[p2p-research] is the use of an opt-out consent request ethically offensive.

[Michel Bauwens]

Dear friends,

some of you may have gotten the invitation letter to join a new mailing
list, which I forwarded a few days ago. These invitations are sent out in
batches by Sam.

So far, we are getting a few opt out requests, but we did get one angry
letter from a free software advocate, saying this was ethically offensive
and unreasonable,

I would like to know the reactions of the community for this, which might be
useful for the future,

here is my own, admittedly exasperated response:

(since the author complains about privacy breach, I won't share that
original letter)

(if you are the free software advocate who sent me a t2t file, don't feel
offended please, it's just an example, to make an general point)


begin text:

Thanks, I personally never have felt there are any substantial problems with
the opt-out clause, especially if it is done upfront before doing anything.
In actual fact, we were asking for your consent, very clearly.

Moreover, this has been done with people like Sam who are steeped into p2p
ethics and with whom I worked for years.

You obviously feel differently about it, I'll ask the community to see what
they think about this,

As far as I know from Sam, a few people have opted out, and this is the very
first complaint,

Myself, I can't really see the difference between asking for your consent
and making it easy to join, and asking for your consent plus asking you an
extra effort to join,

Recently, I had to collect bios from the participants in a conference. The
average input time was 10 minutes per bio, except for the free software
advocates, who used a whole range of file extensions, like t2t, requiring an
average of 90 minutes per bio for those few people. For me, this is entirely
unreasonable and a misplaced sense of purity, which always places the burden
on others. In your case, you object to one click, but it doesn't bother you
that this would make our efforts increase a thousandfold in addition to the
five years of free labour that I've been putting in the p2p wiki and other
resources. Another example, when I still did fundraisings to cover
emergencies (food for my family), I would send an email request, with zero
results. But when I've inputted the same emails in the paypal database
(which for me is a technicality, the same difference as sending you an email
from my gmail or from civicCRM), I got a few thousand euro's. Why, because
you make it easier for very busy people. For the same reason, we send a mail
asking for consent by not clicking on a link, and a simple click to indicate
lack of interest. It makes a huge difference both in response, and in the
amount of work needed.

I'll forward the technical issue to Sam,

Michel

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