Tom Thomson wrote:
I think they are attempting to address the problem of recognizing non-spam
as non-spam. They don't address any particular sort of spam, they merely
tell us that certain people are accredited as non-spammers according to the
service managers' definition of non-spammer.
That would be a broken reputation system. Any honest reputation system
should have hard, definite rules for inclusion, with no element of
subjectivity. This will quite intentionally include 'legitimate' spammers,
who can then be filtered by a blacklist that references some well-known
accreditation system. Any spammer who registers his mail immediately becomes
identifiable and filterable. Any spammer (or non-compliant regular sender)
who doesn't register gets filtered out because they have no reputation on
record anywhere.
Given that mailboxes that have been used for mailing lists (like ASRG) which
expose addresses in their archives and/or for posting to newsgroups tend for
a long time will tend to receive more spam than non-spam, anthing that helps
make the distinction is potentially useful.
It's too bad groups like this don't exclusively use newsgroups instead of
email. Unfortunately, although it sounded like a great idea when it was
discussed here, it never really jelled.
We are going to have to put up with vast quantities of spam for the
forseeable future, especially since US Federal legislation has provided the
spammers with the right to send as much spam as they like provided they
conform to some fairly trivial rules, and also prevented the ordinary
victims of spam from suing spammers who don't follow even those rules, so
accreditation services may be useful. On the other hand, they may be about
as useful some of the RBLs we currently suffer from (ie no use at all).
Although I don't like the law either, that doesn't sound like a fair
characterization of CAN-SPAM. I don't recall it specifically denying any
private right of action, although it did preempt some state laws that
provided for that right.
It's a pity the US legislature has again, as it so often does, chosen a
model that supports the providers of campaign funds instead of a model that
protects the ordinary Joe. Maybe we can get can-spam canned and some
sensible legislation in its place (adopting the EU directive might be a good
start) but I doubt it - the "legitimate" advertisers have an axe to grind
and provide too many pennies to the election candidates to be ignored.
Legislation is not within the scope of this group, and with good reason: the
Internet is international, and so must be any _technical_ solution to the
spam problem. There is no possibility of an international convention
defining and outlawing spam any time soon.
Tom.
Philip Miller
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