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Re: [Asrg] 6. Proposals - Legal - Subject labeling - FTC response- more discussion needed

I believe that rough consensus exists:
We believe that the labeling requirement in S.877 will not result in significant sender compliance.
The reasons being that S.877 provides weak enforcement mechanisms for its labeling requirement - and that California tried a similar requirement for years and it had no notable positive effect.
Based on the postings I've seen here and in other forums, the bill is unpopular among people who fight spam, despite its good points.
http://www.junkbusters.com/spams.html lists the following as not liking the bill:
Jason Catlett, President, Junkbusters Corp.
Jeff Chester, Executive Director, Center for Digital Democracy
Tom Geller, Secretary, SpamCon Foundation
Beth Givens, Director, Privacy Rights Clearing House
Ken McEldowney, Executive Director, Consumer Action
Scott Hazen Mueller, Chairman, CAUCE.org (Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email)
Chris Murray, Legislative Counsel, Consumers Union
Gary Ruskin, Executive Director, Commercial Alert

The only counterargument I've seen is that the US isn't California (a really weak argument, especially given that CA is perhaps 1/4 of the US tech economy).
The following S.877 excerpt is equally true with respect to labeling with 'States' meaning states of the world, not states of the union:
//

/ (11) Many States have enacted legislation intended to
regulate or reduce unsolicited commercial electronic mail,
but these statutes impose different standards and
requirements. As a result, they do not appear to have been
successful in addressing the problems associated with
unsolicited commercial electronic mail, in part because,
since an electronic mail address does not specify a
geographic location, it can be extremely difficult for
law-abiding businesses to know with which of these disparate
statutes they are required to comply./


(Further comments interspersed below.)

On 12/1/2003 2:35 PM, Eric S. Raymond sent forth electrons to convey:

Yakov Shafranovich <research@solidmatrix.com>:

We MUST have a constructive response in *addition* to whatever else we do, or lose future influence on the interpretation and implementation of CAN-SPAM.

Yes, we do need to respond with a labeling standard.
Would a response that ALSO states that we believe the labeling requirement that the response standardizes will not result in significant compliance, and how it can be fixed, be constructive? I think so.
Or do you believe we need to make it seem that we think this is a great bill? I think the FTC thinks that this is a good bill; other than prohibiting using false claims that an unsolicited e-mail was solicited, and supporting consumer action, it's what they asked for:http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/07/spamtest.htm.

I have a draft RFC, to which I've seen the following responses:
You didn't mention that I'd also made some suggestions, which I referred to Mon, 01 Dec 2003 12:36:51 -0800.
Here they are, rephrased/refined:
While providing a standard to which the law may require compliance, we must not provide it the appearance of any legitimacy or IETF stamp of approval.

I PROPOSE that the letter referred to above (Posted at http://www.junkbusters.com/spams.html) be the basis for a section of the draft. It's language that a bunch of respected folks have already agreed upon. It hits the key points that need to be addressed very well. Others, some less key: the labeling requirement in S.877 will not result in significant sender compliance, long arm provisions to make it apply to assets/spammers/advertisers outside the US but within reach of US law.
Let's not get into the individual items in that letter, at least for a few days. Rather, let's confirm (or deny) a rough consensus on two issues:
1)True or false: the labeling requirement in S.877 will not result in significant sender compliance.
2)True or false: the labeling standard should speak of the bill's deficiencies and/or the IETF's non-approval/endorsement.

I don't think these have been discussed, I don't think the ASRG has exhausted its mandate on this topic; if this draft is being discussed on the ietf-822 or main list (http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/ietf/Current/maillist.html) I haven't seen it; wherever it's on topic, I'd like to see these discussed.


3. One misunderstanding about the scope of "commercial email" in CAN-SPAM
and my draft. [explained away as] CAN-SPAM's "CE" is your "UCE".

Sorry. The definitions are more alike than I had believed. (S.877's definition is short and good enough, even if it isn't clear or wrong on some edge cases that, for example, http://mail-abuse.org/standard.html deals with.)
Still, it's not ideal that the draft uses a phrase that S.877 redefines to be something quite different from its plain language meaning.
The draft defines and uses "porn email" instead of using S.877's definition of /`sexually oriented material'/

I'm volunteering to be the point guy on this. The issue interests me, and my
public fame might turn out to be a useful tool when it comes time to talk
the FTC and Congress out of peeing in the proposal so they'll like the
flavor better.
Let me reiterate that I do not view this effort as competitive with
any of the other proposals on the table (LMAP, callback, pull, MTA
labeling, whatever) but as complementary with them.

Those of you with interest in this issue, please work with me to
improve the draft.

Hope so; agreed; trying.



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