Subject: FTC says no do-not-email until there's authentication

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 15 Jun 2004 17:41:11 -0000

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission just released their report on a
do-not-email list, which says that it's not a good idea, at least
not right now.

This wouldn't be relevant to MARID except that they said that the
biggest reason it's not a good idea is that it's nearly impossible
to tell where any particular spam came from, and Internet e-mail
needs better authentication, like what MARID is doing.  They go
on to say that they hope that industry (that's us) come up with
something, but if we don't, the government should mandate one.

The FTC understands the spam problem quite well, they know all of the
other reasons that a do-not-email list, particularly one of individual
addresses, would be a bad idea, so PLEASE don't rehash them here.

If you want to comment further, it would be a good idea to look at the
press release and report first.  You can quote the first two words on
page 33 so we can tell that you've looked at the report.

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2004/06/canspam2.htm (press release)
http://www.ftc.gov/reports/dneregistry/report.pdf (report)

Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
http://www.taugh.com