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From: johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: Lotus CD-ROM database cancelled
Message-ID: <1991Jan24.235000.19230@iecc.cambridge.ma.us>
Date: 24 Jan 91 23:50:00 GMT
References: <3231@litchi.bbn.com>
Organization: I.E.C.C.
Lines: 20

In article <3231@litchi.bbn.com> rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) writes:
>   C.B. (Jack) Rogers, Jr., president and chief executive officer of Equifax,
>which provides the data in MarketPlace, said: "... The major survey finding
>was that consumers are willing to make trade-offs for the use of their
>personal information when they clearly understand the benefits.  Despite our
>significant consumer education efforts, consumer misperceptions about this
>new product offered through this distribution channel persist."

Uh huh.  Perhaps some of us misperceiving consumers clearly understand that
there is no benefit at all to us from a product whose sole purpose is to
increase the amount of junk mail and junk telephone calls we get, and to
increase the availability of junk mailing lists to anyone who happens to have
a PC and a CD-ROM.  This is particularly the case since the sort of people
who will crack the copy protection to produce and mail more mailing labels
than they've paid for are exactly the ones who are the most likely to annoy
us with misleading and fraudulent solicitations.

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