Kee Hinckley wrote:
The current email system allows people to send email to
people they don't know. That's a feature.
Consent based systems need not interfere with this if the system
is used in order to provide preferred handling of mail which is
consented to while still allowing delivery of mail for which consent has
not been granted. For instance, mail which meets all consent rules might
be delivered to the main inbox while mail which does not would be
delivered to a "gray" inbox that would need to be scanned from time to
time. Personally, I don't see how a "graybox" can be avoided...
Perhaps a good way to think about this would be to remember the
old phrase: "Have we been introduced?" and the once normal practice of
sending "Letters of Introduction." In the old world, you couldn't just
go off talking to anyone you wanted to. The expectation was that you
would be first introduced. If consent based systems become more popular,
what we're going to see is people doing things like writing letters of
introduction. For instance, I'll write an email saying: "Tom asked for
your email address today. He's a good guy and should be on your
whitelist."
On a more technical line, we might see the creation of a
specific form of email message which is a "request for permission to
send." This would be something like a specific MIME type, perhaps XML
encoded, that would be recognized by consent based systems. One would
send a message in this form providing a self-introduction and requesting
permission to send. Of course, spammers might send such things, however,
my guess is that the response rates would be so phenomenally low that
they would soon stop doing so.
bob wyman
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