Re: ActiveAgent

Ross A. Finlayson (raf@tomco.net)
Mon, 14 Oct 1996 15:03:54 -0400

I agree that any robot sold to the general public should follow the robot
exclusion factor. It seems that when we get to the pint where every dog and
its advertising agency is running 400 instances of spambot, it will be nice
to be able to generally say "no" to unsolicited mailings.

In the case that a spambot did hit a site and email everyone linked to it,
maybe it would be a good idea to have a public resource kind of like the
better business bureau to report such impolite spammers. When the email
address of the sending spambot was forwarded to the site, it could send a
couple thousand messages to the sender asking to be removed from their lists.

I have seen this one guy's sig file that says "all unsolicited email
proofread at $199/hour". That is as a good idea.

Ross A. Finlayson
raf@tomco.net

At 08:43 AM 10/14/96 -0500, you wrote:
>-- [ From: Brian Clark * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] --
>
>
>My big question is why this spider doesn't adhere to the Robot Exclusion
>Standard ... seems this one (which can run independent of a human operator
>and searches websites "all the way down to its bottom pages") is pretty
>clearly a robot that should adhere to the standard (rather than an agent
>that falls into the "gray zone" of the need to comply to this standard.)
>
>Aside from the issues of harvesting email addresses (which I'll post
>something about later on as it raises some important new issues to consider
>in the robots.txt standard) and the ethical issues involved, it seems that
>you've got some work to do to incorporate the Exclusion standard in this
>beasty.
>
>Brian
>
>-------- REPLY, Original message follows --------
>
>Date: Sunday, 13-Oct-96 07:17 PM
>
>From: HipCrime \ Internet: (hipcrime@hipcrime.com) To:
>robots@webcrawler.com \ Internet: (robots@webcrawler.com)
>
>Subject: ActiveAgent
>
>robot-id: activeagent
>robot-name: ActiveAgent
>robot-cover-url: http://www.hipcrime.com
>robot-details-url: http://www.hipcrime.com
>robot-owner-name: robert returned
>robot-owner-url: http://www.hipcrime.com
>robot-owner-email: agent@hipcrime.com
>robot-status: active
>robot-purpose: other
>robot-type: applet
>robot-platform: all
>robot-availability: source
>robot-exclusion: no
>robot-exclusion-useragent: no
>robot-noindex: no
>robot-host: anywhere
>robot-from: no
>robot-useragent: no
>robot-language: java
>robot-description: crawling email robot and publicity engine
>robot-history: hipcrime's Internet art project
>robot-environment: research/hobby
>modified-date: 10-13-96
>modified-by: RR1563
>
>
>
>
>-------- REPLY, End of original message --------
>
>
>