Spamhaus, a British non-profit company dedicated to eradicating spam, has offered to administer a new “dot-mail” domain for use only by those online marketers who are shown to not send spam. In effect, advertisers who are given the green light by Spamhaus to use the new domain suffix will be able to send their commercial e-mail over the Internet and avoid the spam filters which often label legitimate e-mails from dot-com and dot-org domains as spam and block them.
If the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approves the dot-mail domain, Spamhaus will then review the nature of those businesses seeking to use the domain and approve those it classifies as non-spammers. Spamhaus has announced that it will charge $2,000 for its service, as compared to $6 for purchasing a dot-com address. Applicants will be required to use the addresses that they already own with the new domain suffix, for example, thegap.com.mail. Company Web sites will not be accessible using the address. Should the Spamhaus service be utilized, estimates show that e-mail marketers could avoid losing 15-27% of e-mails to spam filters.
The Spamhaus proposal has received mixed reviews. The Direct Marketing Association's Louis Mastria said that given Spamhaus's reputation for blacklisting some legitimate marketers, companies may not be willing to submit their business practices to the organization's scrutiny. In addition, legitimate e-mail companies may not be enticed to spend the money for a new domain address because their communications tend not to get caught in spam filters.
Significance: The proposed domain could potentially give e-mail marketers an unobstructed computer highway through which to communicate with consumers. This option would be particularly attractive since Internet service providers and e-mail providers have begun to rely heavily on anti-spam software to filter out annoying spam. Although it is too early to know whether Spamhaus's proposal will succeed, it is fascinating to follow the seemingly constant flow of technological innovation in the face of problems caused by other technological advances.