Will certified e-mail stop spam? (was: unsubscribing... etc)

Peter plp-ysDPMY98cNQDDBjDh4tngg at public.gmane.org
Sun Apr 16 01:02:20 UTC 2006


On Sat, 15 Apr 2006 billt-lxSQFCZeNF4 at public.gmane.org wrote:

>> software and install protection, and to have this done by someone who
>> really knows what he's doing.
>
> The problem with 'the small fee' scenerio is that it will become the 
> reason to police things. Instead of investigating and stopping 
> spammers, the authorities in question will investigate and fine the 
> victoms of these attacks. Also the victims of these attacks may 
> quickly decide that the fee 'is part of doing business' espeically if 
> its infrequent and small.

Maybe, but either way it would eventually make service cheaper for whom 
is compliant. Eventually the larger bandwidth and admin time consumed by 
zombied hosts and spammers will translate into dollars, and those who 
are not among the 'flawed' will likely be eligible for rebates, lower 
prices, etc. This in turn could attract other customers to sign up at 
the new, lower prices.

The current situation is, that the sender of bulk email pays *the 
least*, as opposed to the 10,000 receivers. This is the problem. Until 
this problem will not be addressed, there will be no peace.

> What you will get is the situation similar to parking enforcement. The 
> authorities aren't interested in stopping illegal parking or remedying 
> it by legislating solutions because the infraction is too lucrative a 
> business.

Agreed. That's why I was thinking of escrow, and voluntary only (as in 
ISP volunteering to do this). Also the 'regulatory body' would be formed 
from among the volunteers (probably with input from a user panel). After 
all, RBL lists and so on are a variant of this, but without financial 
teeth.

>> After a while word should get around and people should start doing the
>> right thing before trouble starts, or at least asap. Pavlovian reflex
>> induced by modern billing methods.
>
> More likely they will see the fine as part of doing business. If 
> getting caught is infrequent, then why bother with the latest updates?

True, but their fees would allow the ISPs to settle matters otherwise. 
F.ex. by buying bulk antivirus protection. They would also wise up and 
eventually boot such users, because of the threat of being ostracized by 
the other ISPs in the network (for wasting their bandwidth and disk 
space and cpu time). After all, this is exactly what an admin at the 
receiving end of a wall of spam does now: blacklist the origin block for 
a while.

> Also if such a system is instituted why don't you think that a class 
> action suit against Microsoft won't ensue. It is their product that is 
> causing people to be fined. Why do you think a civil court won't find 
> Microsoft negligent?

It is almost irrelevant how, when, and for how much a court finds them 
in NA. Ever since they were indicted for being a monopoly and walked 
away from it as if nothing has happened, and ever since the kafkaesque 
interminable lawsuit about Linux, the credibility of that legal system 
has become irrelevant in this context (that of the state or a class 
action suing monopolies, or patents).

> Finally why do you think you ISP wouldn't end up in court for allowing 
> such dangerous practices on their network?

Which dangerous practices ? The ones they have been allowing since they 
exist and occasionally indulged in (as when forwarding spam or 
providing colocation, dns, mx, and routing to known spammers) ?

> An ISP can easily set up a quota system (say 1000 emails a day) and 
> 99.99% of the machines out there wouldn't notice. This would 
> immediately kill all spammers. The few people (say someone running a 
> mailing list) can put in for an exemption, have to sign papers saying 
> they will take responsibility for any spam from their machine 
> generates.

Agreed. But this lacks teeth. Somehow, the dollar incentive to sending 
spam must be countered. But how ?

Peter
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