Re: Proposed EU Directive on Electronic Commerce

[Ragnar Lonn <]

On Mon, 18 Jan 1999, Dave Wilson wrote:

> > Another thought: since we're tagging anyway, do we want "categories" of
> > SPAM? Like Financial (MMF spammers should set this), Technical, Erotic, 
> > Illegal (MMF spammers should set this too :), etc...?
> 
> Labelling anything at all is a terrible idea in the first place, it's a
> non-stop ride to the pits of despair :-) I can just about hack the idea of a
> label that says "This is unsolicited and may be damaging to your server", but
> only because spam is worse (just about). Labelling *content* starts to raise
> the spectre of censorship.
> 

Wait a minute... censorship?  The idea was that the *spammers*
(advertisers) would label their messages so as to enable ISPs to pass them
through to customers that have indicated they did want to receive UCE 
marked with those specific keywords. It is no guarantee that the UCE will
be of the kind the person wants but it is between the person and the
advertiser - if the person doesn't get UCE of the proper category s/he
can try using other keywords or tell the ISP to stop forwarding UCE to
him/her altogether.

Why is this such a bad idea?  Give me an example of how it can
fail miserably because I can't think it up myself.

  /Ragnar