Throwing the Baby Out With the Bathwater

We all hate spyware. It's on my Internet Axis of Evil list.

So I was pleased to hear that congress is going to issue some laws that will address this issue.

We got a hold of the bills and read them. It is Can-Spam all over again. These well intentioned legislators don't understand our industry well enough to regulate it. They want to take cookies off our machines so publishers have no way to target online advertising. That's not a good thing. So I did the same thing I did with Can-Spam.

I went to see My Senator.

Can Spam was a more difficult situation because Chuck had already staked out a position and, unfortunately, it was not the right one. We had a lot of work to do to get him to move to a better position.

This time around, spyware was just getting his attention. We explained that there are good guys and bad guys in the online ad business and the bad guys are ruining it for the good guys by pissing off consumers. We explained that cookies have been an instrumental part of online advertising for years and that they are not bad. We explained that the industry has been developing some rules about what is "good" and what is "bad" behavior and that congress should work closely with the industry in developing these bills.

Chuck listened. And he put us in touch with the right people in Washington. So we are going to help the congress get this one right, like they did in the end with Can Spam.

Phew.

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Tracked on Nov 20, 2005 10:07:53 AM

Posted August 11, 2004 in Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

(Visiting from buzzmachine)

Nice work. Most politicians don't get technology issues, and it's good to see people taking the opportunity to set the record straight.

However, aside from that, I have to go ahead and echo the comment of Derek Woolverton on your Schumer page. Consider this analogy:

You don't want this bill to pass. Why? It has good intentions of stopping people from doing bad things with a certain technology, but has the side effect of stopping other people from doing good things with the same technology, because the law was drawn too broadly.

It's the same with guns. You say Schumer is against guns being in the hands of the wrong people. Show me a politician who *isn't.* The trouble is that most gun control legislation, intentionally or not, is drawn so that the technology is taken out of the hands of the people doing good with it. In fact, it's usually worse in that the good people lose the tech, but the bad people keep it. That would probably be the case with these laws too, except the stakes are a little higher when you're talking about needing a gun for self-defense versus being annoyed during the course of your web surfing.

Posted by: Zach | Aug 11, 2004 9:12:11 AM

I disagree. Congress screwed up when the passed the U-Can-Spam law. It 'legalized' opt-out marketing, the marketing industry's preferred method as it means they have legal cover to hit any address they can find.

What Congress should have done is to mandate that all email based marketing lists be developed by a three step confirmed opt-in process. Confirmed opt-in provides positive proof that the advertiser has permission to send the spam. Also, they should have mandated that such lists not be sold or traded to outside firms/entities.

After all, permission to company A is not the same as permission to company B, C, D, etc.

As far as the industry (Google's) guidelines, they seem fine, but they don't address the issue of cookies very well. Again, the simplest solution is the best. Cookies should not contain any personally identifying information without notification and full disclosure to the user. Cookies used to identify individual browsing habits should only be used with the permission of the individual and should not be required for a site to function properly.

Don't wait for the folks at Double-Click to sign on to either of those conditions.

Regards,

Posted by: Dann | Aug 11, 2004 12:56:36 PM

well i know of a number of sites that don't use cookies for their ads..

cause otherwise i wouldn't be seeing kerry ads all over the place...

good that you got in and tried to keep the government out of screwing up yet another business... too bad you vote for and agree with the people who see it as government's job to screw up business...

but it doesn't matter when it isn't your ox, right?

free markets, free people...

Posted by: hey | Aug 11, 2004 1:03:07 PM

Well, to Congress: please, do SOMETHING!!

And word up to Bill Gates and the ad spammers: I, like all my friends, am going to cancel my broadband at home and use the broadband only at work, where they have a whole team of people who do nothing but deal with the sewage and the hateful, computer-disabling, invasive, pornographic, destructive crap that is the internet today- until it's safe to log on at home once more.

Posted by: PJ | Aug 11, 2004 10:38:26 PM

Nice work Fred. "Hey" seems to be confused. "Free markets, Free people"? Sounds like he'd also enjoy Free Labor.

Posted by: Jackson | Aug 16, 2004 11:35:07 AM

A VC

Musings of a VC in NYC