chuq wrote:
> At 8:56 PM -0800 2/26/99, Michelle Dick wrote:
>
> > However, consider this: you can make money through web advertising by
> > having a website people want to visit. Suppose 100,000 people decide
> > to start up a a mailing list archive and send out email to all the
> > list-owner addresses they can find asking if it is OK to archive their
> > lists. So, now, list-owners are sent hundreds of requests for
> > archiving a day. From commericial entities not trying to sell the list
> > owners anything, but merely asking if they can archive their data so
> > they can make a valuable website that people want to visit so they can
> > sell advertising and make money.
>
> That's annoying -- but not nearly as annoying as if they go ahead and
> archive the stuff, and then tell you what they've done for you and
> how you should be happy.
Sure, I agree. Of course, if I have to choose between someone sending
me one-time email asking if want to recieve their spam on an ongoing
basis and them just sending it, I'll choose the former as well.
> if someone wants to offer me a service, I can simply ignore it. But
> at least they're asking. I can live with that. But most of these
> groups don't ask. They do, and force you to respond to undo that.
So, the fact that it doesn't cost anything and they think it is a
service is what makes it non-UCE?
The banner-exchange programs are free (what they do is have you sign
up with them and for each 2 banners you display of other people's,
they display yours on 1 other site. They then sell the extra one.
The exact ratio varies, but that's the business plan). It doesn't
cost anything to join and have your banner listed. Is it OK for them
to buy email address of people who own websites and send out email to
all of them?
Why or why not? And how does this differ from the requests to
archive? Both are free services, both are run by commerical entities
who hope to make a profit from having the requestee join them. And
what about, say, Intuit sending out email to everyone offering to do
their taxes online for free if they make less than 20K. It's a free
service, too. Very valuable to some people. Intuit wouldn't know in
advance how much you make. (Intuit doesn't do this, BTW, it's just an
example, instead Intuit bought advertising on TV, and on websites to
promote this). What if the income limit were 80K, would that make a
difference?
I'm really curious about this. I'm wondering how to draw the line.
I'm starting to convince myself that maybe this can be considered UCE
since in this *hypothetical* case the sender is using my email bandwidth
to request cooperation from me that will add value to the sender's
business. I'm hoping there is a criterion I've overlooked that was
not used by spammers to differentiate this as non-spam. Help me out,
please. Is it really because it is "free" and the sender thinks it's
valuable to the reciever? Or is it OK if they document through survey
that X percent of the receivers do want it? (BTW, it's clearly OK if
the receiver asked to be listed or if the receiver has a prior
relationship with the sender, even if by proxy, I'm talking only about
the purely unsolicited stuff. PAML clearly has permission to email
the people who asked to be listed and so does anyone PAML grants the
right to).
--
Michelle Dick [EMAIL PROTECTED] East Palo Alto, CA
