> From: "Donald E. Eastlake 3rd" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> While this may be important enough to have some discusion on the
> general IETF list, I would point out that there does exist an IETF
> working group in this area: RUN, Responsible Use of the Net
> <http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/run-charter.html>. This working
> group produced RFC 2635 which was adopted by the IETF Consensus
> process.
> ...
> >Herein lies one of the major issues that ought to be sorted out before
>>anyone takes any steps to regulate spam. What is spam, exactly? There seems
> >to be a wide variety of notions as to what constitutes a spam. Some
> >people define it in its original context; i.e., unsolicited commercial
> >email. Others broaden the definition to include offensive or off-topic
> >remarks on a public or private list. Still others would include *any* email
>>they didn't want to receive as 'spam. ...
There are surely better places to argue about spam. If you can use
killfiles, the news.admin.net-abuse.email newsgroup is a hotbed of
discussions of such as the definition of spam.
RFC 2635 does not really define email spam. The following definitions
are common. I list them not to start a long flame war, but to counter
the (surprising to me) ignorance about the issue. If you disagree
with my blatant bias, please assume everyone else will and don't bother
correcting me.
1. unsolicited bulk email, or email at least some of which is received
by many people who did not explicitly or implicitly ask for it
(e.g. by foolishly giving their addresses to sleazy vendors that
don't say they won't spam.)
2. unsolicited commercial mail even if not bulk.
3. unsolicited promotional including commercial mail, also even if not bulk.
4. anything someone doesn't like.
5. various definitions from kooks and sleazy merchants and advertisers
trying to carve exceptions for their missives or trying to paint as
kooks or fools all who don't like unsolicited advertising.
Among people with technical and administrative clues, #1 is the very clear
consensus. In it, "bulk" is intentionally vague, but almost no one who
favors #1 is willing to argue against any definition of "bulk" between
half a dozen and a few gross. The messages that comprise a spam spew
defined by #1 need be only essentially identical instead of byte-for-byte
the same, partly because spammers like to "target" their drivel, partly
because they try to evade spam filters, and mostly because they're
incompetent at everything including sending bulk email. When you're
running systems, it's usually easy to painfully easy to know when a message
is "bulk" because your systems will often hiccup, your logs will overflow,
and you'll get complaints from many targets. On the other hand, people
with operational responsibilities rarely want to get involved in the
judging of content that the other definitions require--at least not after
a little real world experience.
#2 is favored by many individuals who have never had operational
responsibilities, because it is usually impossible for an individual spam
target to know instead of merely reliably guess whether an unsolicited
message is one of a bulk blast, and because they're often not gun-shy
about judging content. #2 is also favored by CAUCE and many other
self-described charitable and political organizations who presumably hope
to send unsolicited notes promoting their causes and soliciting funds.
(Or perhaps CAUCE advocates #1 but with an exception for non-profit spam;
I forget. That is one cause for the previously mentioned distrust of
CAUCE. Another is the continued, paid involvement of a major CAUCE figure
with AllAdvantage.com, which some people view as an unrepentant,
irredeemable solicitor of spam because they say AllAdvantage.com continues
to pay spammers money.) #3 is commonly advocated by individuals without
operational experience, but who dislike political and charitable spam as
much as other advertising. #4 is commonly proposed by spammers as a straw
man to show how impossible it would be to regulate or prohibit spam, as
well as by people who haven't thought about the problem.
Vernon Schryver [EMAIL PROTECTED]
