On Tuesday 18 November 2003 03:29, John R. Levine wrote:
Alow me to second that sentiment. It's not very useful to talk about
dealing with spam since the definitions people use range from
"multiple substantially similar items of unsolicited commercial e-mail
sent to more than N people in less than M time" to "any mail I don't
want" and everyone knows that his definition is right and all the rest
miss the point.
*sigh*
Obviously, you people have been badly burned by flames on the topic before
because you obviously did not read what I was saying at all before your knee
jerked. It's understandable, but /please/ take a moment of your time to
consider what I'm saying.
The *point* of my exercise was to define spam in a way that makes it
*independent* on what the recipients define as spam (and, indeed, the reason
for trying to come up with a definition is the (to me) obvious impossibility
of defining spam consistently between individuals).
While it is indeed unnecessary to define "spam" when examining a technical
measure designed to alleviate a specific abuse of a communication
infrastructure, it remains necessary to do so whenever we want to compare
data points, quantify the problem, or even try to communicate amongst each
other and/or the rest of the world.
And, wether you like it or not, we are defining spam both implicitly and
explicitly by communicating here-- but in a manner which is ambiguous at best
and contradictory at worse. Indeed, vast tracts of the requirement document
go about defining various sorts of spams simply because it attempts to
discuss the general problem we are all here to try to solve.
It is useful to discuss specific kinds of messages likely to be perceived as
spam when we are discussing specific measures (like, indeed, "unsollicited
bulk commercial email") because they share common properties. But I think
that attempting to pegging the phenomenon of spam to any one such definition
is dangerous because we then risk colouring our view.
My latest attempt is:
"A message is spam if it was sent without the justified expectation that the
recipients (however many) are willing to receive it."
[for those of you keeping track-- you may notice I removed the double negative
by making a leap of faith: that a recipient is unwilling to receive messages
he percieves as spam, and willing otherwise]
This holds interesting properties:
- any message containing forged information or anti-anti-spam obfuscation
becomes spam almost automatically [you cannot justify expecting the
recipients are willing to receive something if you feel the need to include
end-runs around measures designed to prevent reception!], but...
- even if forged to try to ensure anonymity, a message sent by an individual
to a recipient that is relevant is not spam [the omnipresent "human rights
activist under an unfriendly governement trying to communicate with the
press" counter-example]
- messages sent to an harvested ("opt out") list become spam [you cannot
justify expecting someone you know nothing about is willing to receive
anything]
- legitimate mailing lists are off the hook [expecting people who signed up
for a mailing list are willing to receive the mailings is justified]
- it's completely independent of the communication channel. It covers SMS
just as well as email. Indeed, it would also properly classify a group of
vickings drowning out your attempts to talk in a restaurant by loudly
chanting.
At any rate, when I apply that definition to my own personal view of what spam
is when it hits my mailbox, it matches 99% of the time-- and the rare piece
of mail that doesn't can be argued to not having been /meant/ to be spam. Do
the exercise yourself. When you receive something, ask yourself "did the
sender have justified expectation I would be willing to receive this"? I'm
confident your answer will be "no" (almost?) all the time if the message fit
your personal definition of spam and "yes" for all other messages.
My definition ends up being *completely useless* when trying to discuss
technical measures to prevent spam, because it does not, and should not,
define "justified expectation" and "willing" in any technically implementable
manner (although consent-based communication is exactly trying to define
both). But is *is* useful when we want to discuss the general problem, or
when we want to compare various classes of spam.
-- Marc A. Pelletier
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