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Re: fyi.. House Committee Passes Bill Limiting Spam E-Mail

2000-06-16 10:20:02
On Thu, Jun 15, 2000 at 09:35:23PM -0400, Keith Moore wrote:
And I hope that the courts will finally realize that freedom of speech 
includes the freedom not to have your communications disrupted by people 
who want to sell you things.

The biggest problem with the bill, as it currently reads, is that the
transport notification has been dropped.  There was an ID by Hoffman
and Levine (I believe since expired, can't find it now) that allowed
an organization to "opt out" from unsolicited commercial email by
indicating so in the SMTP banner.

For instance ...

220 garcon.unicom.com ESMTP Sendmail [NO UCE, C=US, L=TX]; Fri, 16 Jun 2000 
12:11:02 -0500 (CDT)

Although "opt out" in general is evil, this actually is quite nice.  The
organization need opt out only once (in the SMTP banner), and the effect
should be immediate.

The bottom line is that although the bill has some unsavory aspects (hey,
this is politics, dontcha know), it is well intended, and restoral of the
banner notification could be a serious tool in the fight against junk
email.

-- 
Chip Rosenthal <chip(_at_)unicom(_dot_)com>                      
http://www.unicom.com/
Protect your mail server against spam.                http://mail-abuse.org/
Junk email is theft.  There ought to be a law.        http://www.cauce.org/
Preserve the monopoly & protect innovation: BSoD, paper clip, email worms, ...