The Philosophy behind the Blacklist of Internet Advertisers

The Greencard Lawyers are right when they say in their book that internet advertising is legal, incredibly cheap and can reach a huge audience. In order to prevent a death of the Internet comparable to that of TV, we need to make inappropriate electronic advertising more expensive.

To do this without violating the general anarchic and grass roots spirit of the Net, I propose a blacklist scheme. Offenders and their offensive actions are described in a document which is distributed widely over the Net. The expectation is that individuals will decide on their own what would constitute an appropriate punishment and will then go ahead and carry it out.

30,000,000 potential customers sounds attractive, doesn't it? How about 30,000,000 people pissed off and telling all their friends to boycott your business?

To avoid centralized power, people should be encouraged to come up with their own blacklists with possibly different criteria for who gets included.

This blacklist is different from blacklists in the past in that it is operated completely in the open. This has the advantage that people see the criteria for getting on and off the list, that everyone can decide for himself whether a particular described behaviour warrants blacklisting and that false information tends to be corrected quickly.

The biggest problem with the blacklist as I see it right now is that sometimes newbies end up on the list, who simply didn't know better. I'm really after the hard core advertisers who know that (and why) what they are doing is wrong.

The philosophy behind this particular blacklist is as follows: advertising which I'm forced to read is bad, advertising which I actively have to seek is tolerable. Hence the following rules for who and what gets included in my blacklist:

• Unsolicited commercial junk e-mail gets included in the list as a general rule.
• Posting or Crossposting of a commercial messages to unrelated newsgroups gets included in the list as a general rule.
• My definition of "commercial message" includes announcements of free services that make their money by selling advertising space.
• Sending commercial messages to unrelated mailing lists gets included.
• Newbies who post make.money.fast and similar things generally are not included, unless they do it repeatedly.
• Advertising via irc or talk gets included.
• Posting of commercial messages to a relevant newsgroup or mailing list is decided on a case by case basis. It depends mainly on the number of complaints I receive, on the posting frequency and on the general attitude of said newsgroup towards commercial messages. Since these rules are not clear cut, I will usually warn the offenders first and then, if they choose to continue, put them on the list.

Subject: You have been added to the Blacklist of Internet Advertisers

Ladies and Gentlemen:

This is to notify you that you have been added to the Blacklist of
Internet Advertisers, which is accessible over the WWW as

   http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/blacklist.html

Please check the accuracy of all information contained therein
pertaining to you.

Your entry will be removed from the list in 3 months unless you choose
to repeat your behavior.

Moreover, if you have a *very good* reason for why you should not be
put on the list, let me know.

Sincerely,
  Axel Boldt

--
 Axel Boldt * axel@uni-paderborn.de * http://math-www.uni-paderborn.de/~axel/

You can read more about my fundamental opposition to advertising on the page describing my political opinions.