Re: Legislative Relief - was Re: Motion for a new POST NSF AUP
Hmm. I really dislike the email spam, and would like to find a technical means to stop it. I am not so sure we would be happy with the results of trying make it illegal, though. But just what is the legal definition of spam ? If it looks like spam, smells like spam, tastes like spam, then it must be spam! Or is it like obsenity, the definition of which even the Supreme Court seems to have trouble pinning down? I don't think we really want any more laws that criminalize ill defined acts. --jon.
I don't think we really want any more laws that criminalize ill defined acts.
--jon.
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? Tim -- +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Tim Bass | #include<campfire.h> | | Principal Network Systems Engineer | for(beer=100;beer>1;beer++){ | | The Silk Road Group, Ltd. | take_one_down(); | | | pass_it_around(); | | http://www.silkroad.com/ | } | | | back_to_work(); /*never reached */ | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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?
It is a meat-like substance which is delivered in a tin can. It can be quite good for breakfast with eggs if you can stand the grease content. ;-) Sorry, couldn't resist. spam: Any posting which contains an advertisement of a product. posting: Any peice of electronic material found either in a UseNet NewsGroup, public mailing list (listserv), or a private mailing list. I really don't see what the big deal is in all this. A few years back, junk faxes reigned. People eventually found out that these junk faxes didn't make them any money, and were a waste of time, both in sending them, and in taking phone calls from disgruntled recipients. I suspect that "spamming" will die out eventually as well. I think the current thread of people saying they are making lots of MONEY off these things are largely exaggerated. The reputation of many of these businesses is falling off the deep end. Being considered a rude and inconsiderate business is, generally speaking, not good for business. You shouldn't have to explain basic concepts like these to people. Perhaps more documentation regarding what is "rude" and what is "not rude" could be helpful, IF businesses actually read it, however, this will not prevent JoeSchmoe advertising agency from raping and pillaging unsuspecting businesses for lots of cash to spam for them. Dave -- Dave Siegel President, RTD Systems & Networking, Inc. (520)623-9663 Systems Consultant -- Unix, LANs, WANs, Cisco dsiegel@rtd.com User Tracking & Acctg -- "Written by an ISP, http://www.rtd.com/ for an ISP."
It is a meat-like substance which is delivered in a tin can. It can be quite good for breakfast with eggs if you can stand the grease content.
I don't think it looks like meat. It's sort of a pink, semi-homogenous, gelatinatious mass. I think Hormell (tm) uses SPAM as an acronym for Sorta Pink And Mutilated but I digress ;)
spam: Any posting which contains an advertisement of a product.
You mean like your email .sig?
posting: Any peice of electronic material found either in a UseNet NewsGroup, public mailing list (listserv), or a private mailing list.
You mean like this message? I don't really think you're message was spam. I was making a point.
I really don't see what the big deal is in all this.
I think you are right that EVENTUALLY people will realize that spam is bad for business. In the meantime, if people can find technical solution, that's great. If they can't I certainly don't want to get the lawyers involved. SPAM is bad, but some cures are worse than the disease, Larry Sig included as a reference
-- Dave Siegel President, RTD Systems & Networking, Inc. (520)623-9663 Systems Consultant -- Unix, LANs, WANs, Cisco dsiegel@rtd.com User Tracking & Acctg -- "Written by an ISP, http://www.rtd.com/ for an ISP."
From: Dave Siegel <dsiegel@rtd.com>
spam: Any posting which contains an advertisement of a product. posting: Any peice of electronic material found either in a UseNet NewsGroup, public mailing list (listserv), or a private mailing list.
I really don't see what the big deal is in all this.
and tags that message with...
Dave Siegel President, RTD Systems & Networking, Inc. (520)623-9663 Systems Consultant -- Unix, LANs, WANs, Cisco dsiegel@rtd.com User Tracking & Acctg -- "Written by an ISP, http://www.rtd.com/ for an ISP."
Hmm, that looks like an advertisement to me, Dave. Wanna try again? Or did you put the cuffs on? I think (hope?) we're talking about something a bit more egregious than what you've just described. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@world.std.com | http://www.std.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
:;-) Sorry, couldn't resist. : :spam: Any posting which contains an advertisement of a product. :posting: Any peice of electronic material found either in a UseNet NewsGroup, : public mailing list (listserv), or a private mailing list. spam: 1) Unsolicited email of a commercial nature. 2) An off topic post made to a mailing list or Usenet News of a commercial nature. 3) An off topic post made to multiple mailing lists and/or Usenet News groups of any nature. Matt -- Matt Marnell Portia Communication & Internet Services CEO/CIO Inet Consulting, Training, Info Services marnellm@portia.com Web Authoring and Unix Consulting and Admin http://www.portia.com v: (513)435-6534 f: (513)435-6643
Smoked Pork And Ham
On Mon, 16 Oct 1995, Dave Siegel wrote:
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?
It is a meat-like substance which is delivered in a tin can. It can be quite good for breakfast with eggs if you can stand the grease content.
;-) Sorry, couldn't resist.
spam: Any posting which contains an advertisement of a product. posting: Any peice of electronic material found either in a UseNet NewsGroup, public mailing list (listserv), or a private mailing list.
I really don't see what the big deal is in all this.
-- Dave Siegel President, RTD Systems & Networking, Inc. (520)623-9663 Systems Consultant -- Unix, LANs, WANs, Cisco dsiegel@rtd.com User Tracking & Acctg -- "Written by an ISP, http://www.rtd.com/ for an ISP."
Is every email you send then a spam since it contains an ad for UTA? I don't think it is, but it is according to your definitions. IMHO, a bad definition. I am more favorable to the one that news.admin.* uses where anything which is posted to over X number of groups is spam (or velveeta if it follows a slightly different rule). SPAM should not be content based. If I sent out a copy of the bible to every single user on the internet (quite a feat to get the address list), I would consider that a spam, and I need not be advertising any product. Hell, if I sent everyone on the internet the letter "a" it would probably crash a few machines. So, what's the definition? Justin Newton * You have to change just to stay caught up. Vice President/ * System Administrator * Digital Gateway Systems *
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
Seems to me like people will use the net in any legal way in the future (some may even go illegally). I don't think that the net is more equal than the phone system or postal mail here. However, there may be technical means on the recipient side to presort email more easily than with phone/postal. For example, if we had more sophisticated user interfaces for electronic mail, the mailer can make certain predeterminations. Perhaps I would like to only allow email into my main mailbox from a predefined set of senders, and everything else ending up in a junk mailbox. I guess if, e.g., PacBell would have followed up on the PUC permission in 1992 (or whenever that was) to provide callerID, and if some callerID box were coupled with a computer, I could do the same thing of not having the phone ring unless the call comes from someone who I want to be called from. Or have the computer use different rings or so. Anyway, just rumbling, main point, we should look for technical, rather than legal/administrative solutions, it seems.
participants (12)
-
bzs＠world.std.com -
Carl Payne -
Dave Siegel -
Elliot Alby -
hwb＠upeksa.sdsc.edu -
Jim De Arras -
Justin Newton -
Larry J. Plato -
Matthew James Marnell -
Paul A Vixie -
postel＠ISI.EDU -
Tim Bass