Subject: [Asrg] How charging for spam (or mis-labeled messages) might actually work...

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 20:25:23 +0000 (GMT)

>>> It's reached the point where I would consider disconnecting everyone
 >> with a zombied machine an acceptable price; I believe every such person

>> I would agree with this. 

Some percentage of the machines you disconnect will never come back (and each 
time they're infected) and eventually nearly _every_ machine will be hit by a 
spammer or abuser or virus/worm infection.  

Like telephones, the value of having an Internet connection is reduced for 
EVERYBODY if fewer people worldwide have Internet connections.

> 3 - Customer is charged on every mis-labeled message (and server imposes 
some limit on amount of messages sent which may yet turn out to be 
spam). If your machine became a zombie, it's your lack of responsibility 
and you pay for it (but at least you know pretty soon about this!). Same 
as if your pet goes biting people...

If the amount of the charge is effective, it must be "reasonable" but nonlethal 
to a victim (though it makes them unhappy) while still dissuasive to a spammer, 
which might happily pay a thousand dollars for sending a months's worth of wild 
spamming.

But again, the fact is that spammers make it a point to NOT pay for their spams, 
but rather to shift ALL those costs to unwilling victims.

I guess you could have a victim's ISP call them to warn them of the spam 
situation, but then that increases personnel costs (and dramatically) as they 
try to deal with the mess and the resulting fallout.

When outgoing WATS lines were introduced in the 1970s, the argument for them was 
that 95% of the cost of long distance was the cost of billing for it.  I think 
that would be true in the case of this charging scheme, too.  That sounds to me 
like it is NOT a good approach.

> 4 - Customer is charged a `flat fee` which typically will include also 
filtering his incoming and outgoind mail for spam, and anti-virus 
support (to reduce chance of his machine becoming a zombie). Same as 
buying liability insurance...

The ISP is NOT in a good position to do anti-virus filtering, since they do not 
have an a priori knowledge of who individual subscribers are, and what their 
trust relationship is with each of their subscribers.  Thus the ISP is forced 
into making arbitrary and capricious judgements which may not be appropriate.

> 5 - existing model: customer is not formally charged, but pays (in some 
way) for each account and accounts are terminated on detecting spamming...

I think it's interesting how many people (clearly from ISPs or at least viewing 
things from an ISP perspective) always seem to see the "bill them" approach as 
the solution for these problems.  Obviously, those of us coming from the 
"enlightened end user" perspective don't much like that approach.

Gordon Peterson                  http://personal.terabites.com/
1977-2002  Twenty-fifth anniversary year of Local Area Networking!
Support free and fair US elections!  http://stickers.defend-democracy.org
12/19/98: Partisan Republicans scornfully ignore the voters they "represent".
12/09/00: the date the Republican Party took down democracy in America.

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