What is SPAM? - was Re: Legislative Relief - was Re: Motion...

Mailman List Mirror (Read Only)
1

spam: Any posting which contains an advertisement of a product.

posting: Any peice of electronic material found either in a UseNet NewsGroup,
  public mailing list (listserv), or a private mailing list.

I really don't see what the big deal is in all this.

--
Dave Siegel President, RTD Systems & Networking, Inc.
(520)623-9663 Systems Consultant -- Unix, LANs, WANs, Cisco
dsiegel@rtd.com User Tracking & Acctg -- "Written by an ISP,
http://www.rtd.com/ for an ISP."

This email has an advertisement in it - it's for RTD Systems & Networking.
Should we call this spam???

Perhaps a more appropriate definition would be:

spam: A posting to multiple newsgroup/mailing lists/? which contains
  as its greater part an advertisement of a product and/or is
  with regards to a topic of no relevance to the forums in which
  it has been posted.

Spamming is not entirely commercial - I can't agree that the various
obscene postings/mailings which appear in the same manner as spams
like the magazine spam are commercial (aimed at titilating the poster,
perhaps, but not at creating a profit for the poster).

Cat

2

Perhaps a more appropriate definition would be:

spam: A posting to multiple newsgroup/mailing lists/? which contains
as its greater part an advertisement of a product and/or is
with regards to a topic of no relevance to the forums in which
it has been posted.

My suggestion:

The electronic posts commonly called "spam" are posts to mailing lists,
mailboxes, or newsgroups of a content inappropriate to the target
destination's charter, or posts inappropriately mass-delivered without regard
for their proper delivery.

You can advertise for bovine sex slaves all you want, but I don't want to see
the ad in comp.sys.next.sysadmin. You can write all the get-rich-quick
schemes and chain letters you want--they're not illegal--but you'd better be
sure you know where they're going.

Therein lies the sum of my argument.

Carl