Re: [Asrg] Two ways to look at spam

"Jon Kyme" <jrk@merseymail.com> writes:

>> >
>> > You might say something more like
>> > positive_test(name_of_engine_1, engineargs, message) => noconsent 
>> > positive_test(name_of_engine_2, engineargs, message) => consent 
>> > etc...
>> 
>> I guess someone could standardise this (using whatever language they
>> wanted), and there are some kinds of content filter (probably quite
>> simple things---the sort of thing that SIEVE can do, say) that we
>> could standardise on.  That might be useful.
>
> Well no, this isn't really the kind of thing that sieve
> ( http://www.cyrusoft.com/sieve/ ) is for - as I understand it.

No, but I can imagine standardising things like "the email contains
the string 'mortgage'".

> Indeed, somebody could standardise this - if somebody wanted to make it
> simple for MUA to talk to policy enforcement agents. 

[...]

> No - it isn't THE "Solution to Spam". However, you can plug A "solution to
> spam" right into it.
>
> positive_test(foolproof_spam_detector, engineargs, message) 
>         => noconsent

Well, perhaps.  I think such a perfect spam detector is impossible,
for useful definitions of spam.  

If a person unknown to me can send me an email that I want to receive
(and I want them to be able to), then that person can send me unwanted
email (and I don't want them to be able to do that, but I see no way
to stop it without also preventing the possibility of wanted email).

So I think the best way to attack spam is to make sending email
expensive (in some way---this may involve computational cost rather
than some kind of financial framework) such that anybody sending me
email thinks a bit first (and so it won't be worthwhile sending to
large numbers of people).  So this would be attacking the volume part
of usual definitions of spam.

That could fit into a consent framework, of course: I could say how
expensive I want it to be for strangers to contact me (specified in
whatever terms are appropriate), and that would be automatically
enforceable.

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