Subject: Re: [Asrg] ESPC Proposal

From: "Shannon Jacobs" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 10:14:32 +0900

Actually, it's quite possible to eliminate ALL advertising email, but not
with the free lunch economic model. If there was any real cost up front for
sending email, then the entire system would change. The most obvious change
would be that the bulk spammers would not reach you at all, and instantly.

You are advocating a more extreme position, however. In spite of the greater
email visibility of the spammers, there are lots of legitimate businesses
using the Web, too, and many of them would be willing to pay for your
attention. Given my choices, I'd actually set the charges for my attention
at a rather high level, but that's because I value my time quite a bit and
would insist that any advertiser who wants to reach me had better agree to
that value. But if you really want to eliminate ALL advertising, then you'd
need to set the rate quite high--probably high enough to pay for someone to
check your email for you.

(I'd also want the option to allow some people to use a white list at very
low rates--or I'd even pay to receive their email as long as they agreed to
use an email system that would reliably prevent sender falsification.)

Actually, I'm rehashing an old position that I introduced when I first
visited this mailing list (and before I was driven off by the volume and my
lack of time). However, I see that nothing seems to have changed in my
absence. The largest bulk of the discussion is about how to escalate the war
by increasing the technical complexity of using email. The next largest bulk
is hoping for the government to ride to the rescue with laws that will
probably be much worse than the disease--power always gets abused. And
almost no consideration of the underlying cause: There is NO free lunch. If
the spammers had to pay for their lunch, they would have NO appetite.

J C Lawrence wrote:
> On Sun, 27 Apr 2003 21:15:39 -0400
> Margaret Olson <Olson> wrote:
>
>> You consent to a mailing because you expect certain content. If the
>> content isn't what you expected, isn't it spam? Don't you want to
>> hold the marketer responsible?
>
> I would be content if I could simply state to the universe, "Do not
> send me mail which attempts to market to me," and have reasonable
> expectation of that election being respected.  That simple: No
> marketing mail, no exceptions, no discussion, no appeal.
>
> Sadly, that's not possible.

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 16:13:19 -0400

> the spammers had to pay for their lunch, they would have NO appetite.

Exactly right.

The ISPs who manage mailboxes simply need to get together and impose a
charge for "commercial email" and use part of the proceeds to enforce
those charges (i.e., efforts to bypass become mere theft of service.)

What's the definition of "commercial email" Whatever they think will
keep their customers happy.

What's the charge? Whatever they think will keep their customers happy.

How much email should they allow into their customers' boxes for these
fees? WHATEVER THE F**K WILL KEEP THEIR CUSTOMERS HAPPY.

Should they distribute these funds to customers? WHATEVER THE F...

Get the pattern? It answers all the obvious objections.

If it were all a legitimate business like just about every other
advertising venue on earth, throttled by the basic business need to
keep customers happy (rather than managing their gang rape by
barbarians which is what it's like to run an ISP right now) then it
wouldn't be any more of a major concern than TV commercials or the ads
between articles in magazines.

Someone could even open an ISP which offers zero email ads if there
was a market for that. They'd be in control.

But there is no technical solution. There may be a technical
implementation of some solution, but there's no technical solution. If
you don't understand the difference that might explain why you have so
much time to read this list.

Spam in the current sense has been a serious problem for about 10
years now.

There's a great bounty for anyone who could write the program which
swoops down and solves the problem.

No one has done it.

Worse.

The IETF isn't generally at its best inventing stuff as is trying to
be done here (let's not quibble, that's the real point of this.)

They can take something which is already invented but being used in
one or more forms (even if just test bench) whose effect is
well-defined and bang it into a single spec, an RFC.

But sit here and grind your wheels on basically nothing until the talk
of course descends into vague morality discussions and the insults
start flying as people rub their world views together? Nahhh.

The ISPs need to get together and charge for "spam" they're being
asked to deliver to THEIR customers and take control of it so their
customers are no longer made unhappy by these thieves and crooks, and
let it just be another variable like "unlimited dialup", pricing,
roaming coverage, etc to compete for customers with.

FAQ

Q1) That's wrong, why should ISPs get that income?

A1) That's a moral question, next?!

Ok, howsabout, that's about the only way you'll reach any critical
threshold of organization to make this happen (I suppose the govt
could do the same thing and impose a tax on spam but I doubt that'd
make things better.)

Q2) What about int'l...?

A2) Other countries have laws, believe it or not spam is not the first
time the issue of int'l enforcement has come up. Although no one can
promise perfection the important currently missing ingredient is a
monetary incentive and means. See Q1.

Q3) Wait, doesn't this mean I'll get even more spam?!

A3) YOU CAN'T GET ANY MORE SPAM, THE METER IS PEGGED IN THE RED ZONE!

Ok, that's not 100% true but will be any minute.

But if your ISP had to be the one responsible for keeping you happy
one thinks they probably wouldn't go about it by pummeling your
mailbox with 150 slight variations on the same penis enlargement ad
every day. Some other ISP might just get the idea they could draw your
business their way by sending you merely 50 penis enlargement ads and,
well, do the math.

Q4) What about corporations and so on who do their own mailbox
delivery?

A4) They should have access to the same mechanisms and be able to
choose whether they wish to receive ads for recompense, what ads those
might be, none at all, etc.

Q5) What about people who run their own small mail servers?

A5) They could keep doing what they're doing. I suspect putting all
the dirtbag spammers out of business would drop volume enough that
it'd become less of a problem. Why would remaining spammers want to
search out every individual DSL line etc?

Q6) Would you still be allowed to filter your mailbox?

A6) Sure, I dunno, I don't care, maybe you'd sign a contract with your
ISP promising not to do that, or probably not because I doubt too many
would sign up for that unless the reward was steep. Or maybe it'd be
like TV right now and men in black suits would come over your house
and prop your eyelids open with toothpicks and later hold guns to your
pets' heads demanding you be able to answer questions on ads you were
watching all night...this is what's known as the paranoid rathole.

Q7) Why not just impose whatever mechanism you're thinking of right
now and be done with spam?

A7) Because there's NO MONEY in it right now. Part of the idea is that
someone has to be able to assert that this is the New World Order,
commercial advertising via email is to be paid for if it's let
through, or declined, and if that's evaded then men in black suits
will come and prop your eyelids open...

Q8) What about mailing lists? What's the threshold?

A9) WHATEVER THE F**K WILL KEEP CUSTOMERS HAPPY.

etc etc etc.

enough.

    -b

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