On Wed, 14 Aug 2002 08:06:10 -0400 (EDT), Richard Welty
<rwelty(_at_)averillpark(_dot_)net> wrote:
[snip]
this has been proposed before, and attempts at implementation have been
made.
having spent an hour thinking about it, perhaps an Informational RFC,
"Requirements for an Effective Opt-Out System" is in order. there are
already two real world examples (Rodney Joffe's system and the DMA system)
from which numerous lessons are already there to be learned.
Unfortunately, the lesson we're learning is that as long as it's
voluntary, it's no different than what we already have. It's important
to remember that the percentage of spammers who are willing to follow
consensus is less than one. Therefore, any rules, policies or laws a
group, state or nation passes, even with buy-in and consent of the DMA,
the marketers, the sellers and the network providers, is basically only
as strong as the weakest rogue spammer.
Laws don't address offshore (of the US) spam, which is becoming the
majority. Whitelists and Blacklists don't address user error (forgetting
they signed up for a list in the first place) or innocent filtering
mistakes. And what is spam to me is probably not spam to every other
person.
Much of the "anti-spam community" (TINASC) is aligned behind Opt-In, not
opt-out. The premise is simple - you shouldn't be allowed to send me
e-mail, and cost me money, then ask me to expend effort to make you stop
sending me e-mail and costing me money. In fact, we already have an
Informational RFC on responsible e-mail marketing that advocates Opt-In,
not Opt-Out. It's in the process of being obsoleted by one that
advocates Confirmed Opt-In (note to self: find out where that I-D is).
Comparing spam solutions to telemarketing solutions doesn't scale
because of the economics of it, and the fact that a "National" anything
just doesn't work in the real world, since we're shifting to the point
that the majority of spam originates outside the jurisdiction of the
United States.
Not that this is a plug, but we at SpamCon Foundation have been planning
our second SpamCon event, which will be held early next year in
Washington, DC. The agenda is an E-Mail summit to bring ISPs, Marketers
government and other concerned people together to try and forge a start
to some of these many solutions - I anticipate the outcome to be a
working group that will start working how Marketers and ISPs can get
along, since it's the ISPs that are bearing the majority of the cost of
this problem. If anyone is interested in participating or volunteering,
watch www.spamcon.org or e-mail me offline.
Ted Gavin * tedgavin(_at_)newsguy(_dot_)com *
Trustee & Officer, SpamCon Foundation <http://www.spamcon.org>
A California Non-Profit Organization
Protecting email as a medium of communications and commerce
Donations: <http://www.spamcon.org/donations>