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Fighting spam the official way

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CIOL Bureau
New Update

By Elinor Mills Abreu



SAN FRANCISCO: A California company said it plans to fight Internet e-mail spam using a new system that relies on U.S. copyright and trademark law. Palo Alto, California-based Habeas Inc. provides a system that allows people to easily differentiate between acceptable e-mail and spam, said Chief Executive Anne P. Mitchell. "We're letting you separate the wheat from the chaff," Mitchell said.



Habeas is a Latin term used in legal proceedings that means, "evidence" or "to show proof." But where the Habeas system is truly unique is in its enforcement mechanisms that provides a way to prosecute spammers in the absence of laws that prohibit spamming, she said. "It's frustrating because Congress is never going to pass any meaningful spam law," Mitchell said.



Most laws on the books call for unsolicited e-mails to specify that they are advertisements in the subject line or prohibit disguising the information of the sender, neither of which will effectively curtail spam, she said. "There are very few laws that prohibit spamming, largely because it's hard to define what spam is," she added. The Habeas system does not block spam, but makes it easy for people to separate the wanted e-mail from unwanted e-mail or prioritize wanted e-mail. It also gives people a way to report spammers so they will be blocked in the future.



Under the Habeas Sender Warranted Email service people and organizations can certify that e-mails they send are not spam by embedding into the header a special, universal mark. The mark is invisible to most recipients but can be read by those who know how to get access to the hidden portions of headers.



Haiku offers copyright protection


The Habeas mark contains a three-line haiku protected by copyright law. Six other lines contain the copyright and trademark notices and other trademark protected information. Senders using the mark are verifying that the e-mail meets one of the following criteria- the e-mail is sent to only one recipient; the sender has verified permission from each recipient; the sender and each recipient share a pre-existing professional relationship; each recipient is a friend or family member of the sender and the e-mail is not commercial.



If senders fail to meet the criteria, they could be sued for trademark and copyright infringement, Mitchell said. Mitchell said she does not recommend that people entirely block out non-Habeas e-mail. The Habeas system ensures that important mail gets through, she said. For example, anti-spam technology has been known to block bulk e-mail that people want, such as domain name expiration notices from Web address registrars, she added.



Individuals and Internet service providers can license and use the mark for free, while businesses and bulk e-mail companies will pay to use it. Customers include Microsoft Corp.'s WebTV division and Outblaze, a Hong Kong-based outsourcer for large e-mail service providers including Internet.com and mail.com.



© Reuters

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