I don't think we really want any more laws that criminalize ill defined acts.
Agreed. Until the net community defines what is spam and other unacceptable messaging, we have no foundation to build on. Can anyone define concisely what exactly is 'spam' ? Or this this possible?
Well, below are the definitions they use in news.admin.net-abuse.announce. Note that this topic could not possibly be less appropriate for any mailing list in Known Space than on nanog, and so I have set Reply-To: accordingly. As long as I have everyone's attention, though, I'd like to point out that Interramp(PSI) has a uniformly horrid record in their response to complaints about spam from their users. Were it in my power to do so, I would cut off their news feed and autocancel all leaking articles from any Interramp user until the Interramp folks wake up, smell the coffee, and start behaving responsibly. Now, aren't you all glad I'm not in charge? ======== (from a random news.admin.net-abuse.announce article.) Excessive Multi-Posting (EMP) means the same as the term "spam" usually does, but is more accurate and self-explanatory. The Breidbart Index (BI) is defined as the sum of the square roots of how many newsgroups each article was posted to. This is a measure of Excessive Crossposting (ECP) also known as "Velveeta". If you have questions about how not to spam, or where "it is written that I shouldn't spam" or similar things, we suggest you consult the newsgroup news.announce.newusers, or the rtfm.mit.edu FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions archives), and read the following FAQs: - "What is Usenet", by Salzenburg, Spafford and Moraes. (FAQ archive: usenet/what-is/part1) - "What is Usenet? A second opinion.", by Vielmetti. (FAQ archive name: usenet/what-is/part2) - "DRAFT FAQ: Advertising on Usenet: How To Do It, How Not To Do It" by Furr. (FAQ archive name: usenet/advertising/part1) - "A Primer on How to Work With the Usenet Community", by Von Rospach, Spafford, et. al. (FAQ archive name: usenet/primer/part1) - "Rules for posting to Usenet", by Horton, Spafford & Moraes. (FAQ archive name: usenet/posting-rules/part1) - "Emily Postnews Answers Your Questions on Netiquette", by Templeton et. al. (FAQ archive name: usenet/emily-postnews/part1) The heuristics for cancels are based _only_ on one or more of the following measures: 1) 20 or more separate copies of essentially the same article were posted (EMP), or 2) 5 or more separate copies of essentially the same article were posted and the BI is > 30 (ECP), or 3) is a continuation of a previous EMP/ECP, within a 45 day sliding window. That is: if the articles posted within the past 45 days exceeds the thresholds in (1) or (2), it gets removed. _Unless_ the originator has made a clear and obvious effort to cease spamming (which includes an apology and undertaking to do so in news.admin.net-abuse.misc). This includes "make money fast" schemes which passed the EMP/ECP thresholds several years ago. 4) broken gateways regurgitating old articles with new messageids. [Please note: threshold (1) has been reduced from 25, to the generally held concensus of 20.] The first three are generically called "spam". The fourth is a "spew". General consensus puts the spam cancel threshold strictly as a BI of 20. These cancels have nothing whatsoever to do with the contents of the message. It doesn't matter if its an advertisement, it doesn't matter if it's abusive, it doesn't matter whether it's on-topic in the groups it was posted, it doesn't matter whether the posting is for a "good cause" or not, if it breaks these thresholds and I detect it, it will be cancelled. Therefore, these cancellations are non-content based. They're not based on _what_ was said, they're based only on _how_ it was said, or what software was broken. ======== end of included text