On Mon, 22 Jan 2007, David Nicol wrote:
On 1/22/07, Daniel Feenberg <feenberg(_at_)nber(_dot_)org> wrote:
Comments:
Comments on comments:
1.1.1 I would resist making the definition of spam so receipient
dependent. If every receipient gets to make his/her own definition, then
it tends to prevent cooperative solutions from looking satisfactory, and
the the purpose of the IETF is to facilitate cooperative solutions. For
example, if spam has no objective definition, then each user must maintain
their own DNSBL, or list of spamassassin regular expressions. I would have
thought the purpose of this group was to suggest ways for MTA operators to
cooperate to reduce spam - individual solutions don't require the IETF.
There are also the cases to consider of ISPs who ignore messages to abuse
- does that make the messages spam? I think we should stick with
"unsolicited commercial email" as a workable spam definition.
the upside of using a very general definition is that it necessitates
a many-sizes-
to-fit-everyone system of solutions.
I had a further thought. Defining spam only as unwanted mail will be a
problem for anti-spam activities operating spam traps. By definition the
mail received in a spam trap is "wanted" - the purpose of the trap is to
learn about the sources of unsolicited commercial email, and incoming mail
helps it achieve that purpose. The fact that it is wanted by the trap
doesn't make it not spam, spam is unsolicited, not necessarily unwanted.
But if the sender can claim that the mail in the trap doesn't meet agreed
industry definitions of spam, then the sender can use the RFC to challange
the use of those messages as evidence of spamming. Furthermore, since the
spammer can hardly be expected to know the mental state of the receipient,
it effectively relieves him of any responsibility for spamming at all.
While I realize that legal challanges to spamming have been isolated, that
is no reason to put such an obstacle in their path. For this and other
reasons, I think it very mischevious to change to a personalized
definition of spam in a document proposed for offical status.
Dan Feenberg
...
David Nicol
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