Savvy Internet marketers eager to get their spam to your inbox aren't the first to play around with the concept of opt in/opt out, or to make it all work to their advantage. There was a time, quite a long time, in this country when a person who wanted the U.S. Postal Service to deliver "objectionable" (read politically or socially unacceptable) mail had to specifically request the delivery.
Imagine subscribing to a French literary magazine, the current issue of which contains a short story depicting a banker in an unflattering light—perhaps he's out foreclosing on the homes of subprime borrowers. In times past such a story might be deemed anti-capitalist, unAmerican, communist propaganda by the U.S. Postal Service. Under the Kennedy administration your magazine would be held by the postal authorities until you went to your post office and completed a form specifically requesting delivery of communist propaganda. In other words, you had to "opt in" to receive what the government (and most of America) felt was objectionable, politically unacceptable, certain-to-be-subversive mail.
At the heart of this oppressive policy was §305(a) of the Postal Service and Federal Employees Salary Act of 1962 which required the Postmaster General to hold all communist political proaganda mailed from outside the United States until the addressee opted in to receive such mail. The Post Office implemented the law by providing the addressee with a card stating that unless the addressee "opted in" within 20 days it would be assumed that the addressee does not want the publication or any similar publications in the future. Nice huh? The statute was struck down by the Supreme Court (Lamont v. Postmaster General) in 1965 for the obvious unconstitutional limitations it placed upon First Amendment rights. In the park today I overhead the conversation of two gentlemen who would like to see new legislation essentially identical to the outrageous 305(a), but substituting "homophobic propaganda" for "communist propaganda." One suggested that such a provision should be incorporated into the "hate speech" legislation currently before Congress. However you line up on the issue of "hate speech," I'd think we'd all want to line up on the same side of free speech—and we certainly don't want to have to have to "opt-in" just to get our mail delivered, objectionable mail or not.
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Has any congressperson introduced any legislation of this kind? This really would be outrageous. How would you even do such a thing today when so much “mail” is electronic, sent over the Internet. How would the government even police that? I’ll be they have their ways!