(large) Mailing lists will have to change, probably become some sort
of pull technology unless the sender is willing to pay per piece.
I realize there's this fantasy here that because each of the Fortune
1000 wants to send out 100 million msgs per month to their "customers"
who (maybe mostly) want those msgs that ISPs are thereby obliged to
deliver that traffic.
That image is not only false, it's also evil. Here're a few reasons
why:
1. It assumes that the $20/mo or whatever (often less) for internet
service, mail being only one part of that, can be infinitely tapped
for their own commercial advantage. Content aside that's precisely
what the spammers want to do. The same can be said for whoever you use
for mail service, including your employer or school, etc., their mail
budgets can't be expected to infinitely expand.
2. There is already a rapidly rising tide of mail being sent by such
concerns to email addresses which no longer exist for all the various
reasons (recipient died, hey it happens, left, quit, graduated,
abducted by aliens, ...)
3. A lot of the commercial mail is sent to mailboxes which never
existed. Where they get those addresses is just another mystery of
life tho we can speculate (people lied on forms, made mistakes, they
acquired bad lists, etc.)
4. It also assumes that resources such as personal mailboxes are
infinite and never fill up causing other mail to start bouncing. Much
of the world has to live with some fairly limited quota on their
mailbox and it's dangerous and foolish to assume that resources can
just be increased as good intentions require.
Most of you don't see this tidal wave of muck banging away on the
shores here like a massive oil spill, so you tend to be focused only
on stuff that actually gets into your boxes which you personally don't
want, you become content-centric.
Unfortunately, the way mail is currently constituted there's virtually
no motivation to ever clean up those lists.
If someone wants to fix this email system the goal shouldn't be just
stuff you don't want your grandmother to see, it should be the
superset problem, of which spam is just one example, added to my
examples above, and more.
If you don't see that then you don't "get it" and shouldn't be
pretending to be qualified to solve the problem just because you know
some SMTP and have looked at some spam you got, etc, which
unfortunately sums up the apparent (related) skill set of a lot of
those pushing themselves forward as having the answers on spam.
--
-Barry Shein
Software Tool & Die | bzs(_at_)TheWorld(_dot_)com |
http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202 | Login: 617-739-WRLD
The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo*
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