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

2003-03-28 12:24:41
On Fri, Mar 28, 2003 at 01:30:16PM -0500, John R Levine wrote:
People can ask for any e-mail they want.  That's a real and useful choice.

Indeed, but not one in this protocol proposed.
I don't get it.  People can already ask for all the bulk mail they want,
by signing up for newsletters and discussion groups.  That part of the
e-mail infrastructure works fine, with or without adding NO UBE.  Why is
it important or even useful to reinvent that?

It isn't.  But the context here is that we started with an open end-to-end,
anybody-can-mail-anybody e-mail system, which is consistent both with
deeply held philosophical principles as well as consensus IETF engineering
principles.

The spam problem forces us to look at limiting that, reluctantly.

You seem to assume sometimes in this debate that people would not think
this banner is the best solution because they think somebody wants spam.
I've not run into anybody like that.   I have, however, run into many people
who believe that if E-mail is to be restricted, individuals should be the
decision makers in how it is to be restricted.  This is a part of the end to
end design philosophy.

But as you agree you are aware, every site would use this flag if it were
what was available to them.  So this is really not about providing users
with choice on how their mail operates, but is in fact about setting a global
network spam policy.   And you may want a global network spam policy, but
it's not consistent with that philosophy that I should be the master of my
own mailbox.

This may be a subtle point for some not used to the history of this sort of
politics of technology.  At the EFF we deal with it every day.   The DRM
battle is another perfect example.  You try to avoid making global decisions
for people on how their mail will be filtered.

Now I am not against the ability to put up a "no UBE" or similar sign on
my mailbox that might have similar legal force to a no trespassing sign on
my gate.   However, we don't have the mayor of the city put up a No Tresspassing
sign at the entrance to the city, and tell people if they don't like the
policy, they are free to move to another town.


Don't be silly.  If you want to run a system that accepts all spam, or
uses some other scheme to decide what mail it'll accept, you can keep
doing so, and senders can keep sending it to you.  Nothing here changes
the status quo for people who don't want to change their mail servers.

Again, you bring up this straw man.  I have not met anybody who wants spam
(by their definition of spam.)  I found it odd that somebody cited toad.com
as a site that wants spam, clearly whoever that was has no knowledge of the
situation there.

There is no question on whether users want the ability to stop spam.  The
issue is how, from a technical standpoint, we will give them the tools
to implement their own decisions on the matter.


Users can already ask for all the mail they want, so the principle of
parsimony tells us that it's unwise to invent a new mechanism that
duplicates (badly) what they already have.

Just about everybody agrees that we don't want any systems interfering
with solicited mail.   Our focus is on various forms of unsoclited mail.
(With alas, different definitions of unsolicited.)

Users are fare from one mind on that, however.

In particular, as has been noted before, I, and literally millions of others,
send unsolicited bulk e-mail.   We do it to people we have met before, not to
strangers.  But some I speak to seem to strongly feel that simply meeting
somebody is not a solicitation for them to send you e-mail.  It's a quagmire.
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