changing your mind about email you explicitly asked
for isn't it. Your neighbor's emailed porn from Germany isn't it.
Anti-spam lobby organizations, such as the various branches of CAUCE,
have, I believe, now all fixated on "UBE" as the spam they're concerned
about (regardless of the "C" in the name) - I'm a director of CAUCE
Canada. "Usenet spam" isn't content. It's simply "the same thing
posted many times" [I wrote the consensus standard...]
Perhaps it would be nice to exert effort on a classification system that
provides more flexibility than a simple UBE definition. But you can
forget about individuals classifying things properly. And we can forget
about getting very far. And if we include that, the pro-spam side, and
the media will just continue on their merry way "they can't even define it".
Think about most the strategies that people are talking about here.
Counting bounces correlated to senders. Establishing authorized "sending
MTAs" for given "from" domains. DCC. Spamtrap analysis. Bayesian,
Razor, Brightmail recognizing messages that "look like stuff seen
before" Etc. That's _all_ about bulk.
The original direction of defining spam as "UCE" (actually, UBCE)
derived directly out of a belief that C was easier to legislate given US
jurisprudence. Thinking has shifted since then, to that believing a
content-neutral definition of spam is (a) easier to legislate and (b)
easier to implement (because you don't have to write AI engines to
recognize whether something is commercial).
You can automate bulk detection a lot easier than commercial detection.
Yes, some people will call commercial email spam. But why? Why should
they care if their neighbor is getting commercial email that they asked for?
Defining the "S" in ASRG as "UBE" helps us focus on solutions that may
prevent more strikers. Isn't that what all of us are primarily
interested in?
Besides, I was hoping that the _rest_ of that original message would
generate the majority of comments ;-)
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