sean@donelan.com (Sean Donelan) writes:
excerpt: I. The Problem MoveOn.org is a politically progressive organization that engages in online activism. For the most part, its work consists of sending out action alerts to its members via email lists. Often, these alerts will ask subscribers to send letters to their representatives about time-sensitive issues, or provide details about upcoming political events. Although people on the MoveOn.org email lists have specifically requested to receive these alerts, many large ISPs regularly block them because they assume bulk email is spam. [...] i reject all mail from moveon.org here. not because i assume bulk e-mail is spam, but because i still personally receive all mail sent to any address at cix.net, and quite a few people who wish to subscribe from cox.net end up typing cix.net by mistake. ("i" and "o" are adjacent in QWERTYland.) i'm therefore in a position to prove that moveon.org does not verify the ownership or permission status of new e-mail addresses before sending political information. i tried complaining, but moveon.org's postmaster function appeared to be understaffed or overworked or both. further down in this otherwise excellent paper, we see: II. The Solution (Or At Least A Start): Principles and Best Practices [...] 2. All mailing-list email should be delivered to willing subscribers. As a corollary, no one should be subscribed to an email list without his or her knowledge and consent, as evidenced by positive action. ...to which i must add my strongest possible agreement. if moveon.org would just follow this principle or best practice, i would accept their e-mail here. even though i found this EFF paper to be well written and well researched in other ways, i wonder if the authors knew that moveon.org does not verify permission or ownership of new subscribers, and if they considered this as one of the possible reasons why a lot of e-mail admins reject, as i do, all mail that comes from moveon.org. if not, then the fundamental premise of this paper is flawed. if so, then they should have mentioned this factor. either way, i'm not as impressed as i could've been. -- Paul Vixie