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An Opt-in Manifesto
A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of unbridled Unsolicited Bulk or Broadcast Email (UBE). All the powers of business and government, of Direct Marketing Associations and Chambers of Commerce, would seek to legitimise a practice which net.users find unacceptable. Over half of the present net.users have never known a time when there wasn't UBE. Over 90% of them are dead against it. Some react with barely articulate rage, some with disgusted resignation. Others try to take a more active rôle. Organisations such as CAUCE and FREE seek (among other things) to channel this anger and to carry on the struggle "with burning hearts, cool heads, and clean hands".
Net.users come in all sorts. Business people, students, hobbyists, professionals in medicine, law, natural and social science, and others too numerous and varied to mention. Some are geeks or hackers who build and maintain their own rigs and use a variety of Unix-based operating systems. Some are blissful drivers of Windows boxes who can just about find the 'reset' button. Taken together we represent a very tempting target for marketers - being from social economic groups A, B, C1, C2 with the spending power which goes with it.
So why all the anger? Surely one little extraneous e-mail isn't going to bring our communications to a standstill? Ah, but that's just it - it doesn't stop at just one, now does it? One becomes two, three, many, lots and so on towards the proverbial bazillion. Now why should that be? Because, at the end of the day, we the users end up paying for it. A feature of the system is that the marginal cost per message tends toward nil for the sender whilst remaining constant for the recipient. That in itself is not a bad thing, for it enables information to be disseminated quickly and cheaply to those who want it, via mailing lists to which people subscribe. The only problem comes when a system based on trust gets abused by those who are no better than charlatans or con artists. (Actually, the hold-until-collected feature of the Post Office Protocol could conceivably result in increased costs to the user, as providers are forced to lay on increased storage capacity in order to keep their systems functioning, in order to handle traffic which the users don't want.)
These arguments are very familiar to us here, and are becoming increasingly known to many users. The Internet is, after all, a means of sharing and exchanging information, and it should come as no surprise that more and more people experience that great 'aha!' moment, read on, and acknowledge "too blinkin' right, mate!" as they see what had hitherto been their mute outrage expressed and clarified.
There is a strong economic argument against UBE. There are the horror stories of itinerant businessmen wanting to catch up on their e-mail from a remote location and paying exorbitant bills to download 30 A4 sheets of make-money-fast to get that precious two-line enquiry, but such cases tend to be exceptional. Attempts are made, however, to dismiss this argument, and it can be cited that many users look at Spam-Abuse or similar Web sites and then go on to download software, participate in a chat session, or browse the Web further, thus running up connection and phone charges far in excess of what the UBE cost them.
On the other hand it is fair to say that the issue is equally one of personal choice and what urban anthropologists call "defensible space": an intrusion occurs with no visible benefit in such a way that the recipient appears to have no control. Even an unwanted telephone solicitation can be answered with a snarl and a curse and hanging up. For most (but by no means all) users, the e-mail must be downloaded in the order it was received before it can be examined. This is fine for the wanted messages, but what about the other stuff, sent with forged headers so as to disguise its origin from what could just as easily be an ocean away? This "other stuff" threatens to grow in volume until it swamps or crowds out the wanted messages. In this matter choice is apparently being denied to the user.
Apropos choice, it must be remembered that with other forms of advertising, the viewer, listener or reader always has a choice. A paper can be put down, the unwanted material glanced over, television programmes can be recorded for later viewing sans adverts and so on. In any case, it has to be borne in mind that the advertiser has paid, and thereby has subsidised the costs of publication or production. With UBE, there are only costs to the recipient and no benefits.
"Your mileage may vary," as the oft-quoted disclaimer goes. Exposure to the seeming deluge of UBE increases in proportion to one's participation in what is supposed to be a decentralised, participatory medium: Chat, Usenet, and maintaining a Web site in that order, we are told, are used indiscriminately by the unscrupulous as a source for addresses. The result is that any participation in the Internet is liable to be punished!
"No, you're getting it all wrong!" the sock-puppet apologists for UBE say. Then enlighten us! We really fail to see where a Usenet article about cultural developments in the former Habsburg empire can be regarded as a solicitation for some illegal and hare-brained scheme to make money fast or some sleazy porn web site or pirated software on CD. The vast majority of users would appear to share this lack of vision.
These users try various methods to neutralise what they perceive as a threat. One all-too-common subterfuge is to alter or mung their addresses when posting to Usenet, a practice which most if not all administrators condemn as abusive in itself. Munging can reduce the inflow but all too often does not stop it completely. There have even been reports of students being paid to de-mung addresses by people who were absolutely determined to prove a point rather than sell anything. Otherwise why in blazes go to trouble and expense in order to send something to people who have clearly, if clumsily, indicated that they do not want it? Oh sure, the "cleansers" of addresses are paid to deliver addresses of any sort. So much for targeting!
Even a quick overview of Web sites and newsgroups associated with what is called "spam fighting" reveals that some of the most vehement and outspoken campaigners are business people! Amazing, according to one misguided point of view. Yet it should really come as no surprise. These are people whose commercial activities were severely hampered by having to deal with floods of hundreds of useless messages, in order to find the one that actually related to the product or service offered. Others try to implement filtering and sorting schemes which, not surprisingly, the scam artists and porn peddlers do their utmost to circumvent.
Over 90% of the dreck comes from the United States, but a few locals are starting to get in on the act. The legislative situation at present would appear to offer little hope of relief. A promising start was made in an EU Directive (97/7/EC) but was thwarted at the last minute by the Council of Ministers and would anyway have only protected 'consumers'. To what extent dissatisfaction in the business community can be channelled towards legislative change remains to be seen, but it appears that business users in Germany have brought legal action in court in no less than three cases.
The content of much UBE is mentioned only as an illustration of how inappropriately directed it can be. Certainly everyone has individual tastes and preferences, and some kinds of UBE will appear to be more objectionable than others. On the other hand, there is no need to get into a discussion about what is or is not acceptable. It's all bad. If anything, the message length could be more important as it directly impacts how much this drivel we're expected to just delete is going to cost us. But even that doesn't matter in the long run. It's Unsolicited, Broadcast/Boilerplate, and probably Bulk, which puts it in violation of most providers' TOS/AUP and, lacking any clear legislative framework, that is the key to the only recourse we users have at the moment that works: which is to complain to the provider or providers. A complaint to a provider is like casting a vote. One by itself may make little apparent difference, but in aggregate it's another story.
A year and a half ago it seemed there would be no end to UBE. A certain
Among other things, it was amply demonstrated that opt-out does not work and cannot work. Even if an opt-out scheme were not administered by charlatans there is a small problem with the arithmetic: if only 1% of the estimated 24 million businesses in the USA each sent one invitation to opt-out, the user would be having to send 120 remove requests per hour every working hour of every working day - for a year. And try finding messages from family, friends, and business partners in that lot! But that's the power and the glory of e-mail: there's no real financial reason for anyone not to send UBE to 12 or 20 million addresses scattered around the world.
Oh yes, we can understand the temptation for marketers to use UBE as a low-cost attention-getting device. Sure, it's low-cost because the end-user pays. It gets attention all right, but far from the right sort. Or else why do so many senders of UBE try to hide themselves? Before one succumbs to this temptation, one would do well to ponder the words of the Master Confucius, who said, "The gentleman does what is moral, the small man only what is profitable".
No, for most end users UBE represents a small pecuniary injury and a great moral insult. There are far, far better ways to sell and persuade. Many suggestions and pointers can be found right on the Web, put up by people who believe with all their being that to be opposed to UBE is not to be opposed to commerce or charity.
So, if you're going to run a mailing list make it opt-in. The addresses you get will be leads, not exasperated individuals who will ignore you with prejudice at best, or will endeavour to stop you at worst. "Better fewer, but better."
Otherwise: it's postage-due, we didn't ask for it, you can assume we don't want it, and we want it stopped!
Forget UBE! Forget opt-out! The well has been poisoned irretrievably - too many have voided in it for too long. The end users see no reason why they should pay for someone's adverts whilst seeing nothing in return.
Opt in.
Let the sneaks and the charlatans tremble, for legitimate marketers have nothing to lose by not sending UBE. They have our hearts, minds, and orders to win.
Marketers of the Internet: opt-in!
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