AW: [governance] [] US, UK and Canada refuse to sign UN's internet treaty

[Roland Perry]

In message <010601cde0ae$930397f0$b90ac7d0$@hellmonds>, at 02:41:05 on 
Sun, 23 Dec 2012, Peter H. Hellmonds <peter.hellmonds at hellmonds.eu> 
writes
>There are a number of references throughout the text, notably under heading
>2.1 "What is spam?":
>
>"Several stakeholders have given definitions of spam, and although there are
>common points, there is still no universally accepted definition. Broadly
>speaking, spam includes all electronic messages that are unsolicited or
>unwanted, sent to a large number of users (bulk) without regard to the
>identity of the individual user, usually having commercial purposes, and
>that can include viruses that propagate via e-mail, or fraud and scam
>mechanisms."

Curiously, this definition is almost the opposite of the previous one, 
concentrating as it does on "without regard to the identity of the 
individual user".

Using the same terminology as my previous email, it's mainly "bad spam" 
which has that characteristic.

"Good spam" is generally[1] targeted at specific people[2] as is my last 
category of "noise"[3].

But if they modified the definition to "without regard to the 
*receptiveness*[4] of the individual user", they'd be quite close to the 
mark.

[1] Although sometimes when "clueless marketers" buy lists of people to 
spam, those lists aren't very clean.

[2] For example, I bought a laptop online about six years ago, and still 
get an email once a week asking me if I want to buy another one, listing 
their current special offers. Definitely targeted to former customers 
but also definitely spam.

[3] Another way of looking at "noise" is that it's people cluelessly 
'marketing' their ideas.

[4] Whether or not the email is "welcomed" by the recipient. However, 
this is such a subjective matter that it's virtually impossible to build 
a policy based on the concept. As a proxy, policy often uses: "did the 
recipient give their permission (implicitly or explicitly) to receive 
the email." Although that leaves many edge-cases, including the 
unsolicited receipt of welcome news like a job opportunity or an Xmas 
greeting.
-- 
Roland Perry

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