On Wed, 19 Mar 2003, Hadmut Danisch wrote:
Spam is a business with growing revenue. The small business
is sending spam. The big business is selling anti-spam-solutions.
Obviously those, who's business is either one of these, try to prevent
a simple and effective solution.
The situation is similar to the virus/worm threat: Some parties make
huge revenues with selling anti-virus-solutions. It would be their
sudden death if application software and operating systems became
virus proof. Some of the anti-virus-software manufacturers are
suspected to viruses themselves in order to keep their business
alive.
I am under the impression that there is the very same situation with
Spam: It's business, it's revenue, it's profits, and thus it must not be
spoiled. Anti-spam efforts are welcome as long as they strengthen the
public awareness of spam and make people purchase
anti-spam-solutions.
I take real offense to this tone. As someone who works at a successful
anti-virus company (we named Klez) I can tell you quite clearly - there is
no attempt or motivation here to put out viruses or even keep virus
writers working. To suggest otherwise is insulting to those who work in
this business.
Yesterday I told a customer I was trying to get involved in the IETF's
efforts to "fix" the spam problem, however that may turn out. He was
surprised we would work to put ourselves out of business. But at the end
of the day this is going to happen whether we're involved or not, so
better to be involved than not. And any solution is going to involve a
long transition period for our customers, and we can hopefully be there to
ease that transition.
I want to see an end to spam as much as the next guy. I'm shit scared of
striker, and I'm an email user too. But the solution has to be practical,
and it has to have tangible benefits or my boss and my boss's boss are not
going to buy into it. And if they don't buy into it they won't sell it to
our customers, and you get a large section of the internet not interested
in using your scheme.
The last thing *I* want to do is prevent an answer to the spam problem
happening.
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