Our concern is the use of seriously flawed technology to filter electronic mail.
The result is all too often delayed, misdirected or bounced messages (returned without delivery).

All current strategies used to block and sort email messages are prone to faulty identification as SPAM (false positives).
Mail sorted in this way may be diverted into less accessable bulk mail folders, bounced, or even discarded.
The individual user is often completely unaware of the disposition of messages they have sent or failed to receive.
The blocks imposed may be so intermittent as to be little more than a nuisance, or of such long duration as to cause businesses to lose their customers.

We believe email is much too important to be handled in this fashion and such practices need to be closely regulated.
Individuals and legitimate businesses rely on email for a growing portion of their communications. Many online businesses now rely almost entirely on email to manage sales and customer support.

Without these flawed methods of filtering, email is a reliable communications technology.

We do not support the sending of bulk mail of any kind, least of all SPAM. However the technology used to handle these unwanted messages has simply not reached a level of competency necessary to support it's widespread use.

The very worst idea to come down the corporate pipe is the "Pay to Play" scheme.
This recent gem has the mass marketer's paw prints all over it. This provides a way for mass mailers to bypass the flawed filters being used and allow all the bulk mail a company is willing to pay for to be delivered directly to ones inbox.
Our inboxes may become so full of rubbish under this plan, bulk folders may soon become the inbox of choice.
Of course unless every mail service adopts this rediculous approach, the ones that don't may find their services in very high demand.

There are a number of sender identification based systems that are nearly as offensive. These too are exclusively limited to those who operate their own mail servers. Something few individuals and small businesses need or can afford.

It is not acceptable that the burdon of proving whether or not an email is worthy of being delivered is being shifted from the mail services to the sender. The vast majority of email senders do not have the necessary level of control over the servers their mail passes through to even apply for the currently available methods of doing this.

Far better would be an encrypted ID (an electronic stamp) which could be attached to each individual email, regardless of the server that actually handles the message. Provided of course any legitimate mailer could use these stamps and it didn't come with an unreasonable cost.

We believe individuals and businesses have every right to block any communications they like from entering the computers and networks they own.
However, as soon as a company offers email services to the public, the right to pick and choose whose communications can and cannot enter has necessarily been waived.

We believe legislation needs to be enacted to provide assured delivery of email for all users, not just the biggest and wealthiest bulk mailers.
Email service providers have proven they cannot be trusted to handle our important communications without oversight.
Their interests in filtering mail are not the same as yours. They wouldn't mind a bit if they could get away with tossing a whole lot more of this costly hard drive hogging email, even if a much larger percentage of legitimate mail is lost in the process. The only thing holding them back is the level of complaints they would receive.
Don't let them get comfortable with throwing your mail away. Complain loudly when they do and do not accept their lame excuses.
There is no such thing as a "bad" mail server or IP address. If it handles more than one account, all it takes is one bad user to become blacklisted and mail from all of this server's users may become undeliverable.
Penalizing every sender on a server (and their recipients) is irresponsible, and should be illegal.

If you actually think the current system is working, just ask yourself a couple of questions...

Do you think it would be OK for a telephone company to intermittently block calls from certain neighborhoods if some of the phones in that city code were found to have been used by telemarketers?

What if the Post Office started putting mail picked up in certain zip codes into a dumpster if they found any of the return addresses in that zip code on a privately published list of unsavory advertisers?

Why is it OK to block email based on the IP address of a mail server which may handle the email for hundreds or thousands of individuals or businesses, most of whom are sending legitimate email?

We are not just interested in regulating the receivers.
Holding email service providers and other mail server owners accountable through meaningful regulation would go a whole lot further toward reducing SPAM than trying to filter the junk out after it's been sent.

If you believe as we do.
That our email is a valuable form of communication that should not be controled by mass mailing corporate interests.
Please write your senate and congressional representatives and tell them that email needs their help.
There were good reasons to impose federal regulation on the telephone companies. There are good reasons to regulate email service providers.
Just as it is a crime to hinder the delivery of US Postal mail, it should also be made a crime to hinder the delivery of electronic mail.

While you are at it, write your ISP and tell them to stop blocking YOUR email.

If you would like to support our cause, please give us a link on your web site.
Or, take a look at some of our sponsor's links.