Chuq van Rospach has a great idea — instead of a do not spam list, an I am your customer, not your asset, and quit treating me like one list:
Where do-not-spam lists are useful (and ought to be mandatory) are third party sales and rentals. Any time someone buys or rents a list, that list has to be filtered against the do-not-spam list. If you’re on it, you fall out of the transfer. that would include any time that information moves from one company to another, the do-not-spam restrictions apply. (ditto, IMHO, for phone and other personal information. I’ll go further, actually. I think there ought to be a generic ‘do not sell me as an asset’ list, preventing transfer of personal information of any kind without permission. Or more correctly, a I am your customer, not your asset, and quit treating me like one list.
Great idea. Really, the resale of contact information for marketing purposes sounds fantastic to marketers — but as The Story of Nadine demonstrates, it only takes two years for the contact information to be sold (via a chain of increasingly dodgy operators) from DeliverE, a subsidiary of Excite to horse bestiality porn spam.