Fwd: E-MAIL SURCHARGE

[pking123-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org]

> On Tue, Oct 18, 2005 at 05:50:17PM -0400, pking123-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org wrote:
> > William Park <opengeometry-FFYn/CNdgSA at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> Email traffic coming into Canada will be charged.  Foreign backbone
> companies can choose to swallow the cost or pass it on to their ISPs.
> In turn, these ISPs can choose to swallow the cost or pass it on to
> their users.  Using free market force to solve spam problem.
> 
> It's still free to receive spam, just like junk mail.
> 

But William, unlike junk mail, spam can be distributed freely (to the 
spammer), where the ISP and end users pay the bill. Spammers depend 
on using up bandwidth at the expense of other users. All "free" means 
in your context, is that the cost is either absorbed by the ISP or 
included in the monthly charge to the end user. I don't consider my 
email service to be free. I pay for it each month as one of a number 
of services that come with my Internet feed. As part of my bill, I 
pay for what I send _and_ what I receive.

OTOH, junk mailers pay in bulk for a postal worker to carry their 
stuff to the mailbox. Somebody pays somewhere, nothing is ever really 
free. As such, it is less offensive, since I can always toss the 
stuff in "the circular file" as they say.

And spammers are disparagingly named, because they are getting a free 
ride off services which others (like you and I) pay for. I would 
prefer to call them "leeches", but that one is already in use as a 
Geek term.

With the ideology of the Free Market ought to be idea of ownership 
and control. Who owns and controls my internet services? Ideally, it 
should be my ISP, and the customers who pay for it, myself among 
them. Should a spammer from the Cayman Islands have a say in who gets 
what email at Sympatico? If we allow unsolicited email from the 
Cayman Islands (or even inside Sympatico -- who cares where it's 
from), then we have answered the question: that they have at least 
some control. 

If we say that they should have nothing to do with deciding anything 
about my email services; that control must belong in the hands of the 
companies which own the servers and also their customers, then we 
must agree that it is important for an ISP operating in a free market 
to purge all the spam they can get their hands on, even to the point 
of urging police and criminal proceedings to take place for theft of 
services on the part of the spammers.

I am not saying that the products spammers provide are good or bad; I 
am saying that the very existence of spam is an abomination and 
perversion of everything the free market stands for. Its very 
existence is criminal. It is a theft of services that they never paid 
for, and it is unfair that I should be made to pay for their share of 
the traffic. 

Paul King

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