> Defining "spam" as any unsolicited and undesirable mail not only > makes it impossible for strangers to sent you mail but trivializes > the offense and makes it harder to penalize the real spammers.
Taken to an extreme (very close to it for some definitions), it makes it difficult to differentiate legit email from spam, as it is impossible for a sender to before hand know the disposition of a given recipient at any point in time. Hey, at the rate we're going with defining everything under the sun as spam, my kids can start to lable my rambling in this way... :-) :-) > > | One of our > > | staff when sending a message to a customer asking if we could be of any > > | assistance in their deployment of our software > > > > if the customer didn't ask for help, that could be regarded as spam. > > It would be pretty rare for anyone to complain much about something like > > that though. This customer was in the process of trying to configure one of our systems - I fail to see how our proactively trying to assist should be taken in a negative light. It is however illustrative of how many people use the label of spam to describe almost anything that might upset them in the conect of email these days. This helps nobody, as the definition becomes so loose that its impossible to combat any more. > Another way that an individual can determine that a message is bulk > is by asking Google. For example, > http://groups.google.com/groups?q=+%22ima.%2Bcom%22+group%3Anews.admin.net-a buse.sightings > finds some reported spam. I hope that Mr. Kehres's employer is > not International Messaging Associates Ltd, because they appear to be > sending unvarnished unsolicited bulk advertising such as > http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=200110250552.AAA03935%40localhost.radpa rker.com > I hope that particular example was not the message in question, because > there are special reasons that make me confident that it was unsolicited > bulk advertising. Two issues here - first, no the message in question above is not the same as above. With respect to the second above issue - I am very aware of what happend - some of our people sent single directed messages (unsolicited) to parties they thought might be interested in what we do. They were single, short messages, sent from real people on a one on one basis. They were sent with valid headers, through our servers, and only one short message was ever sent to anyone. We don't deal with unsolicited bulk advertising. I just have not had the time or energies as of late to set the records straight. Best Regards, -- Tim
