Do-Not-Email Registries?

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Posted by michael on Friday February 7, 2003 @01:27PM from the you-have-already-opted-in dept.

prgrmr writes "Wired has an article about Colorodo and Missouri's latest legislative proposals to deal with spam and with spammers. There appears to be actual consumer-protective teeth in these bills which mirror the telephone 'do not call' lists. A nice example of a government perpetuating a working concept instead of trying inventing new ways to break things."

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Might work if.... by www.sorehands.com · 2003-02-07 13:33 · Score: 5, Insightful
It might work if it had some of the following provisions:
- Trap names on the list so that the states' sttorney general's office may go after them.
- Statutory penalties for violations.
- Liability for companies that hire spammers.
- The ability to block domains, not just individual users.
--
Fight Spammers!
stop the spammers with a central email list by ses4j · 2003-02-07 15:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

Legislation introduced in Colorado and Missouri would create a central database of residents who don't want to receive unsolicited e-mail...
Great, we'll stop the spammers by building a huge central repository of working email addresses, and then give access to the lists to spammers worldwide. How could THAT backfire?
scott
Finally, but... by sethadam1 · 2003-02-07 17:52 · Score: 5, Insightful

Sounds like a great idea...but....

with a forged packet headers, open relays, and a global internet not subject to any one state or country's laws..is this in any way enforceable?
Re:Why Legal and Not Technical Solutions by MillionthMonkey · 2003-02-07 20:15 · Score: 4, Insightful

I understand the problem with SPAM, but why a legal solution to a technical problem?

Because it's not a technical problem- it's a social problem that happens to involve technology. I suppose the phone company should come up with technical method to stop telemarketers as well, but the failure of technical solutions in solving the telemarketer problem was what prompted the creation of the do-not-call list. Technical solutions to spam have so far been a failure as well. The most you can hope for is a perpetual arms race.

It reminds me of the litgation induced from "deep linking," when in reality the web master simply needs to better configure his/her server.

That's a case of corporate idiots bursting onto the scene and applying political and legal pressure to destroy the protocols that made the web successful, because they want to shape it into something that favors their own myopic interests, and they think they can spend the money to get the courts to back them with a poorly reasoned decision. The fact that there's a technical solution to what they're whining about is convenient but irrelevant. Even if there weren't a technical solution to prevent deep linking, their case would be bankrupt.

Similarly there are technical solutions to this. If I'm on a "do-not-email" list, then why don't I configure my email client to only accept emails within my address book? Many email clients can do this filtering, even web based ones, so what's the problem? Effectively, this is what these people want and there's a solution so why the red tape?

Because we shouldn't have to resort to whitelists. I cannot compile a list of everyone in the world who isn't an asshole and who I might want to get email from. Maybe you never get mail except from six people, but some of us have to distribute our contact information.