[9612] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Is advertising relevant
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Fri Jan 14 04:13:55 1994
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 1994 04:11:58 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: barney@databus.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Barney Wolff's message of Fri, 14 Jan 94 03:02:57 -0500 <9401140802.AA02369@uu6.psi.com>
>From: Barney Wolff <barney@databus.com>
>One of the clear advantages of host-based access! The problem with
>any sort of CIX solution is that what's being passed are the pure IP
>packets, and it's certainly against tradition to look at the higher
>layers (the notion of CIX as firewall would be bizarre, yes?).
(tradition? sounds like fiddler on the roof. gee, you don't *look*
isoish :-)
>Anyway, how do we tell unsolicited ads from legit mail, at the router?
Or, is the distinction necessary? It comes back to the question of
would such advertising help subsidize the net and is it tolerable?
You have a lot of folks who have stood up here (sort of) and said that
net connections are too expensive for their personal tastes. You've
also had a lot of network providers go to great lengths to say that
may be true, but that observation alone does not lower the cost of
doing business. So, would such folks tolerate some junk e-mail (let's
assume that by adding costs to sending it it can be kept under
control, I dunno) to get their cheap fix? Just a question.
>Beyond technical issues, which I suppose are eventually solvable, is
>the real issue of free speech vs privacy. Barring governmental action,
>as with junk faxes, can a provider really get away with saying you can
>have the bandwidth for some uses but not others?
Of course they can. Advertising is hardly even protected by the 1st
amendment except in the broadest sense (e.g. the public interest
usually comes first, where there is some dispute.) The post office
certainly distinguishes all these things, (as do telephone rates,
business vs residential) if it were a major constitutional problem
you'd think someone woulda noticed by now.
>Folks not in .com would say that this is a case for government. Much
>as I instinctively shrink from it, I haven't yet heard a better solution.
Look, I don't know about this govt-mania, but I think in this case the
solution is rather simple.
You write a contract, and it stipulates something.
Say the decision is that commercial advertising e-mail shall cost 10
cents per message (for our foreign readers, that's a dime.) And that
it shall be marked with a specific header line, like X-Advert: YES.
See, now you can even filter it. Smart advertisers will add even more
info so your filters might pick their ads out to read. Who knows, you
might even end up with some new standards, I was sick of the old ones
anyhow.
So you write that into a contract and you make customers sign it
before they can use your service (or maybe after simply declaring
whether they ever plan to advertise, yes/no, if yes please see page
37.)
You basically define what's an ad. Trust me, this topic has come up
before, you don't have to invent the definition. You also stipulate
some sort of penalty (and you have your basic fraud and theft of
service laws etc behind you also) for willfully evading this. Maybe
you offer the public a reward of $50 for every violation reported to
you which results in a penalty/conviction/whatever. And get your dog
listed in as many of the slick e-mail marketing databases as you can.
Now, even better (assuming this is the model desired) if that became a
required covenant for joining things like the CIX. That way it's a
level playing field and someone can't easily under-sell and just
ignore or refuse to have such a contract. I doubt this would raise an
anti-trust flag since it involves a shared resource and clearly has
been disclosed to the public. But hey such things can be settled so
long as they're worked out up front with the sort of folks who worry
about such things, obviously the intent is not to defraud the public
etc.
So what's the problem? You're not supposed to use bulk commercial
rates to send out your personal Christmas cards either, etc. Somehow
it works, the occasional fraud can be dealt with and it ain't the end
of the world so long as it's kept to a minimum. This may come as a
total shock but most business people are really rather honest when it
comes to such things, in part because they don't want to be
blacklisted right out of the gravy train and in part because the money
involved is not a big percentage of what they're actually trying to
accomplish. Perhaps 10c is too much, but you get the gist of the idea.
-Barry Shein
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