Keith, IMHO you started an excellent line for further debate (and not just because we have the same last name :). It would be nice to see debate from both sides so that pros and cons could be fully explored. I am not sure I am the one to carry the debate to extreme end (due to time constraints), but I will initiate the counter argument. I came here to make a proposal. It is not a proposal I would champion to the end game alone. The feedback is valuable (hopefully to community-at-large as well), whether the proposal florishes or not. >> What you are saying IMO, is that you can't force bulk emailers or spammers >> to use opt-in. > >Let's be even clearer. What's being claimed is that you can't force bulk >emailers to send their email via "pull" technology (whether this means >providing their own POP servers, IMAP servers, NNTP servers, web servers, >whatever) while everyone else can still use "push". "Enforcers" will force the adoption. "Enforcers" being Hosts, ISPs, legislatures, judiciaries, software, etc.. Once you define that *legitimate* bulk email is only delivered by "pull", then enforcers can start to filter bulk email. This will force everyone to get their *legitimate* bulk email via "pull". Else they will not get it. If you have a choice between receiving your *legitimate* bulk email via "pull", or not receiving it, what are you going to do? Now below you argue that enforcers will not enforce. To me that is more viable argument, one that needs to be debated. However, what is the harm in making an RFC and then find out if enforcers will enforce?????? more below... > And the question isn't >really whether bulk mail can be statistically distinguished from non-bulk >mail (since that's really just a matter of whether you can get people to >adopt a definition of "bulk" in terms of externally visible traffic >properties) - the question is whether you can enforce that rule. Agreed. Good point about benefits (real results) of agreeing on definitions. That is in essence why I am making this proposal. I am proposing we make a definition of spam which is both agreed upon and not ambiguous to enforcers. Simple as that. In my mind, the thing to consider is what is the cost of making this definition compared to what is the benefit?? To me, that is one of the major aspects that need to be debated. Economics (in the larger sense of "economy" as efficiency or survival/evolution, not just financial systems) *always* rules the outcome. >IMHO - most recipients don't want to get their mail that way (and many of >the deployed user agents don't support it), Most people already get their email through POP, even if there is a web-based client on top of it. We already went through the discussion that Hotmail and Yahoo have the ability to access POP accounts. They wouldn't have the feature if people aren't using it. > most senders don't want the >increased burden of providing POP/IMAP/NNTP/web servers Only *legitimate* bulk email senders (mostly that is mailing lists) would have to do this. Non-bulk email and spam does not change it's paradigm. Spam is dealt with by enforcers. Only *legitimate* bulk email senders (mostly that is mailing lists) would have to do this. Only *legitimate* bulk email senders (mostly that is mailing lists) would have to do this. Just making that very clear. *Legitimate* bulk email senders already have a burden of maintaining mailing list databases, maintaining a subscribe and unsubscribe support, handling bounces, etc...s > and the necessary >customer support, I assert there will be less or similar hassles with supporting a "pull" paradigm for *legitimate* bulk email than all the hasslings of teaching newbies how to subscribe and correctly interface with Majordomo mailing list. I do not think it is a big difference. And if you are protecting the mailing list administrators to save spam, then that seems like a bad set of priorities for internet email as a whole. > and there are enough ISPs that derive significant revenue >from selling bandwidth to spammers that it would be extremely difficult to get >them all to enforce this. This is wrong. This would be saying that the economy of spam is significant compared to the internet economy as a whole. ISPs are losing $ big time to spam. > In short: nobody has sufficient incentive to adopt >this. Maybe "nobody" in this list, but let this thread sit in Google for a while and see what might snowball over time :) >Of course there's nothing wrong with defining another way to distribute bulk >mail that people can use if they wish. Great. That is what I said above. Why not see what the enforcers will do? They can not do any thing now, because their hands are tied to ambiguous definition of spam as UBE. They need spam == *BE in order to act. > If it works well, some people will >use it. The stretch is to insist that everybody do it this way. No. If it works well (if the enforcers adopt), then everyone will use it, else they won't receive their *legitimate* bulk email.