Oh, I think many people feel opt-out systems won't be very effective.
I just presumed members of the group were no doubt free to draft
technical proposals on on such systems (and other unworkable or politically
unacceptable solutions) and seek input on them to prepare something for
the group. At which point the group can reject it as unworkable.
Of course, if you know in advance that the group is not likely to judge
it as workable, you are probably wasting your time and should work on
something else.
As for opt-out systems, I will say this. Some of the people pushing for
laws are pushing for laws that (though they may not realize it) call for
changes to protocols. In fact, there have been several laws which have
respecified the format of the Subject line, demanding that it contain
"ADV:" (some jurisdictions) "Advert:" (some jurisdictions) and other such
tags, plus extra tags like "Adv+Adult:" and so on.
I doubt I have to convince anybody here that the government should not
be writing protocol changes into the law. Especially incompatible ones.
What that does mean however is that if they insist on drafting laws, the
laws should say, "The appropriate standards body for the E-mail system in
question shall be asked to define a format extension to use to tag the
thing we are naming in this law, and this law shall compell obedience to
that protocol."
So we might be asked to come up with tagging and opt-out systems as
these are among the more popular laws.
I personally oppose them. The evidence so far is that the current 25 spam
laws do nothing, and I hold no optimism for the success of future ones in
a global net, not on their own. Plus most of them are unconstitutional
anyway, but that doesn't really matter since they have to work before you
even get to that debate.
However, we may need to be ready for them nonetheless.
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