[SpamCop-List] Re: Is political and patriotic spam still spam?

[Miss Betsy]

"SikaSpam" <noway at this.invalid> wrote in message
news:MPG.18c2d63c768e1b559896cc at news.spamcop.net...
> With the "Politics Lite" (about losing our right to something) it's more
> a case of newbie friends who are happy to collect addresses of buddies
> with similar interests and make up a list. Then when an issue comes up
> that concerns this issue, they (in ignorant innocence of spam concerns)
> blast away to 5-25 addresses. Sometimes when I've told people not to do
> this, they've never spoken to me again! Obviously, nothing to do with
> close friends. They become so paranoid they feel horribly guilty if an
> HTML Message slips though ;)

IMHO, what you are describing is not spam as I think it is defined.  It is
not good netiquette, but as you point out, one has to be careful about who
and how one requests that they be more polite or you lose friends.  I often
send them references to truthorfiction.com.  Once I replied to the entire
list which was interesting (it was the one about how Target doesn't
contribute to veterans organizations): I got one "well done" and one
diatribe back.  And now have been added to a couple of address lists, but I
decided just to route them to trash rather than try to explain how to take
me off.

IMHO, spam (the kind that can be reported) has to come from a business
(commercial) or an organization (political, charity, church, lobby, etc.).
It doesn't count for non-commercial spam if it is forwarded by a friend,
relative, or business acquaintance.  It does count if it is "email this to a
friend" from a commercial business - though I haven't actually reported any
of these.  The difference is that one does have a prior relationship with an
individual who forwards it.  Now, occasionally I get forwards from unknown
people that I report because they have other hallmarks of spam (forged
headers primarily) - no one I correspond with has forged headers.

I reread what you said.  At first reading, it sounded like you were calling
those mailings, spam.  We(tinw) on the ng went round and round about whether
an individual email from an unknown person, but a neighbor, who offered to
sell you his lawn mower, was commercial email and unsolicited and therefore
spam and could be reported.  As a result of that discussion, IMHO spam has
to be unsolicited, bulk,  and from a business or organization (and one
person selling eBay tricks sending bulk email constitutes a business) in
order to be reportable.  And I am going to post even though I think I
misread your post in case there is someone who wants to debate the
definition.  I am not sure there is a definitive definition, but in the
light of spamcop's reputation, perhaps, there ought to be for spamcop.

--
Miss Betsy, an almost new spamcop user