On Mon, 30 Apr 2001, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
On 4/30/01 7:18 AM, "James M Galvin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I've often wondered if it was practical to create a list of
> "Certified Non-Spammers."
How would you fund it? Why should anyone (especially AOL) adopt it
instead of their own policies? And most importantly, it seems any
organization that tried this would be setting itself up for huge
legal liability issues.
As answered in a prior note to Tom Neff, my proposed model is that list
owner sites would "subscribe" for a fee. There is a fee schedule issue
for the one list site, but I don't think that's insurmountable.
What I'm proposing is not a replacement for most of the tried and true
technical solutions that can be applied to identifying spam. It is a
replacement for the 1-1 contracting AOL is kicking-off. A
centralization of this for the good of the Internet in general is surely
a cost-savings for them.
On the liability issue I disagree but read on for more information.
And if you think back to what started this whole discussion -- you
can't do this until there's a common, legally definable and agreed
upon definition of spam, and good luck there -- this thread's here
because AOL evidently thought someone was issuing spam, and the site
involved doesn't.... That to me is basic evidence that more
organizational bureaucracy doesn't solve the core issue here.
My proposal is not trying to identify spam, per se, but trying to
identify legitimate list managers. Legitimate, in this case, means
things like opt-in and accountability. AOL, and surely any responsible
ISP/ASP, doesn't really want to look at your email to see if it's spam
or not. They just want a high-level of confidence that it comes from a
source that is either legitimate (a definition yet to be cast in stone)
or easily identifiable so they can be ameliorated.
I don't see the "obvious" liability issue. A list owner subscribes to
be listed as legitimate. If they are then they are listed. Receiving
sites take advantage of this information when evaluating high-volume
input. To subscribe you have to identify yourself, and you have to pay
which is additional identifying information. True spammers thrive on
anonymity. I don't see them getting past this first hurdle.
Do you see something I'm missing?
Jim
