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RE: [Asrg] Another criteria for "what is spam"...

2003-06-04 19:47:11


From: "Peter Kay" <peter(_at_)titankey(_dot_)com>

...
is Internet email inherently trusted or is it untrusted?

Trust is gone, just as it evaporated from voice telephones a
long time ago.

So I'll take it you're saying email is inherently untrusted.

I guess it was a mistake to dodge your use of "trust" before. 
What do you mean by "trusted"?  Trusted to be, say, or do 
what? Email was never trusted to be more than an unsigned 
inter-office memo. If you mean "generally trusted to not be 
spam," then yes, that trust has been gone for years.  The 
justification of this group is to recover that trust.



Good point. "Trusted" here means "trust that email is not unsolicited"

...
The telephone calls that bother people are similar to mail spam.

See, but that's where we have to draw the line. We have to have a 
clear, black line that says this is spam and this is not. 
And it can't 
be based on content. And it can't be based on "it bothers me".

The definition of spam can't be "it bothers me," but it also 
cannot and must not be defined by "clear black line."  That's 
been my point about burglary and many other crimes.  "Insider 
trading" is in the news today. It is another example of a 
crime that if you tried to deliniate it with a clear black 
line, either it or all stock trading would disappear.



I disagree. If you don't have a clear black line, you'll have spam. Draw
the line. Take the heat, but draw the line. Let some people get pissed
off. Too bad. 


So if we're saying, "if you have a public mailbox, you are implying 
consent", then so be it (I would not agree w/ that but 
that's not the 
point).

It is nonsense to have a public mailbox that does not accept 
any mail from strangers.  If you don't want at least some 
unsolicited mail, you should block the slot in your mailbox 
and save yourself grief.


There's nothing wrong w/ unsolicited email.  But there's everything
wrong w/ unsolicited BULK email.

         We can't say "I'm public, so I'm impling consent for any 
email that doesn't bother me".

That's as true as the analogous statements about telephone 
harassment and computer network security.

The clear black lines that computers can see, such as burglar 
alarm motion sensors, do and should differ from the fuzzy 
lines humans use.

The difficulty in defining spam is that many people insist on 
using the email equivalents of motion sensors to not only 
detect spam but to define it.


That's only true if we define spam according to fuzzy logic related to
content and intent.  If we make the definition black and white (i.e.
motion sensor) then we can contain, measure, and solve the problem.



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