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Re: [Asrg] In case anyone thought Barry was exaggerating

2003-06-28 10:41:19
"Jon Kyme" <jrk(_at_)merseymail(_dot_)com> wrote:
If no-one is using (receiving) email, why will the spammers
send it?

  At that extreme, they won't.  Then people will start using email
again, because there's no spam.  Then the spammers will attack again.
Repeat until you regurgitate.  This isn't difficult to figure out...


  Spammers will increase the volume of their traffic until they are
just barely more than breaking even.  That's guaranteed.  I'll bet
money that the number of people using email then will be lower than it
is today, and that those people will have massively increased costs
for their SMTP infrastructure.  I doubt this is the goal of the
current opposition to anti-spam solutions, but it's definitely the end
result.

  So my original statement that "no one" will be using email was
exagerated for effect.  I still believe it's substantially true,
though.  The vast majority of people will simply give up on email once
spam becomes too much trouble to deal with.  I'll include ISP's in
that, too.

  Then what?  We'll probably have SMTP for people willing to put up
with the deluge of spam, and eventually a new, non-spammy protocol for
people who have gotten frustrated with the "fingers in the ears"
attitude towards changing SMTP.  But for a long period, there will be
duplicate email systems, and massive political fights.

  Let's face it, SMTP (as it was in the 1980's) is irrevocably dead.
Spam has killed it, and we need to accept that fact.  Whether the new
non-spammy protocol is SMTP++, or something else, is irrelevant.  We
need to do *something* more than believe that SMTP was created by God,
and that anyone changing it will be cursed forever.

  Alan DeKok.

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