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Re: Why spam is a problem.

2002-08-17 15:02:54
At 03:34 PM 8/17/2002 -0600, Vernon Schryver wrote:
> >I figure any mail message with more than 10 recipients is "bulk."
>
> yes, but a lot of the spam I receive is directed to only one person -

A message that is substantially different from all other messages is
not "spam" as I and many others see it.   It can be illegal (e.g. a


We need to be careful that we do not confuse some properties of transport with the properties of recipient impact.

Whether a copy of a message is sent with related copies -- as happens with the data compression technique that uses a single copy of the body and a list of recipient addresses -- or whether the related copies are sent individually, the effect on the recipient is the same.

Whether the body is identical or whether it conforms to a template is, again, a minor technical point that is totally irrelevant to the salient denial of service effect that motivates objections to spam.

An ISP might care about this difference in packaging.  A recipient does not.

d/

ps. The use of the term "substantially different" might be a fulcrum for debate, but let me suggest we avoid it. Rather than dealing with the major issues we would end up debating minor semantics.

----------
Dave Crocker <mailto:dave(_at_)tribalwise(_dot_)com>
TribalWise, Inc. <http://www.tribalwise.com>
tel +1.408.246.8253; fax +1.408.850.1850



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