Yay Jeremy (was Re: [plug] Spam sender sues)

[Peter Wright]

On 07/06 23:39:29, Peter J. Nicol wrote:
> Point being that spammer is a prejorative term.  Your 'spam' is my
> marketing material etc etc.  That is, there may be no legal acceptable
> definition.

Well, there are definitions that could be used, but I think it'd be
difficult to design one that covers all bases. For example, I'd usually
consider spam to be "unsolicited commercial bulk email" - however, how
easily do you prove that a particular email was sent in "bulk"? Similarly,
while the majority of spam emails I receive are obviously commercial in
nature, some of them (technically) aren't - eg. political spam.

> Personally, I wish the courts and the politicians (a curse on all of
> them) stay out of this, and let technological solutions sort out the
> mess.

As with junk faxes back in the *thinks* eighties? :-)

Of course the technology involved in faxing was (and is) a lot simpler to
understand (at least superficially) than internet email. As there wasn't
really any practical technological solution to junk faxing, a legal
"solution" was appropriate.

The situation is quite a bit different with junk email (spam)... but just
because there haven't been any good anti-spam laws made yet (that I've
heard of, anyway) doesn't mean we shouldn't try. Although I do think that
the collection of technological anti-spam measure are starting to get more
effective... especially the aggressive blacklists such as SPEWS. The more
ISPs that use them, the more effective they become.

Shunning on a grand scale.


Pete.
-- 
http://akira.apana.org.au/~pete/
If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your thing.
		-- Warren Miller