At 01:43 PM 2/28/99 -0800, SRE said:
>I'm not
>sure the average contractor would be offended, as most list owners
>are not offended, but what if the mailed flyer said all contractors
>had ASKED to be included? Wouldn't that be false advertising?
I've read the archive on this thread; I don't recall anyone from
Topica posting on this list, nor do I recall Vince saying that
Topica has advertised that everyone in their directory has asked
to be there. No one said that! To argue about it, then, is
pointless.
>Anyway, who cares if anyone gets 100% buyoff? It's just common courtesy
>to tell someone they've been included as material in a website you are
>making money from. Let them know that they've been added, and don't
>say it's opt-in when it's really opt-out, and this thread can die.
So the online telephone directories should contact you? Huh.
Vince said that Topica contacts owners -- *once* -- *after* someone has
subscribed to a list through them, to ask if it is OK to ARCHIVE the
list, and that this is an opt-in process (no answer="no"). That is
the ONLY thing he said was "opt-in". You (and MANY others, as far as
I can see) are talking about the listing in a directory, which has
been imported from OTHER, PUBLIC listings. Public is public, yet
because there are automated tools out there (e.g., Lizst) gathering
list info, they give you the opportunity to de-list if you wish.
THAT *IS* RESPONSIBLE.
Obviously, Vince has volunteered to announce the existence on various
forums where list owners hang out, so there IS an attempt to notify
owners of the new service, which is one hell of a lot better than
Alexa, et al., has ever done.
In short, if you want to argue this stuff, fine. But can we argue
about what they're REALLY doing rather than apply concept X to theory
Y and arguing about why that's bad? Mixing up opting in to their list
archives and opting out of a public directory -- totally, completely
different concepts -- is certainly throwing out a lot of smoke, but
without adding any light to the concepts.
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