Subject: RE: [Asrg] Stamps

From: "Sauer, Damon" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 11:08:33 -0500

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Moore [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2003 10:12 AM
To: David Jameson
Cc: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
Subject: Re: [Asrg] Stamps

> Spam exists because there is an (almost zero) fixed cost associated with 
> sending it out.

false.  snail mail spam exists despite having significant costs associated
with sending it.

-- False. Snail mail spam exists because the return is higher than cost. So,
David is still right.

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From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 11:58:34 -0500

> -- False. Snail mail spam exists because the return is higher than cost.

That doesn't contradict my assertion.

Let me put it a different way:

Artifically increasing the cost of email will not prevent spam.  It will
reduce spam.  It will change who uses spam to advertise.  It will also reduce
the volume of email that we want to receive.

A large percentage of the snail mail I receive is spam, something like 75%. 
One reason snail mail spam is not as annoying as email spam is that the
overall volume of snail mail is lower, so it's easier to deal with the spam
portion of it.  But the overall volume of snail mail is lower than that of
email precisely because snail mail is so much more expensive than email (both
in terms of money and effort).

If we increase the cost of sending email, we'll find that many of the best
things about email - e.g. that it makes it easy for us to keep in touch with
people with whom we would not otherwise do so - will be gone.  And we'll still
be getting spam, it will just be 'slicker', and trying to sell us different
products.  And the folks who are sending it will claim that they have a right
to do so.

Keith

---

From: Michael Ellis <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 11:54:00 -0500

> -- False. Snail mail spam exists because the return is higher than cost. So,

--False. There is still a fixed cost involved and it is not unsubstantial,
regardless of the return.

--
Michael Ellis
Privacy Manager
Date.com
  Phone   (416) 306-0022 ext 620
  Fax     (416) 306-0023

Date.com - "The New Way To Date"

---

From: David Jameson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 13:05:27 -0500

I don't think this is necessarily true. The proposal was that the cost be 
negligible for "normal" emails and it's only when one tries to send 
hundreds of thousands out that it becomes "real money".  It would not 
affect the average person at all.
As for the claim that people will have the right to send it - that's 
absolutely true. And we will still need to have mechanisms in place to 
detect unsolicited mail. A whitelist with challenge/response is very 
effective for this.
D

---

From: Jim Youll <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 13:21:55 -0500

At 13:05 -0500 3/7/03, David Jameson wrote:
>I don't think this is necessarily true. The proposal was that the 
>cost be negligible for "normal" emails and it's only when one tries 
>to send hundreds of thousands out that it becomes "real money".  It 
>would not affect the average person at all.
>absolutely true. And we will still need to have mechanisms in place 
>to detect unsolicited mail. A whitelist with challenge/response is 
>very effective for this.

Various techniques have been proposed for "raising the cost of high 
volumes of mail"

A problem that invariably arises is that there is no clear means to 
distinguish a high-volume site with many users (e.g. hotmail) from a 
high-volume sender that's spamming. All handlers of high volumes of 
mail are penalized equally... the fundamental cost of doing business 
increases across the board, and this does not create the desired 
imbalance...

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 14:20:12 -0500

> affect the average person at all.

I don't see any way to impose costs that are sufficiently large that
they will deter spam, that aren't so large that they will chill valuable
speech.

I do admit that such costs provide an incentive for spammers to target their
mail, which would probably reduce the volume from any one spammer, and it
would compel them to implement opt-out schemes.  But there would be a lot more
spammers.

As for challenge/response schemes, they're fine for people who want to use
them.  But I find them so annoying (even with whitelists) that I'm unlikely to
impose them on people who send me mail.  Maybe if we could automate them
somehow so that users didn't have to deal with them directly, they wouldn't be
so annoying.

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 12:45:52 -0700 (MST)

> From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>

> reduce spam.  It will change who uses spam to advertise.  

Those two ideas are clearly true.

>                                                           It will also reduce

I doubt that's necessary true for all spam targets.

> ...
> things about email ...

That seems to be based on the false notion the increasing the cost of
any mail must increase the cost of all mail.

I still think the future of spam is what I've been predicting for
years.  Recent statements from the Direct Mailers Association seem to
me to be confirmation.  I believe that eventually bulk mail will be
taxed like alcohol and tobacco, at a rate of $0.01 to $0.10 per
addressee.  The tax will probably not be called a tax, but something
like misleading much like the Gore Tax on telephone serice.  It will
be rationalized as "closing the digital divide" and "for the children."
A large part of the money will be spent on bureaucrats to do paper
work and detect and punish scofflaws.  The remainder will be sent to
ISPs that agree to participate to support free or reduced price services.

The penalties for failing to pay the tax will be imposed not just on
the spammers like Ralsky and Spamford but on their customers.  Recall
that very little spam fails to provide good ways to contact those people,
which means the use of foreign spam service bureaus, open relays, and
so forth will be irrelevant or evidence of intent to evade the tax.

Foreign spammers will be handled with the same mechanisms used to
fight fake Rolex watches and copies of music and movies.  Those
mechanisms are not perfect, but they don't need to be.

The taxes will be welcomed by advertisers for two main reasons.  The
taxes will limit the amount of spam we get to the volume of junk paper
mail which will defuse the public anger.  Second, the current cost of
spam is "too cheap to meter" and so hard to make a business of.  A
$0.03/adressee tax would make administrative costs of $0.01/addressee
and margins of $0.01/addressee sound reasonable.

If I'm right about that, then political implications suggest that
body filtering will remain effective.  They also suggest that real
opt-out/do-not-mail lists will appear.

Vernon Schryver    [email-masked]
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---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 14:49:56 -0500

> I believe that eventually bulk mail will be
> addressee.  

...

> opt-out/do-not-mail lists will appear.

my conclusions are similar.  note that the real purpose of such a tax would be
to make spam legally legitimate, while raising the bar just enough to make it
inaccessible by small companies.   but it wouldn't do anything to improve
the signal-to-noise ratio of email.

Keith

---

From: Jim Youll <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 14:50:08 -0500

I have a hard time getting behind any proposed solutions that require 
global, synchronized changes to infrastructure... such a thing has 
only happened once in the history of the net, and the net was quite 
small at the time.

At 12:45 -0700 3/7/03, Vernon Schryver wrote:
>>                                                            It will 
>>also reduce

---

From: Vernon Schryver <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 13:57:43 -0700 (MST)

> the signal-to-noise ratio of email.

Spam is already generally "legally legitimate," albeit becoming a
little less so.  The taxes will not raise the bar above the reach of
what are often called "small companies" (e.g. $1M/year revenue) but
above the reach of those who pay $300 for books, tapes and seminars
on how to get rich quick.

The tax will not directly improve the signat/noise ratio of mail in your
mailbox if your spam load is like that of the typical U.S.Postal Service
patron.  However, if you spam load is like that of many U.S. retail ISP
customers, it will be a noticable improvement.  The s/n ratio in your
mailbox will probably be significantly improved indirectly, or you will
spend less effort on filters.  The Dell Computers and RealNetworks of
the world do and will not deign to try to work around filters as the
get rich quick spammers do.  The DMA will teach its members that overtly
trying to break filters is bad for a business that depends on
Congresssional sufferance and that it's dumb to force advertising on
people who are willing to spend the effort to filter it.  It's better
to leave anti-advertising zealots alone than to poke us with sticks.

---

From: Nate W <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 13:45:31 -0800 (PST)

On Fri, 7 Mar 2003, Keith Moore wrote:

> As for challenge/response schemes, they're fine for people who want to
> use them.  But I find them so annoying (even with whitelists) that I'm
> unlikely to impose them on people who send me mail.  Maybe if we could
> automate them somehow so that users didn't have to deal with them
> directly, they wouldn't be so annoying.

That's a bit of a double-edge sword, since if you can automate them, the
spammers can automate them.

On the other hand, I think the odds are low that a spammer can maintain a
return address that actually functions long enough to reply to a
significant number of whitelist confirmations.  Not to mention that the
reward for accomplishing such is getting exactly one bit of spam through
to a user; once it arrives, the user is likely to blacklist the newly
whitelisted address.

-- 

Nate Waddoups
Redmond WA USA
http://www.natew.com

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 18:34:16 -0500

> significant number of whitelist confirmations. 

so this amounts to yet another heuristic for identifying possible spammers -
if they can't respond to a challenge, they're not stable enough to bother 
with.  not a perfectly reliable indication, but perhaps still useful?

Keith

---

From: Nate W <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 2003 16:52:11 -0800 (PST)

> with.  not a perfectly reliable indication, but perhaps still useful?

That is basically how I viewed this system in the first place, so yeah, I
think it's useful. :-)  

Put another way, there is a pretty high correlation between people I want
to correspond with and people who can and do monitor responses to their
messages.  There is an even higher correlation between people I don't want
to hear from and people who can't or don't monitor the responses to what
they send.  

-- 

Nate Waddoups
Redmond WA USA
http://www.natew.com

---

From: David Jameson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 2003 17:48:51 -0500

Nope - you can use mechanisms that requires a human to be in the loop - 
people have been experimenting with that since 1994 at least. For example, 
generate a graphic that must be typed in or use audio to say a word that 
must be typed in.
David

___________________________
Dr. David H. Jameson
Founder and CTO, DigiPortal Software Inc.

"Winning isn't everything but losing isn't anything"
                                                                     Irwin Cohen