Well, yes. The basic problem with spam is the imposition of cost on
unwilling recipients; I see little point in epostage that pays some
other party, as then the recipient has still lost; it's just that
someone else has benefited instead. I fail to see how this improves
matters significantly.
It improves matters by significantly raising the transaction cost for
the spammer to send mail (currently ballpark 0.01 cent), thus reducing
the attractiveness of this advertising medium.
That's the standard argument, yes.
But the TRUTH of the matter is that spammers will just do what they've done ALL
ALONG and shift that cost to others to pay... by making sure that OTHER users
of
the net will pay for the spammers' E-postage. (Spambot zombies, etc etc.)
What you're doing is increasing (by a LARGE amount) the overhead of handling
E-mail, not to mention the HUGELY labor-intensive work of correcting all the
problems caused by the spammers and false charges, and all of those charges are
going to be borne NOT by the spammers, but by everybody else.
Remember the phone company's assertion that something like 85% of the cost of a
long distance phone call is the cost of billing you for it. (And THAT is for a
service where it's nearly impossible to "steal" service by billing to the
"wrong" caller...). The result is that you're going to HUGELY increase cost of
E-mail, and those costs are going to come back onto the LEGITIMATE users...
For many, many years, directory assistance calls were "free". They were
included in the cost of your phone service, and that cost a fraction of what it
does today.
Phone companies argued that "some people are abusing Directory Assistance!" and
they said that they wanted to put into place a limit on free directory
assistance... but not to worry, the limit would be high enough that almost no
legitimate users would ever reach it and have to pay.
As soon as they got the "pay for Directory Assistance" dam breached, they
steadily reduced the number of free calls (now, most subscribers get NO free
directory assistance calls per month) and increased the cost of each call to
LUDICROUS levels. Then they added insult to injury by stopping even TRYING to
provide phone books at pay telephones, so you have NO CHOICE but to call
directory assistance for the phone numbers you need.
Had they REALLY been concerned about abuse, a better (and less abuse-prone)
scheme would have been: Directory Assistance calls, IF the number is not in
the
current published-and-delivered directory, are FREE. If you call directory
assistance for a number which IS in the published-and-delivered directory (and
that you thus could have looked up) then there is a dissuasive penalty of $5
per
call. The fact that they charge for ALL directory assistance calls, INCLUDING
for numbers which are not published in the directory, proves that they were NOT
simply trying to stamp out abuse...!
This thing about E-mail... "We'll of course give you enough "free" "e-mail
stamps" each month that nobody legitimate will have to pay extra" is only just
a
ruse to get folks to say "Well, in that case... maybe it won't be so bad..."
but
you can COUNT on the same tightening-the-ratchet once the basic "pay per unit"
scheme is in place... :-((((
AND, like SPF, you have NOT done anything that will PREVENT spam. So you have
YET ANOTHER expensive and cumbersome intensively technical/administrative
solution that ultimately WILL NOT SOLVE THE PROBLEM!
Gordon Peterson http://personal.terabites.com/
1977-2002 Twenty-fifth anniversary year of Local Area Networking!
Support free and fair US elections! http://stickers.defend-democracy.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.
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