Fwd: Re: Digital Island sponsors DoS attempt?

Mon Oct 29 17:33:05 UTC 2001

On Mon, Oct 29, 2001 at 12:24:37PM -0500, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
> What exactly does "established business relationship" mean in the
> context of (for example) the NANOG mailing list? (Note that once there
> is a business relationship, there's no requirement that the solicitation
> has to be related - I continually get calls from various financial
> institutions plugging other services)

Sadly I think we'll always be getting "spammed" by people we do
business with, and I don't think there's any way to write the rules
so this doesn't happen.  While slightly more obvious in e-mail,
it's not much different than what happens in other mediums:

* You get a bill from someone, and in the same envelope they have
  flyers for some of their new products.

* You get a call from your credit card company offering travel
  insurance for all the purchases you make on the call.

* You call customer service for your new computer and while on hold
  hear ads about cut-rate internet service.

I think the legislative presumption needs to be that if you're
doing business with someone then they can contact you about pretty
much anything, and if you don't like their contacting you can end
the business relationship so they can't do it anymore.  Writing
rules to eliminate such communications I think would very quickly
start to step on normal business practices, and even if everyone
on nanog wanted that the $$$'s that make business and politics go
around would never go for it.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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