JamSpam Community #1: The Internet Service and Inbox Providers community consists of companies that provide Internet connectivity as well as inbox services (e-mail) to their customers. Examples are America Online, Yahoo!, Microsoft (MSN), and Earthlink.
State of the state: Traditionally, this community has engaged in one-size-fits-all filtering that is based on e-mail header-content analysis and/or a system involving public consensus on particular e-mails and their sources. Both forms of filtering attempt to establish the probability that a particular e-mail, or source of e-mail, is, respectively, spam or a spammer. If that probability is deemed to be high enough, the e-mail and/or source is either denied delivery to large blocks of Internet users or is deposited into a special inbox for bulk mail. One-size-fits-all filtering is widely regarded as the source for the growing problem of non-delivery of legitimate e-mail.
Report card: To their credit, the largest ISPs and inbox providers have been participating in JamSpam. Whereas little or no cooperation existed within this community prior to 2003, AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo! recently announced that they would begin working more closely together. This type of intra-community cooperation is a prerequisite to any inter-community cooperation. However, the alliance has released few details about what results it intends to produce, how it intends to achieve those results, or how regional or international ISPs can join the effort.
Meanwhile, these same ISPs have recently been enjoying the antispam limelight, as they release fortified antispam tools and pursue legal actions against spammers. However, their underlying technical approach to spam-- filtering-- remains unchanged. Their legal successes are widely regarded (and in some cases, self proclaimed) to be little more than moral victories against a select few individuals whose assets that pale in comparison to the resources it took to hunt down and sue them.
Grade: D The ISPs are fighting the battle and the leaders are showing promise of cooperation. For the most part, however, the ISPs are fighting the wrong battles (technologically and legally) and cooperation is primarily among a select few players within the community.
Honorable mentions: America Online Senior Vice President Joe Barrett volunteered to host the next JamSpam meeting. Both Barrett and AOL Technical Director Brian Sullivan have agreed to contribute to the constitution framing process for JamSpam. So too have Miles Libbey, Yahoo! Mail product manager, and Stephanie Fossan, Earthlink senior product manager. Internet inbox provider Kobo.biz is the first and only member of this community to offer significant hard dollars to the JamSpam cause.
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