Re: user filtering versus spam

Albert Lunde (Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu)
Fri, 30 Dec 1994 06:49:47 -0800

> On Wed, 28 Dec 1994, Craig Hubley wrote:
> > The technology is certainly *here*. My regrets if it is not *there*.
> > Clarinet's excellent Newsclip language is a great tool, the Pipeline
> > client has good filtering capabilities, and if you gateway news and
> > mailing lists to a LAN you can use the filtering of BeyondMail etc...
> > If your GUI IP newsreader doesn't support killfiles then ditch it.
> > It's that simple.
> Ordinary people find the GUIs much easier to use. They don't have to learn
> any UNIX.
> The "solutions" you propose all assume a high degree of technological
> sophistication and willingness to spend money on software. Our customers
> are using WinVN and Internews and the like because that's what's
> available and cheap and easy. Until someone creates a GUI newsreader
> with AI-class newsfiltering and licenses it to ISPs for $20 or less per
> customer, people are going to be using the primitive GUI newsreaders now
> available.

Also, e-mail and news software is among the most diverse in the world.
We're not just talking Unix with SMTP and NNTP, we are talking BITNET, UUCP,
Fidonet echoes, BBS mailers, AOL, Compuserve, VAX MAIL, DECNET, PROFS,
X.400, and so forth. Making sweeping generalizations about what is
possible is unrealistic.

Much of the cost of junk mail and spam is incurred before final
delivery -- it is more efficent to stop it at or near the source than
to filter it. (Ask any postmaster how they feel about chain letters,
ask any news admin how they feel about getting more disk space
or another T1 to deal with increased traffic.)

> > I don't want arbitrary restrictions on the
> > Net/Web and I am willing to eat a lot of spam to keep them out.
> You'll eat spam because you see profit for yourself in a climate in which
> spam is tolerated. The rest of us see nothing but annoyance in spam.

I'm not willing to tolerate it. I don't consider the principle that
those who pay the costs should control how they are incurred to be
arbitrary (or anti-commercial).

There is a fairly clear gap between the restrictions needed
to stop junk mail and spam and anything that infringes on ethical
commerce or personal liberty. I don't think we need to be faced with
a choice between a electronic "police state" and an uncontrolled
distopia. (People who are afraid of "anarchy" might do well to study the
idea of a social anarchy. Anyway, as I've argued in the past, the
nets today are not an anarchy but a feudal federation of sites
and communities.)

--
    Albert Lunde                      Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu