At 5:04 PM +0000 11/26/03, Bruce Stephens wrote:
Bill Cole <asrg(_at_)billmail(_dot_)scconsult(_dot_)com> writes:
[...]
The relevance of RSS is that it is a better alternative medium for
the people currently (mis)using email as a one-way broadcast medium,
without any mechanism for anything like spam. Much of the effort and
hand-wringing and arguing over spam control mechanisms is really
focused on not interfering with truly solicited broadcast email, and
RSS gives those senders an alternative which does not have any
exposure to side-effects of whatever might be retrofit onto email to
stop spam.
RSS is one, HTTP is another. The web browser that I use (and I
presume most others) provides a convenient way to automatically report
changes in specific web pages.
Yes, but that HTTP trick has a lot of built-in failure modes, which
is really why RSS came about.
If current spammers wanted to use
better mechanisms, they could just go ahead.
I see no reason to attempt to accommodate spamming or intentional
spammers in any way. One of the problem areas in dealing with spam is
the collateral damage caused by every approach. As long as the only
real difference between spam and some non-spam is whether the
recipient asked for it and we lack any reliable deployed means of
making that determination programmatically, every mechanism for
stopping spam from being delivered will be fuzzy and stop some
non-spam. Getting the non-spam broadcast material out of email
altogether (email never having been a really suitable medium for it
in the first place) reduces the risks of anti-spam measures
clobbering material that is not really abusive.
The reasons they don't are partly cost, but partly they use email
(presumably) *because* it's the wrong medium---like snail bulk
mailers, they want their commercial or other messages to look like
personal messages so that people are more likely to read them.
Right. Spammers use email because it is a medium that is open to
spamming. Unfortunately, the most direct ways for stopping spam tend
to catch all broadcast email even if it is desired by the recipients.
If all the non-spammers doing broadcast email move to other media,
the only people doing broadcast email will be spammers, and it will
be open season. :)
For the respectable end of the market (the confirmed opt-in, or
whatever the current phrase is), I agree completely---there's a space
for some use of RSS or something much more appropriate than email.
Actually, I suspect HTTP with perhaps some automated browser
configuration (to switch on monitoring of the relevant web page) would
be easier to get going.
That's a technique with 8 years of hard failure modes behind it. It
would be nice if there was a reliable lightweight standard way for
web browsers to detect significant changes of HTTP-accessible
documents, but there isn't. There's about an 80% solution, and the
ways that it does not work are non-trivial to solve.
However, I suspect even that market wants
their valuable marketing messages to look like email, and so would
resist changing. It'll be interesting to see how successful ADV:
turns out to be in reality.
Tagging subject headers in SMTP mail is a losing proposition. It is
legally questionable in the US and the 'You CAN SPAM" act's mandate
for it almost surely will see a legal challenge from someone serious
enough to put that piece on hold long enough that it won't ever make
a difference.
--
Bill Cole
bill(_at_)scconsult(_dot_)com
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