Slashdot Mirror
Analyzing AT&T's Anti-Anti-Spam Patent
An anonymous reader writes "Dan Gillmor is reporting in his eJournal taken, in turn, from Gregory Aharonian: AT&T has apparently been awarded a patent for circumventing certain spam filters, thereby providing slimeball spammers with yet a bigger hammer!" The patent covers "A system and method for circumventing schemes that use duplication detection to detect and block unsolicited e-mail (spam.)", although it's unclear exactly what AT&T want it for.
Has it occured to anyone that by patenting an anti-anti-spam technique, AT&T can legally forbid spammers from using that technique?'
Yay AT&T. I applaud you.
Kevin Fox
Now all I need is an anti-patent patent and we can end all the stupid patent nightmares once and for all!
A patent on bank robbery!
Browse at -1, because trolls are often the most creative part of
If you look back, at the time AT&T would have been filing the patent they were in the consumer ISP business.
Odds are it was filed as an offensive tool to use against spammers.
A patent such as this could be used as a hammer against spammers using filter evasion approaches. The value of that for an ISP of the size of AT&T far exceeds the cost of filing a patent.
(AT&T are pretty clueless on many levels, but this looks like it was a smart move. It'll be interestng to see what, if anything, they do with it.)
Now, instead of being well-nigh untouchable due to spam's precarious placement as little more than a highly undesireable activity, AT&T can go after spammers IN COURT on grounds of PATENT INFRINGEMENT.
And going to court over something like this takes megabucks. Especially against a company the size of AT&T. Even if the spammers somehow weasel out on technicalities (like they didn't actually infringe on the patent directly), they're still going to be out so much money that their great grandkids aren't even going to be able to go to any educational institution after public high school.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
1) Patents are a way of restricting rights to certain ideas/methods/etc.
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2) AT&T can prevent anyone else from circumventing anti-spam filtering software with this patent
3) Ergo, AT&T are the good guys
wait a minute, I thought they were the bad guys
I'm confused now
topreacher@signature.slashdot.org 1% rm -rf sig
What I suspect that they will do is allow it for their Pink contract holders and go after anyone else.
Fight Spammers!
Couldn't you use the DMCA to stop circumvention of mail security software?
That's a question, not a statement.
Maybe this isn't part of a master plan -- maybe it's more random.
I could see a guy inside of AT&T working on something, and having to justify his time to his bosses. The lawyers who filed the patent probably work directly for AT&T, and so they gave it to them, and asked if it could be patented. The patent lawyers filed it, because they're patent lawyers, and that's what they do.
I tend to assume that this situation would fit right into a dilbert storyline. I don't think it's part of a grand strategy.
I can't imagine that AT&T would sell spam technology, because it would be a public relations nightmare. And I can't imagine that they'd try to sue spammers for patent infringment, because that would be expensive, and they wouldn't get anything out of it.
With the patent, AT&T can sue the makers of spamming software for patent infringement, unless SpamCo (or whatever company) makes sure that their mass e-mailer doesn't use any of AT&T's patented methods for avoiding filters. Of course, this will result in a crippled program: AntiSpamCo (or whatever company) knows exactly what SpamCo is not allowed to do, so their anti-spam filters will actually work.
So why is AT&T doing this? One, it could be good PR for them once AntiSpamCo et al. realize the implications. Two, (this is for all you conspiracy freaks out there) the government may have asked them do to it. Governmental agencies cannot hold patents. Only individuals and corporations hold patents.
I'm not trying to claim that AT&T is some benevolent corporation, though. It's entirely possible that, in addition to suing SpamCo, AT&T could also try to sue AntiSpamCo. They might not have as strong a case, but AntiSpamCo would still be using pieces of AT&T patent in their filtering software.
Despite that troublesome possibility, it'll be good to see SpamCo get what's coming to it. A lot (perhaps most) of SpamCos are rather or the sleazy, shoddy side; I'm sure there will be patent infringement. It will be interesting too see how soon and how vigorously AT&T will defend their patent in court.
Can Slashdot patent anti-anti-anti-spam?
And recursively more anti- as well?
Since slashdotters seem to hate spam so much all reason gets abandoned when it's involved, I thought I'd point out why this is so awful. Basically, it's a math algorythm. Like Quick Sort. Now stop and think about what computing would be like if Quick Sort was patented. The same sytem that allows this to be patented would also allow Quick Sort to be. We're fortunate that most of the ground work for computing was layed before this mess started. Anyways, I just wanted to make the point that there's no such thing as a good software patent.
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1980...
Remember being charged for an unlisted number?
1990...
AT&T sells us caller-id, and then sells caller-id avoidance devices to marketeers, then sells us next-gen caller id to thwart their devices...etc...etc.
AT&T has been playing the middle for years...I see no reason for them to stop now. Patents just mean more money, faster.
Actually, this whole thing is probably blown out of proportion. The patent summary looks a lot like a paper by Robert J. Hall. I expect that ATT has a policy of patenting everything any of their researchers works on, regardless of what it is. The paper itself is mainly mathematics with the spam theme thrown in to make it interesting.
If they cannot call you to get you to change your long distance service, maybe they are doing to "telemarket" to your inbox. The Federal 'Do Not Call List' is changing the way a lot of traditional telemarketers are doing their business. Since they are now being fined for calling you, they need another way to invade your life and bombard you with offers. Having a technology that can circumvent spam blocking would be a step up on the competition.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
If you read the patent, you'll see it has nothing to do with "random letters or dictionary words" to break hashing detectors.
Yes it does. Note that while they describe many ways to alter a message, the specific method used is not central to their claim, which is merely that m different versions are created somehow, that recipients are assigned to sublists in which the same ISP does not appear twice, and each sublist gets a different version. While it doesn't mention them specifically, any technique using n random letters in a message will infringe, since it effectively divides all users into m=26^n sublists and sends the same message to all users in a sublist. Use of enough random characters effectively generates such a large m that each recipient lands in their own sublist. Therefore there is no need to "determine if the selected address is substantially similar to an address on the selected sublist" since there are no addresses already in the sublist. Nobody gets the same message, so you don't need to worry about two copies of one version going to users at the same ISP. It is algorithmically equivalent to what they're claiming.
The patent goes on to describe many ways that a message might be altered, like reordering paragraphs, etc. In general many of the techniques they describe are subtle and do not allow as many permutations as you can get from a bunch of random characters, and so they stipulate (as a part of the claim) that care must to be taken that no sublist contains two "similar" email addresses. Meaning, don't send two copies of the same version to two recipients at the same ISP, who will notice the identical message hash. Duh. Any spammer could figure that out for himself. And like I said, if you use a large enough m this part of the patent is irrelevant since you don't need to worry about this problem. All the messages are unique.
If you are too lazy to read the entire patent, and insist on only reading a small part, how about also reading what the claims section says instead of just the abstract?
Yeah, what in the claims section do you think I missed?
Sometimes, you know, patents are allowed that don't actually have prior art, or at least aren't as obvious as the abstract makes them sound.
While true, that's irrelevant in this case because this is an obvious patent with plenty of prior art.
Those numbers are very wrong. Spammers count returns in sales per MILLION emails, because the rate is so low. It's profitable because they send huge quantities of spam, so even a very low sale rate is quite profitable.
On the other hand real email marketing (done by a well known legitimate business, targetted to specific peoples who agreed to receive it) can get much better results.