CDR: Re: [Spam wars, continued...]

[Bill Stewart]

At 11:25 AM 11/7/00 -0800, Greg Broiles wrote:
>On Tue, Nov 07, 2000 at 10:50:25AM -0800, Eric Murray wrote:
>> On Mon, Nov 06, 2000 at 08:37:31PM -0800, Bill Stewart wrote:
>> > I agree with Jim that anti-spam laws are bad in principle;
>> > in practice they're usually worse :-)
>> > Some kinds of cypherpunks technology don't involve the law; some do.  
>> > For instance, user-supplied filters can trigger libel laws
>> > ("Hey, your filter called me a SPAMMER!  I'll SUE!").
>> 
>> Maybe I'm too limited in my thinking, but I don't see this actually
>> happening with usr-level filtering.  Mostly for the simple reason that
>> it doesn't make sense to send anything back to the spammer. 
>
>Even if they did, there's no argument for defamation liability - 
>all of the popular flavors of defamation (slander, libel, invasion
>of privacy) require that the defamatory content be made available
>to third parties (e.g., not the plaintiff nor the defendant). 

I was thinking about filters that are installed by the user,
but might get their lists of spammer / spams from a rating service,
just as censorware products get lists from services.
For instance, there are some patterns that are obvious spam
and once you've seen them twice, you block them,
but there's a lot of randomly worded spam out there
which a spam-rating service could help you block.
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart at pobox.com
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