JamSpam Community #3 The e-mail Security and Management Solution Providers community consists of providers of add-on products that run in parallel to the e-mail clients, servers, and e-mail services. Examples include antispam and anti-virus products from companies like Symantec and Network Associates as well as providers of vigilante-based solutions that make it easy for the public to report spam.
State of the state: This community is one of the high-technology sector's fastest growing cottage industries. The antispam effort has emerged as a lucrative opportunity for those that promise some degree of success in keeping inboxes clear of spam while at the same time easing some of nasty side effects such as consumption of valuable storage. However, emergence of antispam standards, if and when they happen, will also challenge the survival of many of the players in this category. That said, if lightweight standards such as those regarding relationship termination and permission management prevail, there will still be plenty of room for this cottage industry to add value with best-of-breed solutions that detect and log foul play based on compliance and non-compliance with those standards.
Report card: Competition is so stiff in this sector that the various players-- most of whom attended one or both JamSpam meetings--have had little or no time to cooperate with each other, much less work with the other communities to arrive at a more concerted approach. Given that some recognize the potential threat that standards present to their business model, their lack of enthusiasm for long-term remedies is understandable.
As good as these tools are, however, none claim to be 100 percent effective at blocking spam while also allowing the delivery of all legitimate e-mail. If they were, and they also had some critical mass (installed in at least 90 percent of all end-user configurations), ISPs might not have to continue filtering e-mail. Nevertheless, the various players aggressively market their products as being better than the others at filtering spam. Most of the companies never mention that because ISPs continue to engage in e-mail filtering, these tools will not get to act on all e-mail intended for the recipient. Additionally, they don't address the deliverability issue, which traps legitimate e-mail in limbo.
Grade: D- Although the tools have improved in their effectiveness at stopping spam while allowing for the delivery of legitimate e-mail, they remain flawed. In addition, lack of a united front from this community that demands more cooperation from ISPs turns these solutions into little more than placebos that will ultimately hasten the breakdown of the Internet's e-mail system.
Honorable mentions: Borderware's Chris Blask, Bluebottle Systems founder Robert Pickup, CipherTrust's Paul Judge and ePrivacyGroup's Vincent Schiavone. Despite being a member of the category that stands the most to lose should antispam standards emerge, Blask evangelized the need for all of the communities to cooperate on a level that would produce standards. Blask is now serving as the coordinator of a group that is framing JamSpam's constitution--a necessary step should JamSpam evolve into a formal consortium
Although his company is relatively unknown and probably has limited resources to attend such proceedings on the other side of the world, Bluebottle's Pickup came all the way from Australia to attend JamSpam-- twice.
Recognizing the role that standards will have to play if a long-term, interoperable solution is ever to be realized, CipherTrust's Paul Judge led the charge to form the AntiSpam Research Group (ASRG). The ASRG was formed under the auspices of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), which is affiliated with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)--the standards body that oversees the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) standard for Internet e-mail.
In what appears to be one of the first official inter-community efforts, Vincent Schiavone has offered to make some of ePrivacy Group's intellectual property available on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis to a solution that has been agreed to by the E-mail Service Providers Coalition (from the high-volume senders community) and TRUSTe (from the non-profit end-user privacy and antispam advocacy community). However, no other members of the e-mail security and management solution providers community have endorsed the solution and any technology with intellectual property declarations that isn't considered in the context of a standards-setting body can be problematic down the road. Schiavone has also volunteered to help with the framing of JamSpam's constitution, as has Verisign's chief scientist Phillip Hallam-Baker, Computer Associates product manager Janet Dagys, Cisco global security channel/partner manager Bill McGee, and ActiveState founder Dick Hardt.
The Black-Eye award Goes to Mailblocks for suing Earthlink on the basis of patent infringement. This is a perfect example of how putting a company's commercial interests ahead of the greater good will forestall a long-term solution. Unless standards are ratified, no single technology, regardless of how effective it is, will reach the critical mass necessary to force spammers to find another line of work. Lawsuits such as this one can only poison the well and inspire the various communities to keep their distance from one another. Should a standard emerge--and subsequently achieve critical mass by being built into e-mail clients, servers, services and add-on technologies--no single company should be able monopolize that standard or be in a position to benefit from royalties. The stakeholders must set aside their immediate commercial interests to rid the Internet of this scourge.
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