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Re: "RE: Which address of this list shouldauto-responses go?"

2004-08-21 16:40:52
Shelby,


Shelby >>> When did an auto-response become spam?

Mark >>When your "auto" "responds" to people who have not emailed you, for
one.

Shelby >I agree with that. Unfortunately you did email me, using the list as
an open relay.

A) an Auto-response definitely becomes spam when it is sent to somebody
without their permission and when it is advertising something. Especially
when that person never mailed you before.

A.1) Mark did not send an email to you.

An email list is not a relay (nor, should I add, is it an open relay). Learn
the differences :-)
(With a relay, mark supplies YOUR email. With a list, YOU supply your
email.)

 He posted to an email list, to which you had subscribed.

While it may be your right to automatically respond to somebody when they
email you,

it is NOT your right to scrape email list archives and automatically send
advertisements
to all the participants,

and it is not your right to sign up a robot which
sits there and spams each participant as they post

-- that is scraping too -- just in real time.

(They are both the same -- except one is past and the other is future, or
real-time. No real difference in the end. A spam to each poster.)

Shelby >I agree with that. Unfortunately you did email me, using the list as
an open relay.

It was not Mark that emailed you -- it was you that requested a copy of
Mark's email -- then proceeded to automatically send him an autoresponder
containing an advertisement for your product. You did not first ask Mark's
permission to join the list and get copies of his emails, mark may not even
have known that you joined the list until your first post.

Lets say you had joined the list, and Mark didn't know it, and he posted,
and got an autoreply from you which advertised your product, would you say
then that you had spammed Mark?

It is entirely possible that Mark posted between the time you signed up and
first posted.
(I haven't checked, but it's possible, and it's a good place to draw a
figurative line.)

So are you saying that Your auto-responder was in reply to Mark's message to
you, when Mark might not have even known that you were signed up, and might
not even have ever heard of your email address?

You requested copies of the emails to be sent to you -- nobody forced them
to be sent to you. Therefore, you effectively
signed up your robot to sit and listen, and send your advertisements to each
person that posted.

(I'll agree that your intent probably was not to spam everybody, but we're
talking about whether or not you spammed, we're not debating your intent.)

Now I am glad that you turned it off.

But it clearly *was* spam.
(If it wasn't spam, what difference would there have to have been before it
would become spam?:-)

But look, it's not so bad. Lots of people spam list members intentionally,
and some even spam lists intentionally.
It's okay to say "Sorry about the spam, it was accidental.."

I'm a bit surprised at your unwillingness to admit that it was spam -- I
can't imagine anybody but a spammer making such an argument,
but since you're in the business of fighting spam, you're certainly not a
spammer.

Jesse