more on Internet Mailing Lists vs. Specter-Leahy data security bill

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Steven Champeon <schampeo () hesketh com>
Date: June 30, 2005 12:11:59 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Cc: lauren () vortex com, declan () well com
Subject: Re: [IP] Internet Mailing Lists vs. Specter-Leahy data  
security bill


on Thu, Jun 30, 2005 at 11:52:52AM -0400, David Farber wrote:

> From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
> Date: June 30, 2005 11:48:18 AM EDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Cc: lauren () vortex com
> Subject: Internet Mailing Lists vs. Specter-Leahy data security bill
>
>
>
> > From: Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>
> > Date: June 30, 2005 1:13:55 AM EDT
> > To: politech () politechbot com
> ...
>
>
> > That's defined as a "business entity" that it's in the
> > regular business of "collecting, transmitting, or otherwise providing
> > personally identifiable information" of 5,000 or more people that are
> > not "customers" or "employees."
>
> I suspect that as far as self-subscribed Internet mailing lists are
> concerned, "customers" is a key word.  The sorts of mailing lists
> that we (Declan, Dave, me, etc.) run are all self-subscribed lists
> where persons have voluntarily signed themselves up to receive our
> electronic mailings, which we provide as a free service.  Even
> though no money is changing hands in our cases, those recipients can
> still be viewed as "customers" of our mailings -- at the very least
> they fulfill the key aspect of having a direct relationship with
> us that they have initiated by signing up.  Nor do we provide or
> sell our mailing lists to other entities.

<snip>


> On the other hand, there may well be applicability of such a "data
> broker" law to many spammers, who often collect e-mail addresses
> without the permission of the persons involved, send unsolicited
> mailings, and frequently buy and sell those mailings lists like bags
> of potatos.

Not to mention that every last one of them also claims that the list
members are "self-subscribed", that they "voluntarily signed themselves
up to review [their] electronic mailings", and that their mailings are
a "service" provided for free to the willing recipients.

I'm also concerned about this bill, as I provide, and have provided for
the last eight years, a mailing list community for roughly 2300 people
(webdesign-l) - note I have no way to track how many real people are
behind whatever aliases and exploders that may be signed up for the
list; for all I know, half of the "members" are actually aliases at Web
design companies with fifty people behind them. I know I've had to crack
down on various unofficial and unapproved archives of the list from time
to time. I have no way of knowing how many private archives exist. I do
know that I've seen more than 5K members of the list over the course of
its (relatively) long life, though for many I have no way of knowing
whether one address represents one person or many, or whether many
addresses all represent the same person.

The irony is that the only thing I collect about these people is
voluntarily given when they join/leave (via email, so I know where they
sent the admin messages from), post (whatever the volunteer in their
.sigs and otherwise via the content of their messages). And then by
virtue of the fact that it's a discussion, everything they send is then
forwarded to at least 2300 more people every time they post.

Granted, I'm not asking for special protection for email list
communities if it also means that spammers can hide under the same
legal language. But its worrisome just the same.

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