At the risk of seeing this whole discussion brought up yet again ....
(Though I guess it already has.)
Rather than trying to come up with the "perfect" definition of spam, we
simply need to define it / use it in such a way that it will provide the
most immediate benefit. Of course, the definition: "Spam is whatever the
end-user defines it to be" is probably the most accurate in many people's
minds and in particular our own. However, it is not useful as was
mentioned in an earlier post.
The immediate problem we are all facing is the sending of "unwanted
automated bulk e-mail." (Or should I say the receipt of it.) And that is
the definition we should use for the time being. Once this problem has
been solved or nearly so, then perhaps we can think of ways to deal with
"unwanted e-mail", "unwanted bulk e-mail" (that is sent out by hand by
somebody in a third world country hired for their cheap labor rates), or
other definition. In the meantime, the bulk (pun) of the problem will have
been addressed and hopefully taken care of. The mail volume will be
significantly less and at that point, it makes sense to find ways to
reassess our position and the problem.
-Art
--
Art Pollard
http://www.lextek.com/
Suppliers of High Performance Text Retrieval Engines.
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