Opt-in vs. Opt Out

"Opt in" is the scheme of choice of EuroCAUCE, because it is the only scheme that ultimately works. The party interested in sending out bulk email must put in some effort up front, but it pays off in the long run to be able to acquire and maintain a list of potential customers. Problems of scale and administration (not to mention honesty and integrity) render virtually all "opt-out" schemes ineffective, both "individual" and "global".

"Individual" opt-out schemes, where the recipient is expected to answer with a "remove" request, suffer from problems of scale. If only 1% of the USA's estimated 20 million businesses decided to operate in this way, a typical recipient could be expected to be issuing over 200 of these every day for each email address. There are considerations of honesty and integrity as well: one sending entity may well honour a "remove" request, whilst passing the address onwards to another entity as a "confirmed live" address, thus the hapless recipient ends up getting more UCE than might otherwise have been the case. Experience shows that this despicable practice is more often the rule rather than the exception.

So-called "global" opt-out schemes are at least tempting to consider for all forms of advertising communication directed to individuals. These, too, suffer from problems of administration, honesty and integrity. As the British Department of Trade and Industry states,

"In order for an opt-out scheme to provide effective consumer protection, it would have to fulfil certain criteria. It would be necessary for:

• all subscribers to be aware of it;
• it to be simple and free to join;
• it to become effective within a reasonable time of joining;
• it to require companies engaged in telemarketing to update their lists regularly in the light of subscribers' notifications;
• it to have adequate complaints handling mechanisms."

And would require some kind of state-backed supervisory mechanism. Oh, the day-to-day administration could be carried out by some private company under contract or by some association of telemarketers, but it would ultimately have to be backed by the state with its coercive power to enforce compliance. The IEMMC debâcle in the United States has shown that an agency not backed by the state cannot implement a "global" opt-out scheme, especially when it must rely on honesty and integrity on the part of those whose very business practices were characterised by dishonesty.

Such an "opt-out" scheme meeting the Department's criteria could well be adequate for telemarketing based in one, at worst two, countries. Telecommunications costs will still tend to limit the range of a given telephone-based operation, not so with email. Trouble is, at the end of the day, so-called "global" schemes simply are not. The European Webmeister/Usenet poster would then be expected to enter coordinates for each and every email address to any one of 20 or 30 databases, in Europe alone, or expect to be inundated with more and more inappropriately-targetted advertising where communications from clients, partners, friends, and family ought to be.

No, there are many great ways to conduct business or political activity on the Internet, and none of them involve sending Unsolicited Bulk/Commercial Email, see [Ethical Marketing=Successful Marketing]. Email sent under an "opt-in" scheme is, by definition, solicited. Think about it: no bounces (addressed to someone@somewhereNOSPAM.tld), no aggro from one's provider, no thousands of complaints, just communication with possible customers/supporters. Simply forget about sending email to people who have never heard of you, and advertise on the Web. You haven't lost anything. As they're fond of saying in America, "There is no free lunch."