On 4/30/01 11:36 AM, "Tom Neff" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> As I remarked to Chuq privately, I was really thinking of discussion
> forums. We all receive E-newsletters that must number in the millions. I
> would actually be in favor of regulating those a bit more.
The problem with that is that it's an arbitrary distinction. They all use
the same software for the most part. What's the difference between a
discussion list, a moderated discussion list, or an e-newsletter? If I
created [EMAIL PROTECTED], where I post all my deepest thoughts,
how do you categorize it? If I then start having people send their favorite
links, and I approve the ones I like, does it change category? What if I
take the ones I like and repost them from my account,instead of approve them
as moderator?
And most important -- if all of these were run off the same server using
majordomo or mailman as the MLM and sendmail or postfix as MTA -- how in the
heck could someone on the other side figure out how to deal with those
different categories?
One thing Tom said to me privately I'd like to mention here -- he said he
saw e-newsletters as something where a company like AOL might even ask to be
paid to accept it.
I understand his point of view, but I think it's the wrong one; the stuff I
do, for instance, is because people came to us and asked us to tell them
about stuff; AOL's people asked for it -- and a good argument can be made
we're supplying a service to them, not that they're accepting advertising
from us (in reality, reality is somewhere in the middle of this, and both
are basically true at the same time). To me, his suggestion is like AOL
telling Amazon to pay them to allow amazon's web pages to be shown to AOL
customers -- when in fact, AOL is being paid by their customers so they can
go to places like Amazon.
It's all in the perception, and you have to be careful that how you color
your perceptions doesn't overly bias how you decide to solve these things --
especially if you aren't sure your perception matches the general
populace....
