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

2003-06-05 07:21:44
From: "C. Wegrzyn" <wegrzyn(_at_)garbagedump(_dot_)com>

This might not help but when I think of spam I don't focus on the sender 
(since defining bulk is a killer) but on the results. I'll bet almost 
all 'non-spam' emails involve an exchange between end-points - why else 
send email in the first place. Bulk or spamming is when you send out 
email and don't expect to get a response from the majority (define it as 
under 90% or 100% or whatever).

Your message went to on the order of 1000 people, as will this.
I don't expect to receive a response from the majority.  Do you?

Many entities run bulk mail operations.  CNN's "news updates" are
certainly "bulk" regardless of how many of their subscribers respond.
Provided CNN can show that each and every target subscribed, whether
with
   - logs of an HTTP hit on a unique, unguessable URL sent only to
      the subscribing address,
   - a mail message carrying a unique, unguessable key sent only to
      the subscribing address,
   - some other mechanism that convincingly shows that the owner of
      the address and no third party or CNN did the subscribing,
then CNN's bulk mail is not "unsolicited" and so not spam.


Vernon Schryver    vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
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