[2520] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
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daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU)
Fri Mar 13 12:08:51 1992
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 92 12:04:55 EST
From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU
To: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <9203130235.aa15421@looking.clarinet.com> "brad@looking.clarinet.com"
From: brad@looking.clarinet.com (Brad Templeton)
Of course, adding extra headers to mail is easy. I bring this up here
because we may want to filter mail even before it gets to my system.
It seems to me that this is the ideal solution: Mail will be marked
by the sender as to the type; the recipient does what he wants based
on that type (possibly throwing it away unread). That's what people
do already with postal mail. And things that look like junk mail but
aren't are often marked "Information you requested."
The only "legislative" concern would be rules pressuring people who send
mail to classify their mail. Deliberately sending mail under the wrong
classification (ie. junk mail as a personal message) would be some sort
of offence [...].
It may already be an offence -- wire fraud. (In the US, anyway. I
don't know about the law in other countries, but I suspect that it's
similar on this point.) Someone once explained to me that that's why
mailers don't write "Information you requested" on unsolicited mail --
it would be mail fraud, which is a severe crime.
Dale Worley Dept. of Math., MIT drw@math.mit.edu
--
A man about to speak the truth should keep one foot in the stirrup.
-- Old Mongolian Saying
