Tired of SPAM?

See, how it often works is this:

1) You go to a website that has an online service for you, such as Amazon.com or Yahoo games. That sort of thing. You want to sign on, you have to fill out a form and submit your email address to them so they can talk to you. When you do this you are presented with a legal agreement, which often has a clause or refers to a clause that allows the service to 'share' or 'sell' your email address to other companies.

In order to sign on to the service you -HAVE- to -AGREE- to the legal statement, which often includes this referance to 'sharing' in it.

If you do not, you can not get the service.

2) You click yes.

3) You play games/shop online/look at porn.

4) You now get emails from these people and anyone they sell/share your address with.

Now. Here is the cool part. It is technically illegal for them to -FORCE- you to comply with that 'sharing' thing. It should, in fact, be a serperate agreement you enter into, seeing as your email address is part of your private home life, and part of your personal assets in a way. There is the potential for a VERY strong lawsuit that would FORCE this 'grouped clausing' to be seperated into options the user can select. You  legally should be given the choice to recieve or not recive emails from someone, or to share your email address.

I am proposing that people provide a first name and last name into a list, and that list will be used to present a class action suit of some sort to the international courts in order to -LEGALLY FORCE- companies on-line to give the user the -OPTION- of opting out of a 'shared email' situation.

Any takers? Let me know what you think.

The one through my isp I keep private or only use if I know the company isn't going to sell it.

It doesn't sound entirely plausible, but then again I've heard that in Florida you can pay like $10 and get yourself put on a list to never receive calls from telemarketers again.

VIVA LA REVOLUTION!

Anyway, I hate to play Devil's Advocate here but I have to point out one thing.

If that part of the terms of agreement was taken out, no one in their right mind would choose to receive spam. This being the case, large numbers of formerly free websites would start charging you big bucks to use them, since they would lose their advertising. The reason so much of web advertising is becoming a pain in the ass is that those sites are having trouble making enough money off their ads to stay free. I've already encountered several sites that are going subscription, and frankly, it bites.

Would freedom from spam be worth the cost?  Just curious what you think of that.  I'd like to think of a way for sites to make money without all the advertising.