Internetworkers: http://www.ibiblio.org/internetworkers/

["Michael D. Thomas" <mdthomas AT mindspring.com>]

> > > Spammers have been tolerated for long enough.
> > >
> > > It's time to go to war.
> >
> > This idea has merit.
>
<snip/>
> Do you really want to abuse /me/? I hope not. But that's what your plan
> would likely mean.

Good point! In the race to build Weapons of Spam Destruction, there must be
zero tolerance for collateral damage. If even one civilian server is crashed,
one innocent inbox overloaded, then any liberty that may come from a spam-free
world has been unjustly gained.

;-)

But seriously, don't worry.

You may not have noticed, but I recanted my initial belligerent stance on this
subject in an email to this list early yesterday morning. At a moral level I
had already considered and addressed your concerns. As far as I know:

* the Triangle's fields and parks are completely free of massing SpamWarD
troopers.
* The child processes are safe.
* No one is going up in the attic to find their Grandpappy's old K&R and
kill(pid,-9) anyone.

Okee-dokee.....

Tom was wise to point out (in the part of his message that was snipped) that
there are many avenues  -- legal, technical, memetical, etc. Any technical
strategy should be mated with other strategies. E.g., an aggressive (as
opposed to defensive) technical strategy independent of any other strategy
would simply be met technically -- most likely with spammers choosing not to
comply with the language of H.R. 95.

Bummer.

But wait!

Here's where mated strategies come in to play: if the bill passes, then
spammers are acting illegally -- and could face a $500 per incident fine not
to exceed $150,000  -or- the actual monetary loss caused!

But the real power is memetical -- if the meme of 'SpamWarD' catches on, then
perhaps it might convince people considering entering the industry to do
something else. Perhaps it would cause some to consider leaving the industry,
or at least change how they conduct their business, and then perhaps mail
admins begin to have an easier time of it.

Thus, a well-designed, well-publicized but *unimplemented* SpamWarD would have
*more* impact than an implemented SpamWarD that wars in the darkness.

There's still the question: what if someone implements it? As Steve points
out, the actual implementation and use of SpamWarD could cause lots of issues
and lots of collateral damage. E.g., if the Distributed SpamWarD System can be
controlled by one or a few people -- or even if one or a few people are left
to determine what constitutes spam -- then Pandora's Box has been opened.
That's scary. All that has happened is the creation of a non-democratic weapon
that will *invariably* fall in to the wrong hands. There are also the issues I
covered in my recantation about war forcing you to work in the dark and
practice the arts of deception -- no fun.

But the only way for SpamWarD to transcend the Spam Machines it wishes to
attack is popularity. Any design would have to have buy-in from the tech
elite -- which includes a lot of mail admins. Or else, it simply wouldn't
work. The whole process would take years before anything was produced that
would even cause a blip.

But..... in the mean time, the politicians would be reminded that "War is
politics by other means," as Prussian general Karl von Clausewitz said. This
changes the nature of politics. And faced with a possible groundswell against
them, business would have to think twice, too. And as with the Cuban Missle
Crisis, cooler heads will pervail.

Thus, the possibilities of the *rhetoric* of SpamWarD, though dangerous,
remain appealing to me. A well-written Functional Specification that is
readable by a congressperson and that gets well publicized might have a real
impact on the debate and the laws that may be passed *this year*. (This
assumes that the decisions as to what is spam are distributed over a large
number of people -- i.e., democracy. Otherwise, it is just a spam machine. I'm
repeating myself, but I can't emphasize this point enough.)

...and the writing of said document and the discussion of the idea puts no
undue load on any mail server, except perhaps ibiblio's.

....and it continues to be a great thought exercise stimulating great
discussion!

Some links:

Spam Law overview: http://elj.warwick.ac.uk/jilt/01-3/khong.html
H.R. 95: http://www.spamlaws.com/federal/hr95.html
Functional Specifications:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000036.html

....and that is all I have to say on this for the time being. To quote John
Beimler once again,

Peace.