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Advertisers and tracking services will fight this to the bitter end.

....and if this is ratified as a web standard, governments could simply enforce honoring such headers by law. In Norway, a national register has been in place for years where registered citizens opt-out from fax and voice spam. Norway also have laws which prevents advertisers from filling your (physical) mailbox with junk (you just place a sticker on your mailbox).

http://w2.brreg.no/enhet/sok/detalj.jsp?orgnr=970551972 I do know it's easy to register as a religion in Norway (which I think is a good thing) - I once was seriously considering registering some religion with the sole purpose of getting government support and the sole function of gathering once a year and drinking beer for the gov. support money. I still think I could have pulled it off :-) I was inspired by these geniouses: http://www.gateavisa.no/blekka/ga152/religion/152ralt.html

Companies that do direct marketing send their lists in, and get them back without those persons who have opted out. They learn nothing new about you in the process, other than the fact that you've opted out.

For electronic marketing (email, sms, fax) it's opt-in rather than opt-out. In other words, they cannot legally do it unless you've given prior, informed consent to that. The logic is that this in this type of marketing, the recipient typically pays a large part of the cost. Marketers are less likely to abuse say paper-based marketing as that actually costs them to print and distribute. (compare the quality of the marketing in the average paper-based marketing and the average spam you receive to see what I mean..)

For unadressed "distributed to all" marketing there's a small sticker you can put on your mailbox, and you won't get any.

In short, you can eliminate receiving any marketing by following 3 simple steps:

• Register yourself to opt-out of direct marketing. (one phone-call or one visit to the opt-out list.
• Do not agree to receive direct marketing when companies ask.
• Get a small sticker and put it on your mailbox.

1. I get several pieces of spam in Russian every day advertising these databases. Dammit.

2. Law enforcement in Russia does nothing about it. In the current situation, it is trivial to catch the seller: the databases advertised in spam, for example, are delivered by a courier. If the police were interested in hindering this activity (or forcing it deeper underground, at least), they would do this in a blink of the eye. Nothing is done, though.

3. I like the way Norway deals with this danger, partially at least. A lot of information in Norway is public, period. National and mobile operatiors phone directory is public (unless you specifically ask the mobile operator to withhold yor number from the listing) and searchable online. Summaries of tax amount, personal income and fortune by year are public for everybody, complete with mail addresses and year of birth (it used to be the full date of birth, but they have decided to limit it to the year recently). The tax database have been open for a good hundred of years, previously as paper records and now online. Only a handful of persons in the country can have their records hidden from the public view, usually those stalked by sex offenders (e.g. by former hisbands) and the like. Basic information on all companies and organizations is searchable online, too.

Replying to self here - found this describing the Central Marketing Exclusion Register (to sign up, you still go to the Norwegian page).

It works very well, and offers consumers protection against telemarketers and also targeted snailmail advertising.

The individual's right to privacy is very strong here, btw.
There are a lot of restrictions on correlating data from different databases, and using data for other than their original intended purpose (for instance using the information stored with toll booth companies to track your movements as you drive through various toll booths (paying as you go with your electronic transmitter thingie, so they know where you've passed)).

Actually, this is probably correct.
>Domain Name................: mmadb.no
...snip...
>Post Address...............: Postboks 13
>Postal Code................: N-3283
>Postal Area................: Steinsholt
>Country....................: Norway
>Phone Number...............: +47 33 12 91 22

Norwegian phone-books claim that this number belongs to "Per Johan Johansen" from "3283 Steinsholt", which could very well be his father. I could not find anything about this company in the yellow pages, though. (Gule Sider).

What he refers to as NAIPEEC is Økokrim, where the "Øko"-bit may mean either economic or environmental, and "krim" means crime. They have a web-page, although they don't have information in english, as far as I can see. (Økokrim) NAIPEEC may not be the _correct_ english name for it, but it is a good translation of Økokrims own presentation of themselves.

I couldn't find more information about Micro Media ADB, as the search-pages of Brønnøysundregisteret, the register of companies/enterprises in norway, are non-functional at this time.