Re: What Constitutes SPAM?

From: Joel M. Eichen (joeleichen_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 01/13/05 

Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2005 11:30:58 -0500

On Thu, 13 Jan 2005 15:39:24 GMT, "Gregory P. Cole, B.S., D.D.S.
\(Flap\)" <drgregorycole.dds@verizon.net> wrote:

RULES:

Hi Greg!

Good question!

I suppose someone who surfs over here and makes one post like, "Oh my
dental bills were so high until I found,

 www.dentaldiscountplansforripoff.com.

Well W_B is gonna report him and perhaps validly so. Too much
gratuitous spam in NGs is frowned upon.

Usenet is better without too much commercial stuff.

But what of an aggregator who grabs content with no attribution,
massages it a bit, and then passes it off as his own?

Would that be a good business model?

Supposing the guy did not like Mark Tarka and suddenly he filtered all
of Mark's posts?

Jeez, that reminds me of the Soviets who simply prohibited the press
from keeping reports of airplane crashes out of the papers.

Could that happen at USENET?

You betcha ....

Usenet is uncensored discussion. Yes individuals can chose to ignore a
poster, but what if someone unilaterally decided to block all of
someone's posts? In my opinion that is far worse that some commercial
stuff.

More later.

I have a feeling this OFF-TOPIC discussion will be very interesting.

Joel

>>
>> This brings up an interesting subject.
>>
>> Without commercial interests, the usenet or bulletin boards, was an
>> extremely costly affair. I recall buddies who paid hundreds of dollars
>> per month for a simple messaging system. They used it for business
>> purposes, not for chatting endlessly.
>>
>> One guy was a radio show talk host who used it to get ideas for his
>> show.
>>
>> Me too.
>>
>> I use the resources consistently for ideas. Therefore I am quite
>> tolerant of people who want to support it with some
>> informational/cxommercial blending.
>>
>> This is not SPAM. Spam to me means too much of anything is no good.
>>
>> Joel
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>

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