I suspect that the larger outfits will come onboard slower, perhaps
kicking and
screaming (despite the fact that THEY will have the most to gain by doing so).
Really? So they have absolutely no idea what's good for themselves
and their customers? Odd that they are in business.
Corporate inertia is an unfortunate thing, sometimes.
If we don't have to worry about E-mail bulk, then we're mostly
wasting our time here.
The lawsuits that HAVE been placed against spammers by large ISPs usually are
predicated precisely on the fact that the spam wastes ISP resources and costs
them a significant amount of money.
Which of those lawsuits complained that the messages were too big?
The lawsuits have typically needed to put a dollar figure on the damages, and
generally they do that in terms of volume, which has a direct and quantifiable
dollar cost associated with it. I'll try to snare some of these articles as I
see them go by.
...For these people, it is
highly annoying to get an E-mail that includes text-image fetches from Web
servers and other forms of Web bugs in it.
Absolutely. But solving that problem doesn't require removing HTML
email does it?
Perhaps not, although removing HTML tags from the mail does solve it.
And go look at the numbers I posted. Note the number
of messages with and without image tags and with and without
attachments. The majority of HTML email does not have external image
tags. *That* particular problem is pretty much restricted to
spammers and (even more so) commercial bulk mailers like Amazon and
other companies. And if you think they are going to buy into the
idea that they are going to get a bounce message the first time their
customer forgets to whitelist them (which will be most of the time),
I think you are very mistaken.
I don't dispute that there will be some [very] minor inconveniences while the
system is coming up to speed and consumers are getting used to it. I think
that
is going to be true of basically *anything* that involves a change, IF that
change in fact makes a difference. I believe that the payback will be very
much
worth the temporary adjustements.
I still do contend that sending HTML-burdened E-mail in a 'first contact' is a
very poor strategy, and that the recipient should have the choice of whether
they wish to allow their limited Inbox space to be consumed that way.
Unfortunately, restricting email content type seems unlikely to have
any long-term impact on spam, as the spammers will simply adapt their
behavior to whatever content type is most likely to get their message
across.
That claim is self-contradictory. If spammers change their behavior
to send out
plain ASCII text spam messages, since that is the only type certain to get
through from previously unknown senders, then we *have* had a long-term impact
on spam... if _nothing_ else, by reducing its volume by 70% or more.
If you search the archives, you'll see that we had the volume
discussion a while back. The vast majority of the respondents felt
that volume was *not* an issue.
It is the PRIMARY ongoing element in the cost of handling spam E-mail messages.
In fact, if you do some analysis, I
believe you will find that the majority of the volume of email comes
not from HTML, but from attachments (word docs, powerpoint
presentations, pictures of the kids...). While 10 1k messages become
10 4k HTML messages. The first attachment that comes in dwarfs them
all.
That volume is FINE, *if* it's stuff that the recipients *want*.
Gordon Peterson http://personal.terabites.com/
1977-2002 Twenty-fifth anniversary year of Local Area Networking!
Support the Anti-SPAM Amendment! Join at http://www.cauce.org/
12/19/98: Partisan Republicans scornfully ignore the voters they "represent".
12/09/00: the date the Republican Party took down democracy in America.
_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
Asrg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg