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