[hashcash] Re: some more principles of anti-spam (Re: Re: anti-spam collateral damage)
- From: "Richard Johnson" <rdump@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: Adam Back <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 12:47:40 -0700
At 19:01 -0500 on 2004-11-15, Adam Back wrote:
> Brad Templeton has some writings about spam that I found well informed
> and thought out.
>
> "A statement of Principles regarding the regulation of E-mail."
>
> http://www.templetons.com/brad/spam/prin.html
Sadly, even Brad Templeton attempts to improperly redefine spam as that
which his company doesn't do. His mistaken idea is that spam comes only
from strangers.
However, acquaintance spam is still spam. Spam is unsolicited bulk. It
doesn't have to be sent by strangers to be unsolicited. People you know
and/or have done business with could still add you to mailing lists without
your informed consent. And without your informed consent to membership,
whatever they send to that list is spam.
If we add this principle, we're getting closer to a defensible and well
thought out position:
No-one should ever have to unsubscribe from a list they didn't
willingly and knowingly subscribe to.
In addition, Brad Templeton raises the straw man "punishment" vs.
"innocence" issue. That's nothing but an attempt to paint those who who
disagree with him in a false light; to salt the debate with bad initial
assumptions. That kind of rhetorical foolishness is quite beneath what I'd
normally expect from someone like him.
Stopping spam is not about punishment. It's about not accepting traffic
from those networks which emit spam, until such time as they stop emitting
spam. The blocking happens because the majority of all mail delivery
attempts are for spam (now at 99.999+% on one of my networks), and not for
legitimate mail.
With blocking of pro-spam networks in place, we lose less of the legitimate
one-to-one email from the not-spam networks in that horrendous
denial-of-service flood. That way, we can preserve even our very essential
anonymous email.
Wrenching this back on topic from that point: hashcash offers us a means,
at least in the middle term, for accepting messages from otherwise pro-spam
networks whose emissions would normally be blocked and reported as bulk to
the DCC. That's the sole reason I remain interested in hashcash systems.
;-)
Richard
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