From: Chuq Von Rospach <chuqui(_at_)plaidworks(_dot_)com>
...
FWIW, here's MY definition of spam. I want to take content completely
out of it to the greatest extent possible.
Spam is email where there is not legitimate attempt to allow receivers
to define their consent agreement, or no legitimate attempt to honor it.
spam is that stuff that tries to hide it's consent agreement with me
through forged identification, tries to prevent me from changing that
consent agreement through fraudulent or missing return communication
paths, or ignores those change requests and doesn't intend to honor
them if I do actually get a request to them.
...
As written, that is a bad definition, because it allows and even
encourages literally hundreds millions of advertisers to individually
ask you to opt-out.
If DMA members and fellow travelers would allow and honor a global,
individual address opt-out mechanism, then their spam would be irritating
but tolerable. The DMA's previous opt-out efforts have shown they
will always fight such a thing, just as they are now fighting the
national telemarketing do-not-call list. They know that as soon as
such a list existed, common tools for creating accounts would sprout
"check boxes" or other buttons that add new addresses to the global
opt-out list. (Please, no nitpicking about my blurring of distinctions
among various direct marketing and telemarketing assocations.)
] From: J C Lawrence <claw(_at_)kanga(_dot_)nu>
] ...
] In turn that defines what we're (presumably) trying to do with this
] group: prevent abuse of mail systems by those people we don't know
] and/or don't want to know, offering us things we don't want (to know
] about). "Abuse" would seem the key word. I don't see much reason to
] worry about spammers who don't forge mail headers and who have valid
] MXes -- we have plenty pf large and accurate clubs to beat sense into
] their heads once we know who they are. ...
That is mistaken for more than one reason. One is that there are too
many hundreds of millions (100,000,000) of organizations that do not
forge mail headers, have valid MX DNS RRs (or plain A RRs), to be
"known" in any practical sense. In the U.S. alone there something
like 20,000,000 corporations. At least 1% of them could reasonably
ask you to opt-out or have a rogue, about to be fired salescritter
that decides that a push advertising campaign might let the salescritter
"meet plan", keep its job, and couldn't make things worse.
Another reason is that the major clubs against unsolicited bulk mail
from the Fortune 50,000,000 are too coarse. It is impractical to
block spam from Dell Computers by IP address or domain name without
blocking all mail from Dell Computers. That coarse blocking is
completely unworkable for all except the tiny minority of kooks like
me who so object to junk U.S.Postal Service that we've sent complaints
in pre-paid envelopes. The only defenses against that sort of spam
that I know of are automated body filters such as the DCC.
I am not worried about the current flood of spam with genuinely forged
headers (i.e. not merely using free provider drop-boxes) or other
tricks including "hash busters." The DMA will soon finish passing
laws in all major jurisdictions that criminalize header forgery as
the first step in saving "push advertising". (The other jurisdictions
can be blacklisted by IP address.)
...
Please stop talking about the wondersof mechanisms that are not email
(i.e. advertising). They may be much better than email, but they are
irrelevant and off-topic here. We are supposed to be dealing with
email spam. If fixing the email spam problem is hopeless, then perhaps
a new IRTF or IETF group will be created to consider replacements for
SMTP. It would make sense to advertise such a new group or mailing
list here several times. Still, we are about fixing email spam, not
the wonderful additions to Mailman to support something other than email.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
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