> Provide a good user experience, and you'll build a good
  > reputation. Push the limits (for example, use a "pre 
  > checked" checkbox on an order confirmation page to put 
  > people on your sales mailing list) and you'll be putting 
  > out email delivery fires all of the time.

Believe it or not, it's possible to be a good actor, follow all of the rules and best practices, and still get flagged as spam.

Mail recipients are not perfect. They forget that they signed up for things. They accidentally click the "spam" flag on their messages. They get lazy and instead of unsubscribing they click the spam flag.

The real culprit here is that email messages rely on blacklists and not whitelists, i.e. recipients are required to give all senders full access and then block them when they misbehave, instead of giving them no access and giving them more access as they build trust.

So: What would it take to implement email whitelists across the industry?