Welcome to the day when spam was supposed to end
Craig Cockburn
Google! http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=spam+petition
Keeping you up to date with what's been happening in the few weeks
which have passed since The Spam Petition launched at the start of the
year.
But first, what's that about the day when spam was supposed to end?
It's a reference to a quote by Microsoft moneybags Bill Gates who
stated on 24th January 2004 that within two years spam would be a thing
of the past and The Spam Petition was referenced in an article by none
other than The Times bringing Bill Gates to account
You can see the reference on the new Spam Petition homepage here:
http://www.siliconglen.com/spampetition/
Spare a few $'s for a spam solution, Bill?
We've also made the BBC campaign site, and if you want to indicate
support of the campaign there, you can visit the campaign site here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/G1451
Besides The Times and The BBC however, we've been taking a high profile
stance with the anti-spam organisations who by now should have made
progress. This week we marked the milestone of 20 years since the first
computer virus and in April it will be 12 years since the first spam.
Is it too much to expect a solution by now?
We've launched a news page which has some alarming quotes by the
boffins on the anti-spam research group mailing list we're on. Their
replies might explain the lack of progress, including "spam is not much
of a user problem" and "we don't know how to make progress". Read the
quotes here:
http://www.siliconglen.com/spampetition/news.html
We've also challenged the experts in public forums asking the question
"why is it taking so long for a solution?". You can read our article
and all the replies via Google groups here:
http://tinyurl.com/bhjvt
Next, we're pleased to announce a competition to win one of 20
spam-free accounts - if this is of interest, please visit our
competition page:
http://www.siliconglen.com/spampetition/competition.html
The petition and the challenges on newsgroups are just two campaigning
tools. We intend to broaden this campaign into building a free open
source spam filter which employs the best practices of current spam
filters and will serve as a role model for any future enhancements to
email proposed by http://www.maawg.org/ or similar organisations, many
of whom are still only at the theoretical stage.
The success of the free open source Firefox browser which has now had
over 135 million downloads in just over a year proves that this will
work. Imagine what 135 million spam free inboxes would do to dent the
profits that a spammer might make - that's over 10% of all email. The
organisation behind Firefox started with only $2M initial funding,
surely the ISPs of the world could afford that between them to fund an
open source spam filter? If anyone knows any corporate sponsors,
please send them our way!
Another way you can support us it to "Digg" the stories here:
http://www.digg.com/users/siliconglen
This will help them to become visible to more people and promote the
campaign
We hope you enjoyed this newsletter. Please feel free to forward it
responsibly to news organisations and any friends who you genuinely
believe would be interested. Even better, tell them they can subscribe
via the sign up box at
http://www.siliconglen.com/spampetition/
If you have any comments for the next newsletter, please send them into
cr...@spampetition.com
Campaigning for a spam free Internet.