[11829] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Discouraging unwanted advertising
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Sirbu)
Thu Apr 21 13:53:46 1994
Date: Thu, 21 Apr 1994 10:00:43 -0400 (EDT)
From: Marvin Sirbu <ms6b+@andrew.cmu.edu>
To: com-priv@psi.com
As the recent "Green Card" email has made clear, the problem of unwanted
advertising is quite real. Solutions are quite difficult. The
following ideas provide one model.
A. We need a new RFC which would define a new mail header "Advertisement:"
B. Network Service Providers (NSPs) should have an AUP(!!) which states
that any customer who transmits email that is an advertisement must mark
the mail with the "Advertisement:" header.
C. The CIX should agree that they will only accept members and carry
traffic without settlements for member networks who adopt the AUP in
point B.
What would be the result of these steps?
1.) Users would begin to program their mail readers to automatically
delete messages marked as "Advertisement:" except perhaps within certain
defined bboards. Systems which provided netnews forwarding or listservs
could program them to automatically delete messages marked
Advertisement: if they wished to. Newsservers might allow such messages
only in specific news groups in which such messages would be deemed
appropriate. (e.g. comp.sys.new-products.ads). No one would be
prevented from sending forth a message marked Advertisement, but others
could then make their own decisions about what to do with such messages.
2) There is often a fine line between what is an ad and what is helpful
information about a product or service that fulfills a need someone
inquired about. Marking the message alters the burden of proof. If a
message is marked Advertisement: the NSP is obliged by its terms of
service to carry the traffic. If it is not so marked, the NSP can make
the decision about whether it was a violation of the AUP and choose to
terminate service to the offender without recourse. A sensible NSP will
tolerate a few transgressions by the ignorant without pulling the plug;
knowing and deliberate abuse of the system as in the Green Card incident
would prompt swift action without fear of a retaliatory lawsuit.
3) Point B above is necessary to prevent some enterprising advertiser
from forming his own network, joining the CIX, and then flooding the net
with advertising messages that are not marked Advertisement: I realize
that the CIX was formed to escape one form of an AUP, but I suggest to
you that if the CIX does not eventually adopt some sort of policies to
deal with the problems that the Green Card ad represents, the usefulness
of the net will surely be diminished greatly in the future by
recurrences of the Green Card problem, and that this will reduce the
market for CIX members' services.
Readers of this list might reflect on why the advertising problem has
never occurred on Prodigy, Compuserve or AOL?
1) They charge for messages! No one can afford to send messages to
thousands of users mailboxes (except the system operators themselves --
I was always getting messages on Prodigy by the sysop touting some new
feature)
2) They have an AUP! Prodigy, viewing itself as an electronic
publisher, rserves the right to remove posts to its various bboards if
they are "inappropriate".
Of these two approaches, the second seems more consistent with the
traditions of the Internet than the first.
Marvin Sirbu
Carnegie Mellon
P.S. Those who have followed the debates over dial-a-porn telephone
services will recognize the above approach as similar to that adopted by
the FCC to deal with "indecent" material without violating first
ammendment rights. For the "Advertisement:" header, substitute "use the
576- exchange". For automatic filtering of messages marked
"Advertisement:" substitute "default blocking of the 576 exchange" And
for arguments about when is a message an Advertisement substitute "the
burdern of proof of whether a dial-a-porn service is guilty of
'distributing indecent material to minors' shifts depending upon whether
it was listed on the 976 exchange or the 576 exchange." Point C above
is unnecessary, since FCC rules automatically apply to all telephone
NSPs.
