Re: RIPE32 Anti-spam WG minutes (draft 1.1)

[Nate Waddoups <]

On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, Ragnar Lonn wrote:

> On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, Piet Beertema wrote:
> 
> > Can we please stop starting the same discussion
> > and arguments over and over again? I've argued
> > before that there are cases where people *are*
> > interested in UCE.

And there are online services / internet providers that cater directly to
such people. There are also a lot of people who are NOT interested in UCE,
and I think it's safe to say that 99% of the people on this list are most
interested in online services / internet providers who cater to the latter
group. 

And before we get too carried away about legitimizing UCE, note that 99%
of the UCE we receive today is forged messages from hit-and-run throwaway
accounts.  I submit that the people responsible for this are not likely to
follow ANY guidelines that might result in fewer people receiving their
messages, no matter how many people they annoy as a result.

People who care about advertising without annoying people already have
channels to route their ads through - banner ads, opt-in, ads in
ad-supported mailing lists, and ad-revenue-powered services like AOL.

People who are interested in commercial email already have channels from
which to receive what they want.

This list (I thought) was created and maintained on behalf of the
rest of the internet community.  Perhaps I'm wrong, but that's my
perception.

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Assume just 4 million businesses on the Internet today...
If 1% of them sent you one piece of junk email per year,
you'd still have to wade through over 100 messages per day.