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AOL's Dave Long  wrote:

> An unsolicited email ties up switching resources, *and*
> disk space for storage until the account holder downloads
> or deletes it, as well as any connect charges and phone time
> if you're accessing your mail over a modem.

Considering that even the longest email chain letter occupies a minuscule
number of bytes, I wouldn't shed many tears for hard drive cost or, in an
era of 28.8 communications, of download costs. We are, for the moment,
talking about ascii text, after all. All the above comes under the cost of
doing business. 

Considering that AOL regularly greets its users with a drop-dead screen
advertising some pretty worthless books and other like products, I think
they've got a lot of gall trying to block other online merchants peddling
dreck from trying to reach their customers. Pot calling the kettles black
leaps immediately to mind.

> In an ideal world, I'd rather have seen a policy that mail sent to
> more than some large number of recipients (5000?) doesn't go through
> unless on a mailing list (and therefore solicited).  

This is a common theme in the anti-spam movement that indicates a logic
flaw. Most people are against spam because of the nature of the content -
advertisements for crap nobody in their right mind would waste money on.
But the distinguishing characteristic for the anti-spam brigade that moves
a spam item outside the pale of acceptable email is the nature of its
distribution: automated and in large quantities.

(I'm assuming that it's recognized as patently ridiculous for the
"unsolicited" aspect of an email to be used to characterize a message as
undesirable, at least among those of us who marked the "Notify by email"
box on the Publisher's Clearinghouse sweepstakes certificate.)

Large numbers are irrelevant when considering spam; the difference between
Dave Long's unacceptable 5,000 and acceptable 4,999 is insignificant. And
in a world of list servers and mail filters, widespread use makes a
discussion of distribution and creation mechanisms moot. 

That takes care of spam's attributes of automated creation, automated
distribution, widespread distribution, and the lack of solicitation by the
recipient. So that leaves content. And for an industry that almost
unanimously opposes the CDA, it doesn't hold much water to then turn around
and demand that carriers prevent the distribution of information based on
the content of that information. 

Donovan White

Online Information Development and Design
dwhite@olinfo.com                (508) 597-5321
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