At 10:24 PM -0400 4/28/03, Barry Shein wrote:
And then you go to the members lists and it's some of the worst
spammers in the industry; anyone who doesn't have at least half of
those company names in their spam blocks isn't paying attention.
So a proposal in which we can hold them responsible is a bad idea?
But let's put this another way.
Let's assume that there are hundreds of thousands of businesses that
would like to be able to talk to their customers. (Fact.)
Let's assume that some reasonable percentage of their customers would
like to hear from them. (Fact. I know, some people on this list
never want to receive a receipt notification from Amazon, a bank
statement from Citibank, or a notice of sale from EBay, a news item
from the New York Times, or the schedule for your kid's Little
League--but you're in the minority.)
I would posit that it would be a very bad idea to tell all those
senders to manage their own mailing lists off of their own servers.
They haven't a clue. They have no sense of how to be responsible
citizen. And they have no incentive to cleanup their act. And many
of them don't have the money or resources to do it right, even if
they wanted to.
So. It seems reasonable that there exist a kind of company that can
manage mailings for other companies.
So. Let's say you are that company. You have tens or hundreds of
thousands of clients with millions or tens of millions of email
addresses.
Some of your clients are liars and cheats. Some of your clients are
misguided people who thought that buying a list of names from a
big-name company (that should have known better) was okay. Some of
your clients got used as a way of mail-bombing innocents. Some of
your clients were lied to by their customers. Oh, and let's not
forget, some of your clients have been deliberately list-poisoned by
people who don't think you should be in business. But many, almost
certainly most, of your clients are perfectly honest. Welcome to the
real world.
Now forget, just for a minute, all past history of bulk mailers.
Start with a blank slate.
What kind of system will make this all work with maximum success?
Perfection is not a goal, it's not possible. What's going to give
optimal results?
And don't say "confirmed opt-in". That's a policy. Maybe right,
maybe wrong. But anyone can say it. How are you going to enforce
compliance with the above list managers?
The current system is simple. Blacklist the IP. Blacklisting the IP
of a mailing house is like blacklisting the IP of a web site. It
works; so long as you don't give a damn about the collateral damage.
The site is now unavailable--and so are several hundred sites that
were also using the IP address.
Now, I know that this is a popular solution among BL operators. They
consider it a way of putting pressure on the ISP. If you hurt the
innocents, they'll complain, and the ISP will do something about it.
(Of course oddly, the same community feels very differently when
we're talking about web filtering software.) That's the model we have
for list operators. I think it has two problems. First of all, it's
morally wrong. Secondly, it assumes that the list operator actually
*can* do something about it. That's not at all clear.
So. That's the world today. What's the solution?
--
Kee Hinckley
http://www.messagefire.com/ Junk-Free Email Filtering
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/ Writings on Technology and Society
I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
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