do you love spam?
i know i do [sarchasm]. there's a new game in town to help rid the world of spam [unsolicited emails, not the meat substitute product]. the company is called habeas, and what they do is provide a service that works the opposite way as current spam filters. instead of disposing or grouping what it believes to be spam, it guarantees what isn't spam. here's how it works: they've copyrighted a haiku [found here] which will be embedded via software into the headers of a user's email [only businesses have to pay for the service, it's free for personal use]. upon receipt of such an email, the haiku is found by the recipient mail program guaranteeing that it is not spam, and the message is delivered. how is this enforced? anyone caught using the habeas haiku [what they call a "warrant mark"] for the purposes of spam will be sued for copyright infringement upwards of a million dollars or more. they already have a collection agency [Dun and Bradstreet], and several major spam filtering services [Spam Assassin, Mail-Filters.com] intend to support Habeas in their software.

my take: it's a very creative solution to the problem; one that is logical and can be enforced both legally [copyright infringement] and practically [not discarding important emails because they contain a sentence about personal finance, like current filters]. however, success would depend on everyone involved using the habeas warrant mark, so i'm not sure how effective they will be. if it does pick up, though, they'll be making bank, and other companies will emulate their service creating a more competitive environment for it, which will only lead to even better solutions, so i say, "rock on".
Matt @ 11:26 AM