Subject: Re(2): Spam

From: ColorNet Robin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 11:25:33 +0200

[email-masked] a écrit:
>>where only medium to large corporations would be economically able to pay
>>an annual consultation fee, leaving the "little man" with the choice of
>>paying an excessive subscription fee or risk the consequences.
>
>Even if one restricts attention to e-mail, there are thousands of
>successful _opt-in_ e-mail lists, already on the Internet, many
>started by a "little man".
>
>Opt-in scales up and down very sucessfully. So there's really no
>unsurmountable economic barriers to _its_ use.

Good Morning
There appears a serious misunderstanding of the implications of the above,
both societal and economic.  There are restricted lists for the telephone
in Europe where individuals pay for the privilege of being able to avoid
certain offline unsolicited material.  We are talking here of access to
those lists.  Certain opt in offers will NOT be restricted to one site.
What we are looking at here is the opportunity for the small
business/small site (NOT the private individual) to "cold canvas" that is
to say to engage in a marketing effort without infringing the law.   If to
send a message one must ensure that the recipient is not on the mailing
black list for advertising and to do so entails paying for the "privilege"
of consulting that list, and if access to that list is in the hands of
mail order monopolists who, say, charge $2000 or more for access, then
free competition is effectively stifled.

Regards Jonathan

---

From: Gunnar Lindberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 12:28:02 +0200

<[email-masked]>, you miss the point. "Opt-in" can be as easy as
sending mail to a "-request" address saying "subscribe". And, if I
get mail that I consider spam, the sender has to be able to show a
copy of my "subscribe" message, otherwise he is a Bad Guy(TM).

No fuss, no centralized non-spam register, just don't send mail to
people unless they want it (asked for it).

Agreed, there is a grey zone beween an individual sending me
(commercial) mail and the same individual sending me a commercial
from his company) but compared to what we have today - 1 M-address
CDs being used to flood out commercials to people who couldn't care
less - that's almost trivial.

It seems to me that what you're trying to achieve is just delay the
RUN/IETF process. Why?

        Gunnar Lindberg

>From [email-masked]  Tue Sep 21 11:25:47 1999
>Message-ID:  <[email-masked]>
>Date:         Tue, 21 Sep 1999 11:25:33 +0200
>From: ColorNet Robin <[email-masked]>
>Subject:      Re(2): Spam
>To: [email-masked]

---

From: Andrew Gierth <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 05:40:48 +0100

>>>>> "ColorNet" == ColorNet Robin <[email-masked]> writes:

 ColorNet> What we are looking at here is the opportunity for the
 ColorNet> small business/small site (NOT the private individual) to
 ColorNet> "cold canvas" that is to say to engage in a marketing
 ColorNet> effort without infringing the law.

And it's precisely this that has to be controlled, because the
unrestricted use of unsolicited bulk email for this purpose has the
potential to _completely destroy_ the utility of email.

I forget the exact figures (they can probably be found on
news.admin.net-abuse.email somewhere amongst the noise) but if only 1%
of businesses registered in the US were to send only 1 million
unsolicited emails once per _year_ (and this is not an exceptionally
large mailing by current standards), then that would result in enough
email for _every_ internet user to be getting several hundred messages
_daily_.  In such an environment who would dare to reveal their email
address in public?

The only system that scales acceptably is to only send email to people
who have requested it; and to use other, non-intrusive methods (such as
the WWW) to invite such requests.

 ColorNet> If to send a message one must ensure that the recipient is
 ColorNet> not on the mailing black list for advertising and to do so
 ColorNet> entails paying for the "privilege" of consulting that list,
 ColorNet> and if access to that list is in the hands of mail order
 ColorNet> monopolists who, say, charge $2000 or more for access, then
 ColorNet> free competition is effectively stifled.

And this is another argument against opt-out, and in favour of opt-in,
because anyone can build up their own opt-in lists without needing to
consult any such monopolistic organization.

--
Andrew.