On Sat, 9 Aug 1997 12:16:16 -0400 Russ <[log in to unmask]> said:

>IEMMC announced publicly their intention to permit SPAM,

along with  200 other spam joints.  The market rate is  $100/month for an
account that will not be closed no matter what you send.

>I  thought LSoft  would  have  proactively sent  a  spam  filter to  all
>Listserv lists  (and please correct me  if I'm wrong, I  thought my list
>was receiving information from LSoft on  a regular basis, i.e. daily) to
>stop messages with IEMMC's stated header item.

Spam  alerts  have  a  well  defined  format  and  syntax,  and  specific
capabilities. One capability they do not have is to process alerts of the
form "New spam joint XYZ has announced  that it will be sending spam from
randomly  generated domains  with the  following kind  of pattern  in the
message header".  Thus L-Soft  does not  have the  capability to  do this
without a code change. As a matter of fact, the spam joints are going out
of their  way to  prevent filters  from identifying  their spam  as spam.
IEMMC is a first  and I am a bit skeptical about  it having any long-term
value.

>Given  that  Agis,   a  not  so  small  backbone   ISP,  delegated  SPAM
>responsibility to IEMMC, it would seem  that IEMMC is (at least in Agis'
>eyes) going to uphold their stated conditions and mechanisms. The result
>is that Agis will likely sell a lot more bandwidth as SPAM organizations
>move over to  them to avoid ISP hassles associated  with SPAM. That then
>extends to  a lot more  SPAM being produced,  and this stuff  should all
>contain the IEMMC header item (or so the theory goes).

I  have heard  a rumour  that  there is  a lawsuit  or settlement  (can't
remember which) in progress between  Agis and its first-tier provider and
that this will soon become a non-issue :-)

Anyway,  the spam  detector  is  not designed  to  do pattern  filtering.
Pattern filtering is  explicitly something we did not want  to have, both
because it  is easy  to program  around for the  spammers and  because it
raises legal  issues along  the lines  of the  Prodigy lawsuit.  The spam
detector  rejects  messages that  have  been  massively cross-posted.  By
definition these  messages are out of  topic in the vast  majority of the
target lists. No judgment is made on the contents of the messages, merely
on their distribution method. The spam filter works equally well for your
average "Make  Money Fast" plan and  for racist propaganda or  "God loves
you" broadcasts.  Filter based detectors typically  let racist propaganda
through   because   they  were   not   programmed   to  detect   it.   If
"X-Advertisement" becomes a standard, it will be another thing, but right
now it is just the latest finding of  an ISP that is desperate to get out
of the hole it has dug for itself.

  Eric