At 12:55 AM 9/17/96, Rabid Wombat wrote:

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 15:25:58 -0400 From: Charles Ardai <charles@staff.juno.com> To: Rabid Wombat <wombat@mcfeely.bsfs.org> Subject: Annoying spam incident(s) ^^^^

...

Complaints about spamming and cross-posting probably won't get you far, ^^^^^^^^

A couple of clarifications: Juno has never sent a single piece of spam and, ^^^^ ...

And so on, with the word "spam" being used frequently throughout the exchange. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall seeing _any_ "spam" from the account holders at Juno. What I _do_ recall is one or more young kids signed up to our list and then began engaging in posting to the list various boring comments about their interests, their "warez," and so on. Stupid comments are not necessarily (or even usually) spam. When we start calling stupid postings "spam" and complaining to sysadmins about "spamming" by a user, we have seriously devalued any use the term might have once had. This applies whether the stupid posts are from "talker" or from _me_. We have an open mailing list, with anyone able to subscribe via majordomo. This means we'll get inexperienced users, flamers, and, yes, even true commercial spammers who use the open-reflector nature of the list to post their ads. (By the way, when various political organizations, e.g., EPIC, the Libertarian Party, EFF, VTW, etc., use this open-posting feature, is this also to be called "spamming"? Why is an alert to dozens of mailing lists and newsgroups not spam, while "Buy Wheaties" _is_ spam? The answer is that spam is in the eye of the beholder, and the law should not attempt to decide which "unrequested messages" are OK and which are not.) Some suggestions: -- if people want a closed list, use a version of list software that only allows members to post -- if people want "levels" of expertise involved, a la "29th Level Cypherpunk," this is not the place and time to try to implement this -- use filters, e.g., procmail, Eudora, whatever -- don't refer to unwanted posts as "spam," as this invites talk of applying laws about spam -- as always, use technology and related tools (filters, reputations) whenever possible instead of laws and the threat of laws The sooner we move to a system where people make positive decisions about which messages to accept and which not to, the better. This is a technological effort--seeking to influence the direction mail takes--worthy of some serious thinking, in my view. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."