Just to stir the mud here's my take on defining SPAM:
SPAM is the set of all "unwanted email"
Within the set of "unwanted email" you have two major categories each can be
divided up into subcategories:
1) Unsolicited email
a) Bulk email
* Commercial email
* Non-commercial email (someone using evite to get you to a party)
b) Individual email
* Commercial email
* Non-commercial email
2) Solicited email (not an issue as you asked for it even if it's unwanted)
a) Bulk email
* Commercial email
* Non-commercial email
b) Individual email
* Commercial email
* Non-commercial email
Using an entity like the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) one should be
able to get on a "do not send" list to stop receiving unsolicited commercial
email (bulk or individual). Of course this concept only works if the
marketers adhere to the rules (legislated or not). Since this method would
not inhibit enough of the email traffic that should be halted to disappear,
a process to do so needs to be created. This is where the bang for the buck
is. It's not a matter of addressing all SPAM, but rather making it VERY
difficult for unsolicited commercial email to clog the pipes.
The unsolicited individual non-commercial emails to a professor or address
written over a urinal should be addressed by the method of challenge and
response. This of course is at the discretion of the receiver to turn it on
or not. It's like someone knocking at your front door. You ask who it is
and if you like the response you let them in. Otherwise they go away.
I don't think there needs to be a special definition for 'bulk' other than
it constitutes more than one, as most people should agree with.
Howard Roth
Vernon,
Why can't we define "bulk" as "bulk" for human discourse but
let people installing spam-bulk-alarms use thresholds
appropriate for local conditions or other constraints? For
example, a reasonable threshold for a spam-bulk-alarm at AOL
might be 1000. At a vanity domain SMTP server like
Rhyolite.com, 3 is reasonable and 5 is generous because any
message that hits 5 addresses @rhyolite.com is practically
certain to be hitting 50,000,000 at AOL.
I don't think we can "define 'bulk' as 'bulk'" because the definition of
"bulk" in the dictionary does not apply at all. Maybe http://www.m-w.com
is the wrong place. What definition do you get when you look up "bulk".
We need to define "bulk" within the context of UBE. If we can't define
UBE how can we possibly hope to do any meaningful research on it?
Ok, but building software is quite distinct from defining
offenses. Let's first define the offense of "spam" and then
decide how to approximately characterize it for our stupid
computers. Let's also be entirely clear when we are talking
about spam and when we are talking about whatever our
computers can detect or defend against.
Isn't that what we're trying to do? Did I miss something? Aren't we
trying to define what is spam and what is not? Or is the definition of
an "offense" something else entirely.
Peter
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