On Friday 21 May 2004 20:23, Tom Allison wrote: > Adam Aube wrote: > > Tom Allison wrote: > >>Spam RBL's are being attacked on the legal front which puts black > >> lists in jepardy. The idea being that businesses have a legal > >> right to solicit their customers and a third party cannot block > >> that. > > > > Spammers will never win a case against RBL operators, because the > > RBLs themselves do not actually block anything. It is the the > > individual organization that decides what RBLs (if any) to use, > > and therefore it is the individual organization which sets up the > > blocking that is preventing the "legitimate solicitation of > > business". > > http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/12/spam_king_vs_spamcop/ > > It's articles like this one that leave me in doubt. They did get > repealed shortly after, but the fact that they made enough progress > to block spamcop is something. It's a matter of time. 21 Billion > USD can't get ignored for too long.
Larceny is a multi-billion dollar industry too, but it is unlikely to get much official sanction. It is all a question of what is generally felt to be morally acceptable, and public attitudes are changing (I mean amongst the new mass netizenship). My main fear is that the backlash will be _too_ strong, and we'll have another prohibition. Prohibition always creates a black market -- look at the disaster of the war on drugs feeding the greatest underworld ever. (even further OT: http://stopthedrugwar.org/index.shtml) I am convinced that we need a mechanism to allow user-controlled (i.e. recipient-controlled) commercial promotional email. It would take some of the pressure off, and together with all the other measures could allow the spam tide to be reduced to manageable proporions, given the widespread public unhappiness with the present situation. -- richard -- richard -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
