You heard it here first
I'm going to go out on a limb here, and make a bold prediction. I'm going to predict how the SCO v. IBM and Linux case plays out. I predict that the first major event will be that David Boies resigns from the SCO legal team. When that happens, people will start to realize that the SCO case is weak. It will drag on, and eventually people will stop paying attention. Finally, SCO will win a nominal victory. All their claims won't hold up, just a few insignificant claims. And it will be all over.
Why do I say this? I think there is evidence coming out that was somewhat unexpected -- in particular, the evidence about Caldera's role in Linux development. Caldera was a me-too Linux company. They really believed in Linux, even Linux in the enterprise. It wasn't until a change in leadership that they made a 180 degree turn. But the new leadership had bad corporate memory. They came in from the beginning determined to sue, and they didn't want to consider anything else.
In any case, this is just a prediction. I may be wrong.
Joe Rubin, director of public and congressional affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, disagreed. "I wouldn't be upset to see a cheap airfare e-mailed to me," he said. "If Sears sends me an e-mail regarding a discount on a lube job at Sears, that's something that most consumers probably won't be upset about."
[news.com]
Sorry, Joe. I have to disagree.
If you send me email to offer me a discount on a lube job, I want to know "How did you get my email address?"
An opt-out policy ought to take into consideration how the email address was obtained. There are three possibilities: (1) This email address is private. It's unpublished. I give out this email address to only a handful of people. (2) This email address is public, but only to humans who send a message. It is not public for robots that automatically harvest email addresses, store them in a database of millions of such addresses, and send out millions of messages at a time. (3) This email address is public to anyone who wants to send me a message, with no restrictions.
If people take reasonable steps to keep their email address either private or protected from the harvesting robots, aren't they already indicating that they wish to opt-out? And what if an email marketing company sends a bulk message to such an address? Can they be sued for not honoring opt-out?