Subject: SPAM MAPS

From: ColorNet Robin <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 20:12:49 +0200

Good Afternoon,

I don't know whether anyone else has looked at the possibility of using
the palindrome of SPAM MAPS in the title :=)

Regarding my earlier comments and the general concensus that they did not
fit in there is little more that I can add.  If it is held useful for
information purposes I will send you a summary of the French position.

lMHO that there has been insufficient attention paid to the fact that the
legislator is already using published "netiquette" as the basis for legal
precedents by the legislator when it suits.  This forms the basis of my
recommendation to the European Commission DG XV SPAM study that by
concentrating on self regulation and peer pressure, with legislation
protecting minors from SPAM far more can be accomplished far faster than
by enacting controls which could seriously hamper information circulation
on the internet.  This will also form the basis of submissions to the
French Parliamentary Conference sponsored by the Joint Houses of
Parliament and the French chapter of ISOC next tuesday, October 5th.

There was a meeting yesterday of the French working group of the Internet
Advertising Bureau at which the problem of spam and the ethics of the
Internet  marketing were the subject of the constitution of three working
groups dealing with techniques, ethics and 1:1 profiles in Europe and
North America, and the legal framework thereof.  These groups will meet
between now and October 20th and interact to draw up guidelines.

IMHO for what it is worth that the discussion on SPAM is marginal as long
as there is no world wide implementation of digital signatures, third
party certification procedures, and concensual interaction between the
legislator and the internet community hopefully on the basis of self
regulation by peer pressure and technical methods of eliminating
unsolicited email.  Anyone can OPT IN anywhere in the name of [email-masked] and
then sell off the email names thus procured in a cascade mechanism
throughout the system.  Thus how is one to react towards an advertiser who
purchased email lists of opt in individuals in "good faith".  There is
little point in saying such lists are bad - they exist off line and are
not illegal.  For the offline universe there is a direct parallel between
SPAM and JUNKMAIL, and, at any rate in Europe, and for the individual user
of a free mail and cable, no incremental charges.   If there is no proven
method of identification, how can anyone opt in or opt out - especially if
the opt out lists can only be accessed on a fee payment basis weighted in
favor of large corporations, - we will be faced either with marketing
jungle warfare or with potential censorship of the freedom of information.
  I presume that CMGI's appetite has not passed unnoticed ...
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article/0,1087,3_209771,00.html

I apologise if this is, once again, held out of court :=)

Best regards Jonathan

---

From: April Marine <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 11:32:06 -0700

> the palindrome of SPAM MAPS in the title :=)

:-) The Mail Abuse Prevention System folks might have some feelings about
that!  Not that I know them personally--they are a whole hallway away. ;-)

http://mail-abuse.org/

(OK, I know them!)

A.

---

From: Andrew Gierth <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 20:37:57 +0100

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

 ColorNet> Thus how is one to react towards an advertiser who
 ColorNet> purchased email lists of opt in individuals in "good faith".

Very simple: a purchased list is _never_ "opt in", and (from the point
of view of our draft) is never a good business practice either.

The fact that such lists exist in other media is irrelevent - the
economics of email are different from that of other media.

 ColorNet> For the offline universe there is a direct parallel between
 ColorNet> SPAM and JUNKMAIL,

NO THERE IS NOT. THERE IS NO PARALLEL BETWEEN SPAM AND JUNKMAIL, and
this point needs to be driven home at every opportunity.

Even if all email were free to the end-user, they would not be
parallel, because the delivery of email _always_ involves the use of
resources that are not paid for by the sender. This makes the cost of
sending bulk email artificially low, and thus encouraging the sending
of email in much larger quantities than would ever be considered for
junk postal mail. Sending out a mailing of a million emails is not
especially difficult or expensive; a mailing of a million postal mails
would be _extremely_ expensive.

I doubt if there's any significant number of people anywhere in the
world who receive more than perhaps 10 or so pieces of junk postal
mail in any given day. If junk postal mail were as cheap to send as
email, then the average number of items received would likely be
_hundreds_ per day, and at that point you'd probably find a greater
outcry against junk postal mail than against junk email :-)

If the cost of revealing an email address in public is tens or
hundreds of spams per day, then virtually no-one will ever be willing
to reveal their email address. (That's the likely consequence of
individual opt-out spamming (i.e. anyone can send you unsolicited bulk
email until you tell them not to) becoming accepted.)

Responsible opt-in marketing techniques have been practiced on the net
since before spamming was ever heard of (see for example www.reply.net
for one of the oldest players in the business).

 ColorNet> If there is no proven method of identification, how can
 ColorNet> anyone opt in or opt out

confirmation email, as is already used by every properly-managed
mailing list in existence.

It works like this: if I want to opt-in, I give the marketer my
address (whether by email or on a web form is irrelevent). They send
that information, along with a random token that they generate, _to
the email address that I gave_. That confirmation email contains
instructions either to return the email to them, or to visit an URL
given in the message, or some other positive confirmation step.

That way, only a person who receives mail at a given address can
successfully opt-in that address to a list. Notice that this works
_without_ requiring any evidence of identity; this is very important
from a privacy perspective.

--
Andrew.

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From: Albert Lunde <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 19:09:02 CDT

> throughout the system.

There wouldn't be so many people advocating anti-spam ethics if
they were based on a future technology without an present
infastructure.

On the contrary, the _absence_ of a leak-proof, world-wide
authentication infastructure for e-mail users, and the absence
of end-to-end accounting settlements for e-mail delivery costs
is the reason there is an ethical issue about spam in the first
place.

(Though lack of end-to-end accounting settlements may well
be a major reason for the success of the web.)

These are not new issues: you can find precidents going back
as far as the BITNET Acceptable Use Policy, it's just that
would-be "commercial" users have replaced college freshmen as
the primary abuses of the net.

However, you can do reliable opt-in lists today. If someone
subscribes to a list, you send them an e-mail message asking
for a reply (preferably in a way that won't be spoofed by
a "vacation" autoresponder, and with some kind of unique
identifier ). The better list management packages can and do
do this today.

The security is based on the fact that while it is trival to forge
mail that appears to come from any address, it is not trivial
to intercept mail incoping to an arbitrary address and reply to
it.

> Thus how is one to react towards an advertiser who
> not illegal.

There's no ethical way to collect e-mail address lists other than
opt-in methods. Anyone who purchases a list of e-mail addresses
for mass-mailing without carefully auditing the source of those
addresses is dangerously naive. I would suggest first investigating
how the addresses were supposely collected, then contacting a small
random sample of the addressees to confirm that they were added
to the list via opt-in for the specified topic. I would not buy
such a list without contractual penality clauses for unsolicited
addresses. It's not a question of what's illegal, it's a question
of what's ethical and what's good business. It is not good for
one's business reputation to spam people.

> jungle warfare or with potential censorship of the freedom of information.

As I've said before, opt-in scales just fine, it is working today, for
thousands of lists. Any censorship going on is not caused by the use
of opt-in mailing lists but by other factors.

If you want to call spamming "jungle warfare" I guess you can, but
don't imply that spamming is the only way to market on today's
Internet.

I think of spamming as being more like the squeege men of New York
and other street con-artists. They are running a racket which
is dishonest and cheapens the public atmosphere, but they have
little to do with the serious conduct of business, art, or
politics.

--
    Albert Lunde                      [email-masked]