[2509] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Advertising
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Fri Mar 13 02:56:22 1992
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 92 02:54:55 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: LAWS@ai.sri.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Ken Laws's message of Thu 12 Mar 92 23:19:10-PST <700471150.0.LAWS@AI.SRI.COM>
I believe you have raised a valid concern (junk mail and other network
effluvia.)
It is interesting that, as far as I know, such traffic would be
completely legitimate between CIX members. To my knowledge this has
never happened but there are probably reasons this is the case, such
as the sort of customer the nets attract right now and that it's not
trivial to determine to what addresses this would be acceptable (oh,
it may have occurred a few times, but I don't believe it happens often
enough to be much noticed.)
There are four obvious ways to control such traffic (well, five, if
you include not controlling it at all):
1. An official policy enforced and emanating from some authoritative
body (as NSF/AUP is today.)
2. By economics (as you mention, charge them.)
3. By social pressure (people advertise for some reason, to get a
positive response, negative reaction might suppress the behavior, tho
I'll admit it hasn't worked well elsewhere.)
4. Technological control.
The last could be, for example, a required header (this requirement
would demand some sort of enforcement I suppose) marking unsolicited
mail. It could be filtered at any point (gateway, host, delivery
software (MTA), end-user mail software (UA.))
Although I am generally skeptical of using technology to control
people's behavior, in this case it seems compelling to consider.
If it could be enforced it could also be separately charged at some
point in its travel.
Another possible approach to this would be electronic fulfillment
houses with exclusive license to forward bulk, unsolicited mail.
This would be, presumably, for a fee, and a responsibility to ensure
protocol is followed, people are removed from lists upon request, etc.
This is standard (although not mandatory) in the paper junk mail (and
other mailing, eg, magazine) business.
-Barry Shein
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