[comp.org.eff.talk] Junk E-mail

brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (04/02/91)

No, no, no!   We don't want to fight junk E-mail, I think we want to
encourage it, *if* it is properly classified.   I would much rather have
junk E-mail than junk paper mail, junk phone calls, junk fax or even TV
ads.

Junk e-mail my computer can handle for me, either tossing it all (and
autoreplying to tell the sender not to bother again) or sorting it for
viewing when I want to peruse my junk E-mail.

If this reduces the other tree-wasting and time-wasting forms of direct
advertising, let's encourage it -- with a mandated header line.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473

alex@am.sublink.org (Alex Martelli) (04/02/91)

brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes:

:No, no, no!   We don't want to fight junk E-mail, I think we want to
:encourage it, *if* it is properly classified.   I would much rather have
:junk E-mail than junk paper mail, junk phone calls, junk fax or even TV

...EXCEPT for us poor folks that have to PAY for INcoming mail as well
as OUTgoing!!!  Some of us are spending about 100$ per megabyte for
transantic mail... people who call long-distance to their mail feed
can be in similar situations in North America as well!

-- 
Alex Martelli - (home snailmail:) v. Barontini 27, 40138 Bologna, ITALIA
Email: (work:) martelli@cadlab.sublink.org, (home:) alex@am.sublink.org
Phone: (work:) ++39 (51) 371099, (home:) ++39 (51) 250434; 
Fax: ++39 (51) 366964 (work only), Fidonet: 332/401.3 (home only).

brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (04/05/91)

No, as I said, junk e-mail will be great, if it is classified.  Nobody
will pay to receive junk e-mail, as all recipient paid links will be
coded to refuse such e-mail.

Of course, the concept of paying for e-mail is likely to be a short lived
one.  E-mail is going to become so cheap soon that it will be hard to
imagine billing it at anything other than flat rate, although sending
huge files around (images, software, databases) will still possibly be
charged for.   But at rates of a penny/megabyte  (T-1 time is only slightly
more than this today) this may not even be a concern.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473

jefu@twics.co.jp (Jeffrey Shapard) (04/06/91)

Organization: TWICS, Tokyo, Japan
Lines: 25

Alex Martelli makes a good point: internet email is not necessarily
free to the senders _or_ receivers. Somebody always pays. If you
are in North America and your government or organization picks up
the tab, then you are living in a lucky illusion. Those of us
outside the USA operate in quite different environments. It seems
that the one in Italy is similar to the one in Japan, where we
pay for _all_ our international email traffic, outbound and
inbound, because folks on the other side have no mechanisms or
policies, or perhaps even recognition of the issue, that cover
it. (But, ah, the price of connectivity...)  And... hmmm...
this may also mean that if I send a message to Italy, both I
and my addressee pay for it. But that is another issue.

So, rather than receiving junk email in this current situation,
I would rather see a widely distributed newsgroup, or newsgroups,
where advertisers were free to post notices, and if I wanted
more info, THEN I could solicit it and thereby choose to pay
for the freight. (Or the sender could subscribe to DASnet, for
example, and bear the charges themselves, which would be very
nice.)

--jefu

* Jeffrey Shapard <jefu@twics.co.jp>                       "Connectivity   *
* Connect-activist and Operations Director, TWICS, Tokyo    is our biz..." *