Anti spam solutions

[Peter L. Peres]

> Agreed, this is exactly what the corporate warlords want, is to shut out
> the end-user from all attempts to modify content on the internet, and
> make it, as I and many others have described it many times, a "content
> delivery system", another version of TV.

I don't want that but I don't want the spam in a worse way than I don't
want that.

> Charging people per-mail is one step in that direction, and as Kareem
> rightly points out, is punishing the wrong people. The ability to
> send/upload/modify ought to be universal and free, if it is to work for
> good (ie. a community of equals, the only truly workable communicative
> structure) instead of evil (ie. an ideological and one-way stream of
> bullshit).

I do not see the connection. A postage stamp is 10 cents or so, if an
email would cost 2 cents, and you can get a bulk mailing license (say for
0.1 cents per) if and only if you run a nonprofit mailing list then what's
the problem ? You sent 10 emails a day, 30 days a month, = 20cents * 30
days = $6. You probably do not realise what spam means for people like me
who pay US$30+ per month for 56k modem access (and it never is 56k).

> As the Discordians say, true communication is only possible between
> equals, and if you start putting a premium on that communication, it
> becomes by definition unequal. It is already unequal enough, in that
> only a few million of us have the resources to go "online", let's not
> make it more so.

True communication involves the coordination of the talking and the
listening parties such that they change roles in accord with each other.
That means that they are not equal all the time, rather one is the
subordinate of the other one at any one time, and that they accept to
change roles in an orderly manner.

Spam is not communication, it is a form of undesirable noise for most
people. I do not want to limit communication, I want the noise down. Now.
I am aware that this has a price (money or otherwise). I want it down
because it uses 50% of my bandwidth (in theory spam costs me USD15 per
month, not including phone time and my own time required to deal with it).
I am willing to spend that much to make it stop. No, I will not invest in
a spam filter, I already have one. A spam filter at the receiver side only
reiforces the market in spam filters.

Some spam I receive advertises spam filters. I wonder if it lets the spam
filter advertisements through.

I am not trying to argue this is a good solution, but something must
happen soon.

Peter
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml