Re: Water tight opt-in (yet another FUSSP)

On 01/04/2014 08:51 PM, Barry Shein wrote:
> 
> On January 4, 2014 at 17:12 [email protected] (Steve Atkins) wrote:
>  > Some of those concerns are certainly valid - but if you want people
>  > to take your views on them seriously you might want to rethink
>  > your terminology. Bundling *all* email which has the potential of
>  > generating revenue from the sender - including everything from 1:1 mail
>  > from my sales rep at one of my suppliers through to botnet generated
>  > malware -  into a single concept is unlikely to lead to useful discussion
>  > either.
> 
> Sez who.
> 
> It's fundamentally about the receiver being able to control what they
> receive. And what intermediaries (e.g., those who host your email box)
> will carry.
> 
> They don't need anyone not directly involved to decide what should be
> exempt from that control.

I don't see that the proposal at hand, nor much else discussed here is
making anything exempt, hence, I think your point:

> That's my point.

isn't really on-point.

> And that whatever the intent, no matter how noble, there are so many
> thousands of "legitimate" emailers, as well as miscreants, that email
> has become increasingly unusuable outside of focused interactions such
> as this or one on one email.

Of course there are thousands of legitimate mailers.  There are billions
of receivers too.  If anything, that ratio seems really low.

And as a point of fact, my email is MUCH more useable than it used to be.

> As I said I'd set that boundary somewhere very different than you
> would, most likely. So, it's the old mechanism vs policy discussion.

I think you're setting that boundary somewhere around the "commercial
transactions shouldn't be taking place on the Internet" zone.  Even to
old-fart curmudgeons like me that position seems a trifle extreme.

> At any rate, as soon as one is discussing legitimate versus
> non-legitimate senders and similar I think they're wading into a
> quagmire, yet again.

The terminology is gibberish, and everybody in this conversation seems
to have radically different definitions of it.

I buy woodworking tools from Lee Valley.  They email me a monthly
newsletter and every once in a while and occasionally emails about specials.

I _want_ that.  I _asked_ for that.  Are they a sender?  Of course. Can
I block their email if I don't want it?  Yup.  Can I unsubscribe?  Yup.
Do they share my email with others?  Nope.  They sure and hell ain't
illegitimate senders.  So what are they?  There is _only_ one
alternative with a binary terminology.  A legitimate sender.

Horrors.  And there's lots of them.  Horrors!

But precisely how are they ruining it for everyone?  Sure, it costs me
to receive their email and they make a lot more money if I buy one
(drool drool, that hand plane costs more than my whole computer - maybe
when I win a lottery), but it's one of the reasons why I have email in
the first place.

Actually, rather than a horror, it's a good example of the Internet &
commerce working together rather well.

Then, there's Grace in the Kitchen, a cool store of good kitchen gear,
and houses "Serious Cheese".  How serious?  You needed reservations to
watch them split the Grana Padano.  Yum!

Their email is done by Mailchimp.  And _perfectly_.  They even COI'd a
POS email email acquisition.  And don't share my email address.

And we bought some Grana Padano, a pound of which is worth more than
many of our reader's networking for a month.  So yes, they made money
off the transaction, none of which reimbursed my network connection.  So?

Legitimate?  Well, they're not illegitimate, so that leaves only one
alternative.

> But just to bring this down to earth, I am trying to introduce some
> different ways of thinking about the problem.

I hate to say it, this different way you're speaking of isn't making any
sense yet.

> Telling me they're not consistent with the almost total disaster of
> spam fighting over the past ~15 years really isn't a compelling
> refutation.

Murder is still with us.  Are the laws against murder a total disaster?
 I think not.  And besides, the amount of crap getting thru to inboxes
is FAR less than it was years ago, despite the hugely increased volumes
on the wire.
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