On Tue, Mar 02, 1999 at 10:39:26AM -0700, Randy Cassingham wrote:
> Um... WHICH community?
The anti-spam community. Not any particular faction of it, including CAUCE,
which is very much a latecomer to the fight.
> I consider THE leader in anti-spam efforts to be CAUCE -- the Coalition
> Against Unsolicited COMMERCIAL Email. It does appear, then, that
> reasonable people disagree on the definition of spam.
CAUCE's acronym is flawed in the abstract sense because it depends
specifically on the content/intent of the message, and thus runs afoul
of First Amendment problems in the US, and similar legal problems in
other jurisdictions. (Context-specific restrictions almost never pass
unscathed through Constitutional challenges.)
It's also flawed in the practical sense because it gives spammers the
quick out of simply claiming that the message is non-commercial in nature,
whether that is in fact the case or not. (And I hope you will agree that
1,400,000 sermons from the First Church of Ni! constitute the same
problem as 1,400,000 ads for shrubberies.)
The correct definition of spam defines it as conduct, not speech,
thus avoiding all First Amendment entanglements and focusing on the
act itself -- which is, if you think about it, where the damage is done --
not on the content, which is completely irrelevant.
---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
