FTC Issues Final Rule Defining What Constitutes a "Commercial Electronic
Mail Message"
This has vanishingly little to do with defining what spam is.
That's correct, and indeed I think the rule does not claim to define
what is spam. Instead, it defines several classes of often-undesirable
e-mail (commercial, etc.).
If e-mail belonging to such often-undesirable classes would have
included an appropriate `warning` category label, this could provide
very good mechanism for users and providers to filter out undesirable
messages (based on user's and/or providers policies).
One possible (and imho very useful) definition of spam is `e-mail
belonging ot one of the often-undesirable categories, but without an
appropriate label`. The FCC rule may help define these categories, and
technical mechanisms, and potentially complementary legal measures, can
enforce appropriate labeling. See
http://www.cs.biu.ac.il/~herzbea//Papers/ecommerce/Spam.htm for a simple
cryptographic protocol to enforce correct labeling for content
selection (filtering).
Best, Amir Herzberg
They're
defining what messages are subject to the CAN SPAM act, which
regulates all commercial e-mail, solicited and unsolicited.
I don't think much of the rules that CAN SPAM defines, but don't shoot
the messenger. The Congress directed the FTC to regulate some kinds
of email, and the FTC is clarifying what mail that is.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl(_at_)taugh(_dot_)com, Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
http://www.taugh.com
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 13:13:29 -0800 (PST)
From: William Leibzon <william(_at_)completewhois(_dot_)com>
Subject: Re: [Asrg] FTC tells us what is SPAM
To: John Levine <asrg(_at_)johnlevine(_dot_)com>
Cc: asrg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Message-ID:
<Pine(_dot_)LNX(_dot_)4(_dot_)60(_dot_)0412161305200(_dot_)29317(_at_)cwhois1(_dot_)completewhois(_dot_)com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
On Thu, 16 Dec 2004, John Levine wrote:
FTC Issues Final Rule Defining What Constitutes a "Commercial Electronic
Mail Message"
Notice Includes Criteria For Determining the "Primary Purpose" of an
E-Mail Message
This has vanishingly little to do with defining what spam is. They're
defining what messages are subject to the CAN SPAM act, which
regulates all commercial e-mail, solicited and unsolicited.
I don't think much of the rules that CAN SPAM defines, but don't shoot
the messenger. The Congress directed the FTC to regulate some kinds
of email, and the FTC is clarifying what mail that is.
I agree. I've very little faith in the "You can spam all you want" act by
congress. It seems to have allowed large spammers to tell ISPs that they
are not doing anything illegal because they are CAN-SPAM compliant (which
might or might not be true, but verifying takes long time) and if ISPs do
threated a disconnect then they begin to use lawyers to keep them up longer.
Nevertheless that Congress clarified what consititutes a COMMERCIAL EMAIL
is very important because that directly related to UCE type of spam and
commercial part is very often what makes a difference if deciding how to
react to bulk sender on your net.
---
William Leibzon
mailto: william(_at_)completewhois(_dot_)com
Anti-Spam and Email Security Research Worksite:
http://www.elan.net/~william/emailsecurity/
Whois & DNS Network Investigation Tools:
http://www.completewhois.com
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