Lessig Wagers His Job On Anti-Spam Theory

kien writes "Lawrence Lessig is betting his position at Stanford on his anti-spam legislative recommendations. From his blog:'First the analysis: Philip Jacob has a great piece about spam and RBLs. The essay not only identifies the many problems with RBLs, but it nicely maps a mix of strategies that could be considered in their place. But, alas, missing from the list is one I've pushed: A law requiring simple labeling, and a bounty for anyone who tracks down spammers violating the law. Here goes: So (a) if a law like the one I propose is passed on a national level, and (b) it does not substantially reduce the level of spam, then (c) I will resign my job. I get to decide whether (a) is true; Declan can decide whether (b) is true. If (a) and (b) are both true, then I'll do (c) at the end of the following academic year.' The Declan referred to in point (b) is Declan McCullagh." Update: 01/07 02:45 GMT by T : Speaking of whom, here is Declan's acceptance of Larry's bet.

Comments

Re:First problem with this solution:

[ergo98]

I had a long winded reply regarding false positives and what they represent to even the best filtration (i.e. what happens when your filter is attuned to emails between you and your buddies, and suddenly a proposal comes in from an employer, or a partner, or a customer? This single lost email could be incredibly damaging) when I noticed this page that says it eloquently and thoroughly.

Re:First problem with this solution:

[WatertonMan]

I pointed out Apple's Mail as an excellent example earlier as well. One point I should make. Unlike Bayesian filters that go through your POP server before you do, the fact Apple's is integrated into the Mail client makes all the difference. You can go into the spam folder and if there is a message that isn't spam, you tell the program and it updates the Bayesian tables. If you find one that Mail missed, you just right click and tell it that it is junk mail.

Apple has it set up in a very friendly way. It prompts you initially for mail it thinks is spam. At that point it has preliminary training from Apple plus whatever you give it. At a certain point it figures it is accurate enough and goes off on its own automatically.

As I mentioned, after a little training myself, it has yet to make a mistake. It is amazing what that does to your workflow!

Don't get me wrong. OSX Mail isn't a perfect mail client. It isn't aware of the blockquote HTML tag, for instance. And I hate how it uses a drawer that isn't resizable for its folders. Unlike the old Claris Mail it doesn't have scriptable triggers for certain mail events either. (Of course neither do most mail clients, especially on other platforms) But other than that it really is very, very impressive.