ETD: 682 Visa settles debit card lawsuit for $2 billion;
Internet E-Mail Stamp; Internet Sales Tax again; Spam? What is it?;
Music is intellectual property
E-Tailer's Digest
etd_post@gapent.com
Thu, 01 May 2003 07:30:30 -0400
E-Tailer's Digest --- Everything for the Retailer
Issue #0682 May 1, 2003
George Matyjewicz, Moderator mailto:georgem@gapent.com
Published by: GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.etailersdigest.com
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CONTENTS
[1] Greetings
[2] Visa settles debit card lawsuit for $2 billion
[3] Internet E-Mail Stamp
----- ---- --- -- -> Important Offer <- -- --- ---- ---- --
[4] Internet Sales Tax again
[5] Spam? What is it?
[6] Music is intellectual property
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[1] Greetings.
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Hi All:
We have some very interesting material today. Visa settled the class
action suit; more on the E-Stamp and Internet sales tax.
Seems the music industry is suffering with lack of royalties because of the
Internet. I investigated this issue, and interviewed one of the artists,
and see it is a serious problem. Perhaps lessons learned there can apply
to other intellectual property owners.
Now that Visa has settled, it looks like debit cards will be in use more in
the US. The suit allows private networks outside the Visa/Mastercard
network, which means giants like Wal-Mart may be offering their
own. Without getting greedy, there is a lot of money to be made with
transactional processing using debit cards. Instead of charging a
percentage of sales, charge a flat fee per transaction. Trust me, there is
a lot to be made.
I believe we have the start of one battle with today's issue. Jim Straw
asks "what is spam?" According to Jim, one man's junk is another's
treasure. What do you think?
Now, let's get to everything for the retailer.
Sincerely
Dr. George Matyjewicz
Chief Global Strategist, GAP Enterprises, Ltd.
mailto:georgem@gapent.com
http://www.etailersdigest.com
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[2] Visa settles debit card lawsuit for $2 billion
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Visa USA has reached a tentative settlement with Wal-Mart and thousands of
other retailers just before their multibillion-dollar lawsuit over the
company's popular debit cards was set to go to trial, both sides said late
Wednesday. Visa USA said in a statement that it had reached "an important
agreement in principle" with the plaintiffs and would change its debit card
policies.
THE DEAL is worth $2 billion, with terms similar to those agreed to between
the retailers and MasterCard International on Monday, a source close to the
plaintiffs told The Associated Press.
The retailers claim Visa and MasterCard trapped them into paying high fees
by demanding that stores that accept their credit cards also accept their
debit cards. They also claim the companies have stifled competition.
Visa and MasterCard have said the "honor all cards" policy is important so
that consumers can have more choice. Retailers, who filed suit seven years
ago, say the process ultimately costs consumers more money.
The debit cards use a customer's signature to verify a transaction. Many
merchants would rather use less expensive, independent networks that clear
debit-card transactions using a personal identification number, or PIN.
Details at...
http://www.msnbc.com/news/907625.asp?0si=-
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[3] Internet E-Mail Stamp
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A list member wrote...
>A stamp would merely legitimatize spam.
The charge previously noted was not 1.00 or 1.50 but a micropayment - ie:
an amount intended to hit spammers who typically send 100000 emails or more
at one shot. I receive between 300 and 400 emails a day and send anywhere
from 100 to 700 a day (some automated, of course).
Even so, stamps do not solve the problem for people who want to get mail
from unknown sources, what many of us happen to call "prospective
customers"<g>, nor do they solve the problem for deep pocketed spammers who
have studied their business enough to know that their response rate (and
thus their anticipated revenue) will make the cost of "stamps" simply part
of their overhead costs. The spammer without business skills would probably
disappear, while the professionals would simply get better at their trade,
since the stamps would weed out those without business skills.
>Fees like that would kill mailing lists.
Doesn't have to. Part of the opt-in process could easily include a
mechanism to bypass the payment process for lists. The opt-in process
itself (when it is actually used<g>) would prevent spammers from working
the system by "building a list" and trying to use it to send for free.
>My proposal has been at http://www.mall-net.com/spam/ since 1996.
> You decide what to charge unknowns based on topic and/or domain name.
> If they bid enough for your eyeballs, you get their e-mail. If not, no
charge.
> Those whom you know, you charge nothing for. Bulk attempts to reach
> this would be clear commercial fraud.
As defined, this would mean prospects who you do not know would never
receive your mail or would be charged for contacting you. Not an ideal
solution in my book, those are unknowns I *want* to get<g>. Fraud
prosecution requires that I stop doing business to chase down a lawyer (or
a bureaucrat, per the link above) who will never be able to find a Korean
or Chinese (or US) spammer who doesn't want to be found.
The prospect emails from unknown addresses are what throw a monkey wrench
into all these discussions.
As I recall (slept since then, sorry<g>), this discussion started because
of the inability to get legitimate email business communications to
your/our customers. RSS feeds are another way to make that happen. We are
starting to build a private RSS aggregator into our products so that we can
make our way around ISPs who think they should have the right to control
our customers inboxes and poorly written / poorly configured personal spam
filters. Spammers cant steal our RSS feeds. RSS doesn't fix regular emails,
but it is a great way to get legitimate business broadcast info (mostly one
way communications like tips of the week, weekly/monthly specials,
newsletters, etc) back into our users' hands.
Now all we have to do is wait for MSFT to get RSS built into Outlook and
Outlook Express for those who don't want to (or don't realize the
ability/need to) use a separate aggregator.
Mark Riffey
Granite Bear
www.granitebear.com
==================================================================
----- ---- --- -- -> Important Offer <- -- --- ---- ---- --
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----- ---- --- -- -> Important Offer <- -- --- ---- ---- --
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[4] Internet Sales Tax again
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>35 states are trying to coordinate their laws to create a
> far simpler, more uniform sales tax - Streamlined Sales and
> Use Tax Agreement that state budget officials hammered out
> in meetings over several years. That will make it uniform
> throughout the US. When ten states adopt SSUTA it will be
> in effect - probably July.
Actually, it will not "be in effect" no matter how many state "adopt" the
uniform sales tax. States can't make Federal law. Right now there is a
Federal Supreme Court prohibition of a national sales tax, i.e., of
collecting sales tax from an entity not in the a state's own jurisdiction.
What the writer probably meant is that once 10 states adopt the so-called
uniform sales tax, there will be a push in Congress to override the Supreme
Court decision, forbidding a uniform national sales tax. But there is
already more than enough opposition in Congress to prevent that from
happening.
Most of the businesses "voluntarily" signing up to collect the Internet
sales tax are doing it as a cynical move to force smaller retailers into
the system. It won't work.
Cheers, CMA
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[5] Spam? What is it?
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I don't think people are looking at the real source of spam...
ISP (INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS)
Whenever I sign up with an ISP (Internet Service Provider), I always set up
one of my email addresses using a grandchild's name. Now, I never provide
that address to anyone and never use it. Yet, after a few week I start to
get spam on that email address. The only way this can happen is for the ISP
to sell my email address.
I can tell you for sure, Bellsouth and SBC/Yahoo sell the email addresses.
Jerry Grooms
Alpharetta, GA
jg.acs@prodigy.net
http://www.barcodeitnow.com
+++ [Next Post] +++
Many years ago a number of tests were made within the mailorder industry to
try to determine what "Junk Mail" was/is. -- In all the tests conducted it
was discovered that what was "Junk Mail" in one person's opinion was good
mail in another person's opinion ... the "test" results were almost always
50/50. -- SO ...
Before anyone can attempt to ban or control "spam" it must first be defined
... which it will never be ... because whatever you (or I) may deem "spam"
may very well be welcome email to someone else.
Jim Straw
--
Are YOU making enough money?
Maybe you're using the wrong tools.
Check out the "POWER TOOLS for Entrepreneurs" at:
http://www.businesslyceum.com/mdl.html
You won't be disappointed.
+++ [Moderator's Comments] +++
Jim, I'll gladly pass all my spam on to you <g>. Spam is defined -
Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE). The difference between spam and mail
order junk mail is one simple thing - I pay for spam, and I don't pay for
junk mail. I would still like to know of any company who makes money as a
result of spam.
Jerry, once your email is posted anywhere, it becomes available to mail
extractors. And I agree that some ISPs do rent their lists.
George
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[6] Music is intellectual property
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Here's something very similar to the Internet stamp we've been
discussing. The music industry really suffers when folks download
music. My wife's cousin Jack Keller is a famous song writer (theme song
from "Bewitched" among others) and he an I discussed the issues at length
on day. It's intellectual property, the same as software or written
works. Writers or singers get paid for every song sold. Public places
that play songs pay a flat amount each month, which is distributed to the
appropriate people. Jack gets a computer print out each month that is
approx 4" thick that lists every song he wrote and the amount of royalties
for each song, no matter where in the world the song is sold or played.
With the Internet and applications like KaZaa, they lose out on royalties
due. Yes, there are arguments that downloading a song allows you to listen
to it, and then go out and buy it at a store. Yeah, right.
I believe they have a method of controlling this process, however. You
need to download a peer-to-peer program like KaZaa. So, the obvious is to
charge for that software, and distribute the fees like they do with places
that play music.
Here's an article from Reuters...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. court said on Thursday that Verizon
Communications VZ.N must reveal the names of customers suspected of
downloading copyrighted songs from the Internet without permission even as
it appeals the decision to a higher court.
The ruling marks another legal victory for the recording industry as it
tries to stamp out the unauthorized Internet song-swapping it says is
partially responsible for a decline in CD sales. The Recording Industry
Association of America took Verizon to court last summer in an effort to
get the telecommunications giant to help crack down on online song-swapping.
The RIAA argued that Verizon is obligated under the 1998 Digital Millennium
Copyright Act to help its members to protect their copyrights. Verizon says
it is willing to help, but argued that the law only applies to Web pages
stored on its computers, not traffic on the "peer-to-peer" networks that
merely travel across its wires.
Details at...
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=T3PJC0NDS0PV4CRBAEKSFFA?type=internetNews&storyID=2625749
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