Subject: RE: [Asrg] A New Plan for No Spam / DNSBLS

From: "Olson, Margaret" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 21:15:30 -0400

>From: Jim Youll [mailto:[email-masked]]

>1 - with what authority do you speak? The website for the ESPC 
>initiative does not list any leaders or others who are publicly said 
>to speak authoritatively on behalf of the other members.
I have been heavily involved with the development of the proposal. I
just checked the web site myself, and it is seriously lacking. I'll
try to get this addressed.

>2 - my greatest concern (I cannot speak for others here) is not those 
>mailers who are well-behaved of their own initiative, but all the 
>rest. Why do you suppose your organization will be able to improve 
>things? If your few members are not already well-behaved, what is 
>their incentive to stay in the organization and suffer "punishment" 
>and for that matter, what is the worst you can do to them? If they 
>are not well-behaved now, what is their motivation in forming this 
>organization? To put this most plainly, what can you offer to 
>demonstrate that this is not simply a lobbying effort?

Basically by introducing accountability. As ISPs and others transition
to using the new information by which they can hold senders accountable,
it will get harder and harder to send mail (and certainly volume mail)
if you aren't willing to be held accountable. There is an objective
rating system, and the "punishment" is a poor score. Presumably, most
people won't accept mail from poor scoring senders. The rating system
has to be run by a third party - not the ESPC or any of it's members.

The motivation in making this proposal is to end spam. Spam is a huge
industry problem and it affects us both directly and indirectly. 

You raise some very good questions and they deserve a fuller answer than
I have given here. I am working with the other ESPC members to put together
at least a short whitepaper as soon as possible, hopefully within a couple
weeks. 

I will be pretty tied up for the remainder of this week, and may not get 
back to questions from this list promptly.

Margaret.

---

From: "Alan DeKok" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 11:12:01 -0400

"Olson, Margaret" <[email-masked]> wrote:
> As ISPs and others transition to using the new information by which
> they can hold senders accountable, it will get harder and harder to
> send mail (and certainly volume mail) if you aren't willing to be
> held accountable.

  That's nice.  It also doesn't help the "mom and pop" business who
discover that there are 1,000 "accountable" businesses, all sending
them "low-volume" amounts of marketing email.

  ESPC does nothing to alleviate the recipients problems or costs
associated with sending "accountable" email.

> There is an objective rating system, and the "punishment" is a poor
> score. Presumably, most people won't accept mail from poor scoring
> senders.

  And many people can't afford to accept mail from a large number of
high scoring senders.

  People want to run their *own* businesses.  They don't care about
anyone elses business goals.  This applies to spammers (and ESPC
members), as well as a "mom and pop" style business.

  Alan DeKok.
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