Re: we aren't the enemy, but it's hard to prove it

[Tom Neff]

--On Monday, April 30, 2001 8:18 AM -0700 Chuq Von Rospach 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> If we could just agree on what spam *IS*, we could solve a lot of these
> problems. Unfortunately, the basic definition of spam is "all the crap I
> don't want to get", and that makes this issue difficult to solve on any
> level.

>From an ISP standpoint, what really matters about spam is the number of 
recipients.  The really noticeable difference between a legitimate mailing 
list and a spam campaign is that the latter is HUGE.  As a matter of 
practice, if you check your sender's relay and you impose a limit (hard, 
agreed-upon or otherwise) on the number of recipients within your domain, 
you can let real lists through while blocking spam campaigns, or so it 
would seem to me.  This doesn't eliminate small scale unwanted email (which 
still fits the purist's definition) but it does eliminate the profit 
motive, which generally works wonders.