On November 28, 2008 at 12:19 sethb(_at_)panix(_dot_)com (Seth) wrote:
Barry Shein <bzs(_at_)world(_dot_)std(_dot_)com> wrote:
I don't particularly care if it was solicited or not.
I do. That's what matters.
And you generally find that the post office will bring your mail for
free (to the sender) or the telco will deliver SMS's (to the sender or
whomeve) for free because you solicited them?
If I call Sears and ask them to send me a catalogue that doesn't
compel the post office to bring it to me for free (I don't think
Sears has a catalogue any longer, but whatever.)
There is no "the post office" in email.
No, but anything which is charged for has an agent involved in the
charging. Often many (e.g., credit cards->processors->bank->vendor.)
If Sears pays The Delivery Company to carry stuff around for Sears,
and The Delivery Company hands it to the front desk of my condo (since
the building is private property, that's as far as they can go), then
I _do_ expect my condo manager to deliver it to me (hold it for me,
whatever I've asked them to do) for "free" (actually, as part of the
services I pay them for every month).
That seems a lot more analogous to email.
No, it is not, as you said Sears paid for the delivery.
In email the sender paid nothing other than their bandwidth and
computron costs (if that, e.g., zombies), which is more analogous to
the printing and production costs of the catalogue or trucking them
down to the post office.
It also removes most of the judgement. Who really wants to argue
whether something is "solicited" or not?
I don't care whether the local Chinese restaurants pay somebody or not
to slip menus under my door, *I don't want those menus*.
Well, if they had to pay postage do you think you would get as many?
Anyhow, so what? Spam is not analogous to the occasional chinese
menu. It's more like having to get a shovel to dig a hole big enough
to find your door because 5-ton dump trucks of chinese menus are being
unloaded on your door daily.
I think we all tend to agree that inherent to spam being a problem
worthwhile discussing is its volume.
Ihat is, if we got one spam per week (no filtering) I doubt we'd spend
our time worrying about it like this.
It's a rathole. For example, subsidiaries, partners, etc. Ebay owns
paypal, so if you told ebay to send you updates does that mean paypal
can also send you "updates"?
You should be specific in what you tell them. If eBay pays $X/month
to have their email delivered, does that cover PayPal? Same rathole.
Well, like any postage scheme, they may affix their stamps to whatever
they like if they're authentic and paid for.
So that question is moot.
Also, I bought like one or two little things from Amazon a while
back and to this day they send me email every single day pitching
something, often trying to relate it back to the book I bought in
some way but often not, just random, or very general (buy anything
over $XX by Friday and shipping is FREE!)
Is that spam?
What did you _tell_ Amazon when you bought those things? What have
you told them since?
What difference does that make, really?
Actually, I am sure that if there was any checkbox I saw that said I
DID NOT want any email solicitations etc I would have checked (or
unchecked as the case may be) them, I never, ever say yes to that
stuff.
So either they managed to slide something past me, or they ignored my
requests/checkmarks, or they never really asked and have decided that
if I bought something from them my mailbox is their playground.
I suspect the latter.
I don't really care. I just think if they had to pay for delivery
maybe they wouldn't pelt me and everyone else daily.
So if I _want to_ receive their ads, you would prevent that from
happening (because neither Amazon nor I am willing to make whatever
payments you want to require)?
Well, only to the extent that we "prevent" them from sending you paper
mail by requiring postage be paid.
Now you're off in the realm of some utopian communist sort of polemic,
charging for food starves babies and all that -- food should be FREE!
Are you sure that's where you want to go?
Right now the only thing which limits Amazon (et al) is what volume
they imagine will really piss me off at them and they try to stay on
the safe side of that, it's purely PR and marketing.
Plus laws, so apparently you haven't told Amazon to stop mailing you
(or you could sue them as an ISP).
Well, I'm not so sure about any such laws.
But you're quibbling the specific example to death which is a very
boorish method of argument.
Bulk email senders should pay.
The rest is only some attempt to explain what is meant by that.
I really am not all that interested in your interpretation of the
CAN-SPAM act and how it applies to customers who have done business
with Amazon.
Apparently that's once per day except sometimes when it's twice a day
because there's something really, really important coming up like
Christmas, or Tuesday.
Strange how I buy stuff from Amazon a lot more than you do, have their
credit card (two, actually), and still get an order of magnitude less
mail from them than you're claiming.
Maybe your filters are dropping the rest?
Maybe it's BECAUSE you buy a lot more that you get less email
solicitation.
Maybe we need a more objective measure.
Maybe this specific line of reasoning isn't really interesting or
germaine, at some point it's just argument for argument's sake since
if I got even exactly as many messages as you get it would still
support my point.
Therefore, I enter a motion of dismissal on prima facie evidence:
Opposition has just presented evidence sufficient to prove our case
so we request that we not be required to present any further on this
specific matter.
-b
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