Forget about defining "spam". At its broadest, "spam" is just "anything that I
deem inappropriate for my inbox". In its narrower forms, "spam" is just a
common specific instance of that, like "unsolicited bulk email", but the
specific instance is not necessarily a pure subset of the general instance.
The general instance has the benefit of satisfying all comers; the specific
instance has the benefit of being recipient-independent.
In my view, the owner of a particular inbox is the proper authority on what is
appropriate for that inbox, and anything which plans to be a solution to
"spam" should therefore deal with the problem in its broadest sense. Is there
a compelling reason to deal with recipient-specific instances of the problem
(even common ones), rather than the problem in general?
The focus should be on how to empower mail *recipients* to set their own mail
policies and make everyone else deal with it, as contrasted with the current
situation in which the *senders* have the upper hand. Why should I, as a mail
recipient, allow anything in my inbox that I don't want? A perfect
implementation of such an ideal is almost certainly impossible, but that's
the target we should be aiming for in the fight against "spam". (No doubt
this implies a research direction, such as overcoming the ability of the
sender to lie with impunity, hence the spirit of LMAP.)
It's possible that the fight against the general case will involve the
development of many specific countermeasures (rather than a single general
one), and the ability of recipients to choose which countermeasures they
apply, but there is no question in my mind that the ASRG should approach
"spam" in its broadest sense.
Regards,
TFBW
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