![[No Spam]](../images/caucemod.jpg)
Unsolicited
Commercial E-Mail
Note that spam/UCE does not include one
time messages sent by Vaxxine clients to local
general mailing lists, such as vaxxine-discussion, for
private sales. These mailing lists explicitly
(as opposed to implicitly, or implied) permit such one time mailings
of a private nature. As such they are an opt-in list for such
single mailings. All such postings must be "Rated G"
since the list has members of all ages, cultures, and beliefs.
Unsolicited commercial e-mail, sometimes known
as spam, is e-mail that is normally of a direct sales/solicitation
nature sent to one or more e-mail addresses on the Internet without
the recipient first requesting or authorizing the communication.
It also includes posting of articles to the Usenet in newsgroups
not meant for that type of use. E-mail of this type may also be
known as unsolicited broadcast e-mail or unsolicited bulk e-mail.
UCE can also include unsolicited e-mail requesting
trades or services that do not request money. The main point is
that they are unsolicited. Note that sending e-mail to
people that did not explicitly provide you with
their e-mail address for this particular purpose is also an abuse.
To be considered solicited the recipient of the message must have
provided their e-mail address directly to you
explicitly for this particular purpose. Further,
signing up to one opt-in list does not infer that the recipient
has signed up for any other.
Unsolicited e-mail has been shown to cause
performance bottlenecks by consuming a great amount of bandwidth
and is loathed by all but a few recipients. Since the
recipient is paying for their Internet access (everyone on the
Internet is in some form) it is unfair to attempt to pass on the
cost of doing business to people not involved in the operation.
It is theft, plain and simple. Claims to the contrary
are only made by those stealing the resources.
Reputable Internet
Service Providers recommend that clients not deal
with any company or individual that acts in this fashion.
Such e-mail is also
commonly used as a vehicle for questionably legal scams. The problem
has reached such a critical level that the Federal
Trade Commission in the United States wants questionably legal
material (get rich quick schemes, financial promises, etc.) which
may involve Americans sent to you by e-mail to be forwarded
to them at uce@ftc.gov. So far,
thousands of the most dishonest fraud promoters have been contacted
directly by the FTC. They have also created a Newsletter
to help show some of tricks used by the usual cheats that send
out unsolicited commercial e-mail. Senders foolish enough to be
resending existing unsolicited commercial e-mail should remind
themselves that they, too, may be charged with fraud. Such charges
can carry both civil and criminal penalties. Canadian fraud laws
are designed with much the same intent as the American ones.
Unsolicited commercial e-mail risks harming
Vaxxine's reputation as an Internet citizen as well as computers
and networks operated by Vaxxine and third parties. There are
several efforts underway to have unsolicited e-mail qualified
under the same laws as "junk faxing" which is an excellent
idea. Additionally several very successful lawsuits have been
brought by various companies across the Internet against the senders
for such abusive activity. Some receiving ISPs have been able
to recover many thousands of dollars from the individuals that
sent the e-mail in these suits.
Advertising in a less
intrusive way that doesn't waste massive amounts of bandwidth,
such as creating a WWW site, is the far better alternative. E-mail
advertising is acceptable if the sender can prove that each individual
recipient authorized the sending of such e-mail beforehand (i.e.,
it is solicited or "opt-in" mail). These activities
normally require some business knowledge and skill, however, and
may exclude many existing senders of unsolicited chimerical e-mail.
Vaxxine also does not permit "harvesting",
the process of collecting e-mail addresses from Internet servers
(be it WWW, Usenet, etc.) without the express
permission of the particular user of the e-mail
address.
References
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