Re: Lets get on task! {was Re: Standard}

Ross A. Finlayson (raf@tomco.net)
Tue, 03 Dec 1996 18:13:48 -0500


At 01:34 PM 12/3/96 -0800, you wrote:
>> I'm not quite sure how enforcible a ban on junk email would be. How is
>> the US government going to prosecute a spammer based in taiwan or brazil?
>
>Not enforcable at all. Not that I'm a proponent of Uncle Sam trying
>
><Yada Yada Yada deleted...>
>Can we start talking about robots again? I was in a cybercafe listserv
>that died a similar fate because too many people talked about topics
>that were WAY off topic.
>Please - no more on email/fax spamming.
>Yes. That is the law in the U.S.,
>No, there is no way to enforce it.
>If you want to continue discussing, please do so via private email, not
>in the context of the robots@webcrawler.com listserv.
>Thanks...
>Not trying to be... whiny..., just trying to learn somethin' here.
>Wesley G Miller
>msussvdc.wmiller@eds.com
>wmiller@getwired.com
>
>[My opinions almost definitely do not reflect those of my employer, EDS]
>Let's have
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>

Hello,

I guess the only response for spam email denial of service is to reciprocate
with some level of email. That is, as spammers become really obtrusive it
seems appropriate to say mailbomb them in some form or another. Perhaps a
group could be set up who would handle requests to inform spammers of their
inappropriate activies and help the spammer establish methods to curb their
emails to interested parties.

This leads to some other possible items in regards to these unsolicited
mailings and how there might be solutions. That is because to some extent,
people still want to get email that interests them. So it appears that the
goal is to eliminate junk mail and stray mail (mail that is not in your
interests to receive) and facilitate interesting email.

A question here concerns email addresses and their ownership. It is pretty
obvious to say that any email address belongs to it's owner, mitigated by
service provider agreements. Essentially, that boils down to the email as
fax machine/commodity and unsolicited emails are infringements. Also an
infringement is to transfer this personal information, the email address, to
other parties that are interested in demographic or personal data without
agreement of the owner. Perhaps this might someday create personal
information brokers that would handle a chain of property rights that
involved personal demographic identity data. The legal framework for a lot
of these informtion issues is still relatively undeveloped.

I encourage people to spam appropriate newsgroups, because that is a public
forum where people that apply to it are implicitly interested in the
contents of information related to the subject.

In the frame of reference of the robots.txt voluntary exclusion standard as
a proposal to the IETF or whatever I think it, the standard, is a good idea.

Have a nice day,

Ross A. Finlayson
http://www.tomco.net/~raf/fc

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