-Caveat Lector- ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- The DLC Update Monday, November 1, 1999 ************************************************************************* Discuss the Idea of the Week at the DLC Idea Exchange at http://www.dlc.org/idea/discussion.htm ************************************************************************* ***Idea of the Week: Canning "Spam"*** No, we are not talking about the tasty luncheon meat called Spam, but rather the annoying unsolicited commercial e- mail called "spam" that is popping up more and more frequently on millions of home computers. It's time to put it back in the can. Spam needs to be controlled because its proliferation is a major threat to wider use of the Internet. The intrusive nature of unsolicited commercial e-mail feeds recipients' worst fears about electronic threats to their personal privacy and security online. Because "spammers" typically get e-mail addresses by buying them or otherwise leeching them from voluntary online transactions, spam undermines consumer confidence in the medium and inhibits the growth of legitimate e-commerce. And since participants in newsgroups, online forums, and other interactive uses are most vulnerable to becoming targets for spam, it's beginning to have a chilling effect on the Internet as an important civic space. Defenders of spam often suggest it's no different than the unsolicited commercial "junk mail" that clogs the postal system: annoying no doubt, but easy to dispose of and essentially harmless. But spam really is different because recipients and Internet service providers (ISPs) pay the freight in transaction, communications and storage costs. Estimates vary on the total price tag for that cost shifting, but it has been pegged as high as 10 percent of Internet service provider's overhead costs--and that gets passed on in consumers' monthly bills. Without question, spam is getting bigger and badder. America Online, the largest online service provider, estimates that fully one- third of the e-mail messages coming into its networks from the Internet are spam. That's between 10 million and 24 million chunks of spam per day, just on AOL. Spam is a menace to the digital economy. It clearly warrants federal legislation (several states have enacted anti-spam laws, but limits on state jurisdiction over out-of- state spammers make that a clumsy and potentially confusing and burdensome approach). The legislation, however, must be carefully crafted in order to be hard on spam--that is, unsolicited commercial email--ithout interfering in the legitimate practices of businesses using email to build stronger relationships with existing customers. For example, when someone visits a Web site and indicates interest in receiving further information or updates, any email that business then sends to that individual is not spam, because it is not unsolicited. Legislation should also rely heavily on consumer empowerment with information rather than bureaucratic oversight and provide simple remedies for fraud and abuse. Congress can and should set a national standard, but most of the many pending bills tend to over- or under-shoot the mark. In a new Progressive Policy Institute report, How to Can Spam: Legislative Solutions to the Problem of Unsolicited Commercial Email, Randolph Court and Robert Atkinson lay out a reasonable solution: Require all commercial email to include an "opt- out" mechanism allowing recipients to easily remove themselves from senders' email address lists and avoid unwanted future mailings. 1. Require unsolicited commercial email to include standard identifying labels in the subject line (such as "ADV," indicating the message is an advertisement), so recipients can use filtering software to sort it efficiently. 2. Enumerate rights of action for ISPs to sue those who violate their posted policies against unsolicited commercial email (UCE), and rights of action for states to sue on behalf of citizens harmed by UCE. 3. Require commercial email to contain accurate technical information (such as the controlling data that indicates its point of origin and routing information) in the message "header." Concurrently, the Administration should work with other countries and appropriate international bodies to craft consistent standards addressing the problem of spam. The Internet can remain a free and vibrant medium of communications--personal, political, or commercial-- without resembling a Wild West community where the bad guys discourage the good guys from ever coming to town. Canning spam is an important place to start. ***Over the Top Over the WTO*** We've already taken notice of some of the zanier groups planning protests (see "Bad Company in Seattle," in the September 27, 1999, DLC Update) for Seattle during the World Trade Organization's ministerial summit next month. But a review of some of the literature being circulated to advertise the "battle of Seattle" shows that over-the-top rhetoric is not limited to anarchists or other relics of the radical past. One little pamphlet, entitled "The New World Order," features a trash can in which domestic laws are being tossed, and comments: "Meet the WTO. Meet Your New Masters." Inside, the first section is headed, "The End of Democracy," and concludes by saying, "the U.S. Constitution is no longer the supreme law of the land. We now have a government by, for, and of multinational corporations." The back of the pamphlet invites readers to come to Seattle "for a creative rebellion," where one can "join the forest activists, steelworkers, Wobblies, Zapatistas, performance artists, indigenous peoples, and others from around the globe protesting the WTO." Who sponsored this pamphlet? The Humane Society of the United States (along with the Animal Welfare Institute), those mild and middle-class protectors of household pets. Another widely circulated pamphlet called "A Citizens' Guide to the World Trade Organization" sports on its cover our old buddy "GATTzilla," a cartoon monster spewing toxic wastes and stomping on the U.S. Capitol, who first appeared on the scene during the unsuccessful lobbying campaign against the last round of global trade negotiations. The text calls WTO "one of the main mechanisms of corporate globalization," running a "system of corporate-managed trade." This encyclical is sponsored by a large group of organizations including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Friends of the Earth, and Public Citizen. Our point is not just that relatively credible organizations are lending their names to lurid, indeed cartoonish screeds about trade. More importantly, they are communicating a message about the World Trade Organization that presents the world trading system as an enemy to be vanquished, not as a process to be influenced or changed. Indeed, the Seattle protests are being planned under the slogan, "Stop the WTO." The labor movement and most environmentalists favor a rules-based system of international commerce that respects and reinforces their concerns, and allows them access to its deliberations. The Clinton Administration has endorsed this position, and so have we. The "Stop the WTO" message of the Seattle protests threatens to undermine progress towards opening up the WTO and shaping its agenda just when those long-standing goals of labor and environmental groups are coming into sight. Worse yet, demonizing the one organization we have for rules-based global trade in Buchanan-style rants about shadowy multinational corporations and their evil plans can feed a rejection of internationalism itself. It is important that we do not let the festivities in Seattle degenerate into a spasm of millennial hysteria against the current direction of world history, because if we do, there won't be much to talk about when the protestors go home and the WTO is left to chart a course for global trade. Whatever radical groups plan and over-heated organizers say, we hope that responsible people concerned about the WTO will cooperate with pro-trade advocates to make Seattle the first step in a process to resolve legitimate issues that have been raised about globalization and its potential effect on workers' rights and the environment. International institutions like the WTO should be addressed as part of the solution, not as the source of every problem. ### -------------------------------------------- Subscribe and Unsubscribe -------------------------------------------- You may subscribe to this list at any time by sending an e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "SUBSCRIBE NEWDEMNEWS" in the body of the message. You may leave the list at any time by sending an e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with "SIGNOFF NewDemNews" in the body of the message. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Membership is your key to unlocking doors to the DLC-PPI world of people and ideas. 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