The Method and Reasons Behind Our LIMITED Use of E-Mail Notification
to Initiate the

BLUE BUTTON Website Program

We do not recommend or condone the abuse of net privileges. But, it's still important to remember that this is an electronic information medium.

Therefore, if you are going to operate as a commercial NETWORK service provider (or at least what NET domains are supposed to be), you should expect to become a conduit for information that might be of interest to you and your subscribers.

All we've asked of anyone is to put our BLUE BUTTON on their home page with a link back to our site to make as many people (on and off the 'net) aware of both the ignition switch problem and Ford's unwillingness to accept responsibility by recalling ALL 26 Million vehicles.

We wholeheartedly agree with anyone that thinks SPAMs are a waste of effort and bandwidth. However, what EXACTLY is a SPAM? In our opinion, simply sending e-mail to a niche group of users is NOT a SPAM. For something to be called a SPAM, it would need to have ANY of the following characteristics:

  1. Have little or no true informational value to the majority of recipients.
  2. Include any format where a reply from one recipient results in the entire list of recipients receiving a copy of the reply.
  3. Use entirely too many words (bandwidth) to disburse whatever information is contained in the message.
  4. Broadcast any message to a wide group of people that have their e-mail addresses in the public domain simply because they posted to any number of general newgroups on USENET.
  5. Negligently implementing any delivery mechanism which is likely to result in one individual receiving multiple copies of the same e-mail message. This includes not being able to properly recover from a process or server crash and having to resend the message to everyone on the list.
  6. Sending multiple unsolicited pieces of e-mail on the same subject.
  7. Disregarding requests for list removal. This also includes not having an effective information management system in place to electronically process removal requests in the most diligent manner possible.
  8. Promoting the distribution of any list of individual e-mail addresses without any qualification to area of interest or any other form of accepted demographic separation
  9. Assuming that no response from one e-mail message is equivalent to a license to sending additional electronic mail to the same recipient.
  10. Blantantly cross-posting to numerous and unrelated newsgroups on USENET - which is the ORIGINAL definition of a SPAM.

We did not do ANY of those things.

We simply sent a brief message to a very finite group of individuals that are publically registered as operating commercial network services. Our hope was to solicit their support to disburse information to their users through their own Web pages. Not only did we not abuse the use of bandwidth on the recipients' end, targetting this specific group actually eliminates ANY server or storage issues at almost every site.

What kind of numbers are we talking?

One (1) piece of e-mail was sent to under 9,000 people that administer one or more NET domains. That's it - less than one e-mail per Net domain. Not 25,000, 50,000 or 250,000 individual users as more than one person figured. These 9,000 people are the administrators for just over 13,000 NET domains on the Internet that effectively control the access for tens of millions of people.

We went to a lot of effort to setup a method where each e-mail message was delivered to different sites and avoided duplication. We respect all of these individuals for who they are and the position they are in - we simply requested their support. If they didn't want to give it, we respected that decision. There was never any intention to send more than this one e-mail and every request to be removed from the list has been honored.

If you are the Administrative Contact for a NET domain and wish to get deeper into the philosophical aspects:

You are a Commercial Internet Service Provider - or should be based on the the registration of a NET domain. This places you in a unique position of responsibility as well as influence in most respects.

You have made yourself public by registering yourself and your address as the administrative contact for your NET domain - which also implies that you are responsible for any number of COM domains for your subscribers and any number of personal users as well. Sending you one (1) piece of e-mail requesting your support is, in our opinion, demonstrating to you the level of respect we have for you and the service you provide.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that in this society, nearly everyone's information is public whether they like it or not. All you have to have is a telephone, newspaper subscription, electricity - whatever - and you're eligible for any number of infringements into your privacy regardless of who you are. This is the case unless you take the time to send written requests to have yourself removed from every conceivable list of names that exist with market research companies.

A case could be made that EVERY e-mail address falls into this category. The problem however, is that "RESIDENT" doesn't work on the Internet like it does with snail mail. Invalid addresses cause more problems to individual ISP's when you take into consideration the bandwith/server utilization when bulk e-mails are sent. This is what's wrong with SPAM's - not the unsolicited delivery of information that is a normal part of our lives.

The other problems with broadcast or bulk e-mails are:

  1. There is no centralized system to make your e-mail address "non-published" in a manner similar to your telephone service.
  2. The Internic doesn't currently offer the ability to provide a separate mailbox for general information or the ability to not list yourself publically.
  3. There is no centralized authority like the Federal Trade Commission overseeing electronic mailing list acquisition and usage and protecting consumer privacy rights in the same manner as traditional mailing lists.

The real question is WHEN is it ok to send something to you?

As a NET domain administrator, aren't you in a position to receive and distribute information that you believe is important?

Are you expecting that your responsibility is limited only to what you are aware of even though you have little time to research and investigate the issues?

It's our belief that we were providing a valuable service by sending only ONE e-mail to each Net administrator. This doesn't cause bandwidth problems to anyone (other than our provider who agreed to let us do this before we attempted it). One e-mail message surely doesn't overload a mail server. And we took great care in making certain that we eliminated as many duplicate e-mails as possible.

The biggest problem is people don't like being reminded that their lives are essentially public in nature. Other than that, one e-mail message to the small group of people that administrate the networks that comprise the Internet simply should not a problem for anyone. We suspect that if most people in your position had the ability to provide input into what unsoliticed information is sent to their subscribers, the concept of a SPAM wouldn't even exist. We took the position that if there is a right way to do an e-mail of this nature, this is it. From here, the NET administrator is given the responsibility to make their own decision about whether or not our specific content is relevant to his/her "domain".

Taking a position that ALL unsolicited e-mail is wrong is both naive and illogical. This is, after all, an information medium. If we based our lives on only learning what we already knew without other more informed people helping us, its fair to suspect that there would not even BE an Internet.

Instead, NET administrators should relish their position, accept the responsibilities that come with the position, and support activities that promote responsible information distribution. Given the fact that we are dealing with a VERY serious issue - and don't have the MILLIONS of DOLLARS that FORD has to shape public opinion, we truly believed what we did was right and done in the absolute best possible manner.

Finally, it's our position that if this very limited burst of electronic information saved just one home from burning, or maybe even one life, we succeeded.


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