[ full disclosure: network sorcery did a fair amount of contract work for me
a few months back to help develop the rfc bibliography in xml
(http://xml.resource.org/). that project is separate from the rfc author
stuff maintained by network sourcery. ]
vern - as much as i appreciate the modern dictum that "everyone is a
villain", i don't think it would kill you every now and then to look for a
benign explanation to things.
if the guys want to send an email to the author of an rfc and ask for
updated contact information to go into a publically-available repository, i
think that's a service, not a threat.
if the message gets sent by a script instead of someone of
cutting-and-pasting from emacs, i think that's automation, not 1984.
in fact, i'll go out on a limb and say that i'd certainly be happy if the
rfc editor had the resources to maintain such a database.
/mtr
----- Original Message -----
From: "Vernon Schryver" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2001 11:02
Subject: Re: networksorcery.com spam
> > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Steve Conner)
>
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > I guess it is time to come out of the shadows. As many of you know,
> > Network Sorcery maintains a mirror site with the RFCs. Three years ago
> > we started maintaining home pages for RFC authors so we could collect a
> > listing of contact info, publications they have written and whatever bio
> > info they want to reveal. The contact info gets stale over time.
> >
> > Yes it is true, we actually try to contact authors using the contact
> > info in their latest RFC. It is also true that I send out a form letter
> > requesting the info. Why would I want to compose the same letter over
> > and over again? If we wanted to spam the largest number of authors this
> > would be the group to send it to. I have tried to be descrete but I
> > guess someone took offence at actually trying to contact him.
> >
> > It would certainly make my life easier if the IETF would provide a
> > directory that the authors could update themselves. I have volunteered
> > in the past to share this info with the IETF.
> > ...
>
>
> From Mr. Conner's private statements to me, it is evident that he does
> not understand, or more likely, chooses to misunderstand the notion of
> "bulk mail." Contrary to his statements, when you send a message that
> is substantially identical to a bunch of people, it is "bulk," no
> matter why you do it. This applies equally to Mr. Conner's enterprise
> as to the reflector for this mailing list.
>
> Judging from the following command in my private stash:
> grep -i '[-a-z0-9_]@[a-z0-9_]' rfc*.txt | tr -s '< > ' '\12' \
> | grep -i '[-a-z0-9_]@[a-z0-9_]' | sort -u | wc -l
> there are more than 11,000 addresses among the RFC's. I assume
> that Mr. Conner has targeted his messages to only the addresses listed
> in Authors sections, but whether he sends to the full 11,000 or only to
> authors, he is sending bulk mail.
>
> Note that bulk mail is *substantially" identical. If Mr. Conner had
> replaced his "Greetings" with "Dear Mr. Schryver" and added a url pointing
> at "my" listing among his web pages, his message would still have been
> "bulk," although I probably would not have recognized it as such.
> (Note that the anti-spam mechanism I'm flogging, the DCC or Distributed
> Checksum Clearinghouses, should recognize it as bulk despite those
> personalizations.)
>
> The difference between general bulk mail and "spam" is that spam is
> not solicited by its targets.
>
> So is Mr. Conner's bulk mail spam? That depends on whether it is
> solicited by its targets. From his private words to me, it seems that
> Mr. Conner figures that his messages are desirable because the IETF
> does not maintain a list of contact addresses for RFC authors.
> Personally, I think it is no more desirable to involve a third party
> in such a project than for publishing the RFC's themselves. However,
> that bears on whether Mr. Conner's messages are generally useful more
> than on whether they are solicited by their targets.
>
> As others have said, putting your address in an RFC can be seen as
> soliciting questions and comments. I'm not sure I agree or disagree, but
> regardless, those messages would not be bulk and so could not be spam.
>
> What decides the issue for me is comparing Mr. Conner's messages with
> the familiar messages from the Who's Who spammers. The only differences
> I can see between the two are:
>
> - Mr. Conner targets his bulk messages to fewer people. Instead of
> scraping InterNIC domain contacts or using one of those 30,000,000
> address CDROM's, Mr. Conner scrapes RFCs. That may that produce
> a better class of targets, but it is irrelevant to whether his
> targets solicit his messages
>
> - Mr. Conner does not charge authors for a listing in his Who's Who,
> but hopes to profit indirectly, such as by having RFC authors
> recommend his services and by making his database as complete as
> possible. This is also not a relevant difference.
>
> - far more people are likely to see a listing in Mr. Conner's
> Who's Who than in the others. If you value the resulting ego
> stroking or advertising for your consulting business, this might
> be enough to make you decide you would have solicited Mr. Conner's
> messages if you'd known about them before hand. Not I.
>
>
> Vernon Schryver [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
