Subject: RE: [Asrg] 6. Proposals - Legal - Subject labelling (?)

From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 06:47:24 -0800

> Jon,
> 
> I suggest you take a look at some prior work with PICS, and P3P.

I am not sure that that will be usefull.

I was the person who originally proposed the ultra-extensibility mechanism
in PICS and I did it as a wrecking ammendment. The political situation was
that there was an unholy alliance between the Stalinist wing of the
Marxist/Feminist left (Dworkin/Mackinon) and the Religious Right. Both
factions wanted to establish an Internet censorship board so that they could
have a forum to exercise influence in.

PICS allows anyone to define their own censorship scheme. Each censorship
scheme is identified by a URI identifier and may have multiple dimensions
(sex, violence, rudeness, political alignment) each of which is scored on a
scale.

The idea of multiple censorship schemes was to ensure that there was no
single internet censorship board. This destroyed the reason for the alliance
between the authoritarian right and left factions and with it a good deal of
the support for the bill.

So no, you do NOT want to use PICS for this. You will also find that the
documents compiled by the technical committee are uniformly evasive on their
purpose. They hide behind euphemisms rather than admit what they are doing.

What you want for the purpose of the bill is a single uniform classification
scale. You do not want every spammer defining their own.

I think the bill needs to be read carefully, did the ADV convention ever
make it to Internet standard? I suspect it was experimental.

There are various types of commercial material:

1) Advert, Unsolicited, no prior business relationship, cold calling
2) Advert, Prior business relationship
3) Advert, Solicited,
4) Account, presumably solicited
5) Report of transaction, invoice etc.

The point being that it is vital to allow types 4 and 5 through and may be
pretty important to allow type 3 through.

		Phill

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From: "Eric S. Raymond" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 09:58:31 -0500

> make it to Internet standard? I suspect it was experimental.
 
I have read the bill carefully.  

> pretty important to allow type 3 through.

Yes.  These are the categories CAN-SPAM dsecribes as "transactional and 
relationship" mail.  They are explicitly exempted from the labeling
requirement.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>

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From: "Chris" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 27 Nov 2003 10:15:47 +1030

>
> Yes.  These are the categories CAN-SPAM describes as "transactional and
> relationship" mail.  They are explicitly exempted from the labelling
> requirement.

That's a relief, so if someone is designated as "opt-in" does not need a
label on mail sent to them

the problem there is that I get tons of Spam "CLAIMING" I have opted in

When I know I haven't, because I use individual e-mail addresses for each
list I do "opt in" for

How do you prove you didn't opt in? so that the law could be enforced.

And when reading the fine print for most opt-ins it usually says something
like I accept receiving mail from this organisation and any affiliated
organisations

Q/ What is an affiliated organisation ?

A/ any one they sell their e-mail list to.

Regards
Chris

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From: "Eric S. Raymond" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 18:48:14 -0500

> How do you prove you didn't opt in? so that the law could be enforced.

This is a normal repudiation problem; the law deals with these with respect
to conventional mail and contracts all the time.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/">Eric S. Raymond</a>