On Tue, 5 Jan 2010, Gene Heskett wrote: : The bottom line is that they are still spammers. Filter 'em.
About that..... A principle needs to be discussed here: Prohibition does not work. The way to gain cooperation from 'big business' that *does* want to 'spam' is to find ways to keep them happy and thinking that they are gainnig sufficient 'benefit' from this amazing marketing tool called the internet. And let's be honest with ourselves. Big business is what has *paid* for this internet, so that you and I can send e-mails around the globe for a ridiculously small price. If we 'prohibit' all e-mail advertising, we drive the 'needs' of ALL big business into an 'underground' that will *struggle* with all its corporate power to get its spew into every mailbox, and most likely in clever 'off shore' methods that are even *worse* than what we endure now. The 'trick' of spam filtering is that there are thousands of people who are too stupid or gullible to think spam is 'bad' and *welcome* the advertising of 'legitimate' big business. They WANT this crap. They willingly and knowingly subscribe to it! And naturally, these are the people that bug business MOST wants to reach with their spew. So the principle is, if they both want it, we need to find mechanisms that HELP that happen, so that they don't fight to get around 'general' anti-spam filtering, but are content to be given 'special exception' to get their mail to the people who WANT it. Emphasize, absolutely WANT it. By cooperating, and doing the job well, we can hope to then gain *their* cooperation, so that they follow the 'easy path' we give them, and only 'spam' the people who want it. Now to be fair, there is always the business that wants to see how far they can 'push' the rules. Every business WANTS to spam, and some of them try to see if they can do it 'sneakily'. Others try to take advantage of a 'reputation' service to sneak some stuff out. No system is perfect. But lamely saying that we should ban every last piece of mail through hotmail or returnpath or any other e-mail service is self-defeating. It will not result in 'less spam'. It will result in the same spam being delivered *more* indiscriminately, to YOU and to ME. No thank you. Let the morons who subscribe to this crap have it. Thanks. - C
