Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: OECD Consumer Policy Committee
From: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 05:48:20 -0500
------ Forwarded Message From: "James Love" <james.love () cptech org> Reply-To: "James Love" <james.love () cptech org> Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 09:46:21 -0500 To: <farber () cis upenn edu> Subject: OECD Consumer Policy Committee Dave, The OECD Consumer Policy Committee met this week in Paris. We have been asking the US and the EU to begin discussions on global cooperation on addressing spam problems, if not solving every possible problem, finding areas where there are less controversial steps that can improve things, recognizing the cross border nature of these problems, and what should be obvious limitations on addressing this on a state-by-state or country-by-country basis. This was our letter asking Mozelle Thompson to push for OECD discussions on controlling spam. We have asked the US government to do this for a couple of years -- they talk about a zillion other e-commerce issues, including those relating to the cross border protection of various IP right owners, but the cross border enforcement of any consumer protection measures is opposed largely on ideological grounds. But we are optimistic that there may be some movement. People forward about 10,000 pieces of spam to the FTC every day. The FTC doesn't classify these as "complaints," but if you do, it would put spam in a league of its own in terms of requests for the FTC to act. Jamie http://www.cptech.org/ecom/spam/murismozelle.html Ralph Nader P.O. Box 19312 Washington, DC 20036 James Love Consumer Project on Technology http://www.cptech.org March 6, 2002 Chairman Timothy J. Muris Commissioner Mozelle W. Thompson US Federal Trade Commission Dear Commissioners Muris and Thompson: This is a request to ask the OECD Consumer Policy Committee to put on its work program efforts to find consensus on global actions to address the problem of spam. The OECD should show leadership in addressing what has become the top consumer protection problem for the Internet --- the explosion of spam. Many people now find it difficult to use email, and the costs of spam are increasing every day. The FTC now receives approximately 10 thousand forwards of spam every day, and appears to have no program to address this problem. We are realistic about the problems in finding consensus on a wide range of possible spam issues, and we are not asking you to do this in the short term. We are specifically asking the FTC and the OECD to determine where there are areas of consensus that can be reached. We believe this is achievable, if any effort is directed at this problem. For example, a simple agreement that countries should prohibit persons from sending unsolicited commercial email from accounts with forged addresses and mail headers would be very useful. It would also be useful agree to require senders of such messages to identify the real names and address of the firm making the solicitation. Thus, even if global consensus is not achievable right now on issues such as opt-in or opt-out, you can do things that will make things better. The fact that this has not happened already is evidence that public officials have not made much of an effort to address the problem. We have been pushing for global action on spam for several years, noting also that this is the topic of resolutions adopted by the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue. Contrast the lack of attention to complaints about spam, which are a daily headache for millions of angry email users, including children who receive pornographic spam and elderly persons who receive countless fraud schemes every day, with the massive effort by federal and global agencies to address such issues as invalid addresses in domain name registrations and other efforts designed to protect intellectual property owners. The FTC needs to act even when the parties who need action do not have high priced lobbyists. Ralph Nader James Love Consumer Project on Technology mailto:james.love () cptech org http://www.cptech.org http://www.cptech.org/ecom/spam/ -------------------- James Love, mailto:james.love () cptech org, http://www.cptech.org voice +1.202.387.8030, mobile +1.202.361.3040, fax +1.202.234.5176 _______________________________________________ Random-bits mailing list Random-bits () lists essential org http://lists.essential.org/mailman/listinfo/random-bits -------------------- James Love, mailto:james.love () cptech org, http://www.cptech.org voice +1.202.387.8030, mobile +1.202.361.3040, fax +1.202.234.5176 ------ End of Forwarded Message For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- IP: OECD Consumer Policy Committee Dave Farber (Mar 15)