Political spam, censorship, laws and John Gilmore

[Russell Turpin]

John Gilmore writes:
>What makes the Internet so valuable to everyday people is that you can 
>reach anyone, on ANY email system, through it. There were many email 
>systems before the Internet, but they didn't catch the broad public 
>interest. If we continue the current process of anti-
>spam-driven Balkanization

This overlooks the fact that spam broke the system,
before the Balkanization that came in response to it.
I have lost important and time-critical email because
I accidentally threw it out as part of a spam deluge.
So the question isn't whether to break the email
system. It's ALREADY broken, vis-a-vis its promise
prior to its expropriation by spammers. The question
is how best to fix it. And yeah, the fix likely will
have some drawbacks relative to the original promise.
But Michael drew the sword at those gates when the
spammers arrived, so there's no point in comparing
any solution to that.

>THE REAL SOLUTION is to build and use mail-reading tools that learn the 
>reader's preferences, discarding or de-prioritizing mail that the reader is 
>unlikely to care about.

This is simply further escalation, not victory. Do you
want to receive email from geeks making intelligent
comments about Internet protocols? I have some bad news.
Five months after an email filtering tool smart enough
to learn and pass on this kind of email, you will
receive 50 such emails, from 50 different geeks, with
50 different comments about Internet protocols just
smart enough to fool your filter, and oh, by the way,
would you like a really cheap mortgage with that? Just
click here. Automatic content filtering is subject to
defeat by automatic content spoofing. I see no reason
to think there will be a decisive winner in that
evolutionary battle, without a hook to some other
mechanism.

Even white lists won't work, as long as they rely on
the From: field to identify the sender. That, also, is
content, and the spammers will start maintaining databases
of highly connected individuals, with lists of who is
likely to whitelist them. As soon as whitelists start
making a dent in spam, you'll be receiving offers for
FRESH YOUNG PUSSY and Preapproved CREDIT with Rohit
Kare's name and email address in the From: field.

Carey writes:
>What I find so funny about the spam wars, is that the very people who 
>complain that its invading the sanctity of their homes, and brushing up 
>against their personal
>space, seem unbothered by the fact that television, newspaper, radio and 
>even snail mail ads do the VERY same thing.  And they take more time to 
>delete, you really can't filter them (save for not subscribing to
>newspapers, and destroying your television and radio) and generally they 
>tend to be more annoying

There are two important differences. (1) Radio, TV,
and newspaper ads subsidize the content you want. They're
why broadcast TV is FREE, and your morning paper is
only a quarter, delivered to your door. In contrast,
spam makes my ISP service more expensive. (2) These
other ads don't interrupt me while I'm about other tasks.
Email, telemarketing calls, and cell phone spam all are
interruptive. So unlike legitimate advertising, spam
is an expense that causes us an annoyance that brings
nothing in return.


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