FC: Jamie Love on TRUSTe, spam, and industry best practices

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[Jamie is a longtime Politech subscriber who works for (some would say is 
the soul of) the Consumer Project on Technology, a Ralph Nader group that 
is not exactly opposed to government regulation. Previous Politech message: 
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04378.html --Declan]

---

Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 10:44:25 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: FC: TRUSTe on spam and industry adopting best practices
From: "James Love" <james.love () cptech org>
To: <declan () well com>
Cc: <politech () politechbot com>, <fmaier () truste org>

Declan, given the massive amount of spam I receive every day, I would have
to say voluntary methods of regulating spam are a failure by any
reasonable standard, and the only interesting debate is over what type of
government regulation makes sense.  In our opinion, a simple labeling
requirement for unsolicited commerical spam is a no-brainer, if it is
simple and if the requirements are implemented across borders.  The reason
there is no cross border cooperation on rules is both ideological and the
result of lobbying by firms that dream the Internet will be a haven for
self-regulation on other issues.  Hence, we tolerate spam, to prevent
cross border consumer protection measures from getting off the ground.

  Jamie

--
James Love
http://www.cptech.org mailto:james.love () cptech org
mobile +1.202.361.3040

---

Date: 28 Jan 2003 10:34:04 -0500
From: "John R Levine" <johnl () iecc com>
To: "Declan McCullagh" <declan () well com>
Subject: Re: FC: TRUSTe on spam and industry adopting best practices

> TRUSTe encourages companies to look into approaches such our Trusted Sender
> program, ...

I am not a big fan of TRUSTe, since their web seal program is worthless
(they'll certify anything so long as it's documented, and they don't
discipline seal-holders who lie) but the trusted sender program looks
surprisingly good.

The sender promises that what they're sending isn't spam, for a reasonable
definition of spam, then trusted sender then adds a crypto signature
header that recipients can check.  If they get complaints, they stop
signing (with this last part being yet to be demonstrated, of course.)
Ray Everett-Church of CPO and Alladvantage fame is involved and can tell
you more, ray () everett org.

Regards,
John Levine, johnl () iecc com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner
"More Wiener schnitzel, please", said Tom, revealingly.




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