[WSIS CS-Plenary] Spam as an issue

[Gurstein, Michael]

I think the issue of "spam" and "spam control" is highly interesting
particularly for what it reveals about the implicit frameworks
concerning overall Internet related issues.  
 
Spam is and can be approached from a technical and a legal/regulatory
perspective--that is, what are the centrally (top down) determined,
centrally (top down) implemented and centrally (top down) controlled
approaches to the problem of spam--what filters do ISP's put in place,
what laws do central authorities implement, what banishment do central
monitors impose and so on.  
 
An alternative approach to spam control, which in fact seems to be far
more powerful and certainly more cost-effective is a 'bottom-up"
strategy which has users either individually or more usefully
collaboratively, establishing mechanisms for identifying and diverting
spam messages as they are being received.
 
The way this seems to be working is that individuals identify messages
they consider spam, they set up a filter against that message which then
is shared with other people. As the network (on-line community) of those
sharing their filters grows, the grid of filtering against the spam
messaging grows apace and there is no particular need to have central
authorities to identify and track/attack spammers (an approach unlikely
to be effective in any case given the ease with which spammers can
change their addresses, the very low entry costs to spamming and so
on... (I saw a note pass by a few weeks ago which indicated that the
cost of identifying and running to ground a single spammer was in the
$40,000K US range, and this doesn't include the legal costs of
attempting to try and convict each individual spammer...).
 
However, recognizing that spam is a problem which is probably best
controlled through (bottom up) on-line communities and networks doesn't
seem to have filtered into those who treat the Internet with all its
transformational elements as simply another ground for regulatory
business as usual, or who see a way of making a buck by providing
technology (overkill) solutions for what are essentially
"social"/community problems.
 
To extend this further I'm seeing a similar "divide" in the Finance for
the Information Society area, where the bulk of the efforts seems to be
in finding ways of funding governments or (centralized) multilateral
agencies or NGO's to develop top down delivery programs rather than ways
of channeling funds and expertise to communities to help them develop
local solutions to access and related issues. 
 
In the end of course, there will never ever be enough funds for top down
centrally administered solutions -- the technology moves too fast -- and
in the end there is an endless number of potential (even socially
worthy) beneficiaries.  But to set up processes where communities are
enabled to achieve access and effective use based on their application
of local resources in relation to local needs (with of course, the
availability of some type of technical infrastructure--IMHO the
appropriate use of centralized capacity and resource commitment), that
should be do-able even within a context of limited donor interest and
financial committments.
 
Best,
 
Mike Gurstein
 
Michael Gurstein, Ph.D.
Clinical Professor: School of Management
Research Profesor: School of Computing and information Science
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Newark, NJ
 
(Interim) Chair: Community Informatics Research Network

-----Original Message----- 
From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org on behalf of avri at acm.org 
Sent: Fri 28/01/2005 11:20 AM 
To: plenary at wsis-cs.org 
Cc: 
Subject: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Spam as an issue



Hi, 

I would like to explore the issue of Spam as an IG issue. 

My instinct all along is that this isn't an issue that belongs to 
Internet governance, but since many, if not most, other people on the 
WGIG and the CS think it is, I want to explore my reasoning and find 
out where I am missing the point. 

When I look at Spam, and I do get a lot of it, I see two problems a 
technical problem and a legal problem. 

In terms of the technology, if I have the correct protection software 
and my filters are well written I don't ever see 90% of it unless I 
want to; it goes into a folder I glance through periodically to make 
sure the nets haven't caught something I actually want.  In this 
regard, as a user I don't need to differentiate between legitimate fund 
raisers, legitimate bulk business mail, pornography or whatever.  It is 
all junk I do not want and it is easy to take care of. 

In terms of other technical issues, there is a growing natural barrier 
to Spam.  As service providers block prefixes that generate a lot of 
spam, allowing spam to leave a network becomes a technical problem for 
the service provider, how to provide egress filtering.  Again this can 
be solved by technical methods and the prefix blocking provides a 
natural incentive for those who allow spam to stop it locally. 

Finally there are the bandwidth and intermediate storage burdens.  I 
tend to see these as market forces that determine the requirements 
either for ways to filter or ways to charge for legitimate bulk mail 
and to make settlements based on those charges. 
And while the issue of settlements is something I think is an IG issue, 
I don't see how Spam can be differentiated from other bandwidth issues 
in this respect. 

I mentioned that I see some of the Spam issue as a legal problem.  
There are things that are considered illegal by different 
jurisdictions; in some places pornography, in some places phishing, in 
some cases hate speech, and in some places political dissent (not sure 
I can always tell the difference between the last two).  In most cases 
these are matters for local jurisdiction and fodder for the push and 
pull of legality, morality and freedom of expression.  One issue here 
is that I don't see anything that is tractable for Internet Governance 
here; do we want IG making proclamations about what is legal expression 
or not?  Personally, I don't. The main issue I see is that these issues 
are not qualitatively different on the Internet then they are in any 
Media or in any other public means of communication. 

So, as I said I do not understand how Spam is either open to IG or is 
an appropriate goal of IG.  But since I know many, if not most other 
people, think it is, I pose the question: why? 

thanks 
a. 

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