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Re: [Asrg] Opt-Out Notes: too complicated, ignoring history

2003-03-28 00:05:27
There are several reasons why people would want individual choice.
The primary one would be they don't agree with the particular program
and definitions decided upon.   Particularly ones that might affect non-bulk
mail as those who use the term UCE have been known to suggest.

Don't get hung up on non-bulk mail.  I think we can agree that the spam
problem is due to scaling issues with bulk mail and there's no compelling
state interest to regulate non-bulk mail, U, C, or otherwise, any more
strongly than any other individual communication.  I suppose I should
adjust the proposal to make that clear, NO UCE means no UBCE.  (But the
fact that it's spelled "NO UCE" is good because that helps preempt an
unwise non-bulk rule.)

I'll skip over all the non-bulk issues, since I don't think we disagree
there.

Right.  How does giving server operators the option to publish a NO UBE
policy force a policy decision on them?  For the 99.99999999% of server
operators and their users who don't want spam they publish a standard NO
UBE banner.  For toad.com, they don't.  It's up to them.

This is where it gets messy.  As noted, this approach very stronly encourages
only domain-wide policy.  Then it has to deal with the questions of what
policies can be expressed.  If you go to very simple policies like only a
tag that means "No UBE" with some definition agreed on to the parameters of
that, then people can have only a binary choice of policy.

Given that there must be hundreds of millions of domains and subdomains on
the net, a domain strikes me as a pretty fine level of granularity.  And
you can have any policy you want, with NO UBE as a baseline.  If you put
on a NO UBE banner and publish a policy somewhere saying "we welcome all
mail about kittens to meow(_at_)templetons(_dot_)com", kitten mail to that 
address,
even if bulk, is not U any more.  Laws and software are not the same and
it's a really bad idea to try to encode every legal statement you might
want to make into software, which is one of the reasons I think the
complicated opt-out list proposal is a non-starter.

I would rate the TCPA as highly ineffective.  I have gone to court with
TCPA lawsuits, and even won and even collected the $500 damages.  It was
not a productive use of my time.

The goal of the TCPA is not to pay you $500, it's to keep fax machines
usable.  I have a stack of junk faxes like everyone else, but my fax
machine is still useful.  My email inbox is rapidly approching the place
that my fax machine was pre-TCPA, with all the paper on the floor filled
with junk and none left for the real faxes.

The problem with a binary policy flag is that it effectively applies the
same policy decision to all,

Uh, no.  See note above.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl(_at_)iecc(_dot_)com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet 
for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
"I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.

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