On Saturday 02 August 2003 16:20, David Fokkema wrote: > On Fri, Aug 01, 2003 at 03:52:36PM -0500, Michael D. Schleif wrote: > > How dare you ***ASSUME*** that I am spamming you! Who are you > > that I ought to feel compelled to jump through your hoops, simply > > to say -- in an email -- hello ?!?! > > I'm very sorry you feel that way. I gather from the replies to my > mails that other people feel that same way. Please let me elaborate [...elaboration snipped...] > But I have to be realistic: other people might have received a > large amount of C-Rs in their daily mail exchange and might have > reasons to be annoyed. I have not, so don't really see the problem. > That might be my mistake. If so, my apologies.
I suspect it is not just a question of quantity, but also of quality. I am a long-time supporter of the principle of C-R, but I was really surprised how unfriendly and inconvenient some implementations can be. True, I find most spam not merely unfriendly but hostile; nonetheless, I think C-R systems need to be better designed to avoid offending people and turning them against the principle. What do I mean by well-designed? It is not a simple thing to define, for an effective strategy will need quite a complex set of interlinking techniques. It must be designed to work seemlessly in today's internet, of course, but also incorporate a set of base standards for C-R, which would allow processing in a more automated manner, and interface with the existing or new blacklisting databases. It can easily avoid the reciprocal bounce phenomenon, but only if all C-R systems move to incorporate some standards. It should additionally lay the framework for manual and automated processing at various configurable levels. The adoption of standards would make it worth while for client software developers to create plugins or incorporate the response process. It is an unpopular view, but I am convinced that, for the widest acceptance, it should link to a locally configured client-side opt-in system for specific classes of ad-mail (I'm trying here to distinguish between UCE that comes form a replyable address and carries clear descriptive headings and the usual run of spam that does neither). It would then be difficult to object to C-R on the grounds that it prevents "free speech", but the greater benefit is that the option for orderly commercial activity on the internet would exist, while the disorderly techniques (to describe spam as politely as it has ever been done!) would become progressively less effective. At the same time, this is likely to result in a wide public reaction against the spammers, causing the success rate of the nastier kinds to plummet even where they do get delivered. Actually, this is an important argument for C-R compared to filtering or blacklisting. Both of these merely stop what is sent, and in a way challenge the spammers to use ever more devious methods. C-R prevents any unreplyable mail, and the more widely it were implemented, the more it would become economic sense to advertise to a small willing audience rather than to a massive /dev/null. I'm for _all_ approaches to reducing unreplyable UCE. And I want to see an internet where I don't have to be bothered by advertisers except when I want. And I don't want to be inconvenienced either, by badly implemented C_R systems, or by over-zealous filtering. I think the elimination of spam will require both approaches. Together we can progressively erode the economics of even virtually free spam. Once the delivery rate drops by another order of magnitude, and the "conversion rate" too, the spammers will go and look elsewhere for an arena - or turn into gentlemen. Lots of words in this way OT thread, I know. But everyone else has had a go... -- richard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
