ietf-asrg
[Top] [All Lists]

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

2003-06-29 08:54:38
From: tbetz(_at_)pobox(_dot_)com

...
 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.

I'm not certain of this.

There is considerable evidence that it's already begun.

I heard an interesting stoy on the subject on NPR's "On The Meda" 

The old mass media including NPR hated the Internet at the start.
Then they fell in love with it and how it was to transform humanity.
Then they switched to talking about it being over the hill.
To see how widely and long they've been flogging "net dropouts," see
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Net+Dropouts%22

...
The Pew Trust report on which they are reporting can be found at 
<http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=88>.  A quick 
reading indicates that spam is only one contributing factor to the 
more general "problems with Internet Service Providers" cause for 
what the study calls "Net Dropouts".


My take follows that of people who know a lot more about the ISP
business than I do.  It is that many ISPs are still selling below cost
and trying to make it up in volume.   Unlike the colorful TV advertisers
that popularized that phrase, ISPs not saying that out loud and it's
true.  Worse, their volume is not increasing as it once was and that
is dimming hopes that signing up more users will get them into the black.
Instead of admitting that email is only mail, surf'in da web is merely
a computer game, and that most people have better things to do, they'll
leap on the hope that if they solve spam, they'll get profitable.
And by the way, the reason they're not profitable today is the $3 to
$100 per user per month that they are spending fighting spam--NOT!


Vernon Schryver    vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com

_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
Asrg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg



<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>