Re: [Asrg] Spam, defined, and permissions

This is making the "best" the enemy of the "good".

Just because no one can guarantee perfection (and I think the idea
that high volume mailers can't be metered is questionable) doesn't
mean an idea is unworkable.

Little in this world is perfect, right down to elections which decide
the fates of nations, or tax systems that we are pretty sure allow for
a lot of evasions, etc. Somehow we muddle through, lacking any more
perfect alternative. It's interesting how only technical people seem
to ever find these "but I can show it's not perfect!" arguments to be
fatal.

I'd imagine the way to spread interest would be some sort of
cross-settlement. I meter what's delivered to me and from whom. Not a
big deal (pretty much all that info is already in my regular mail
logs.) [I know, I know, that which we don't like must be technically
impossible.]

At some point I send the other ISP a bill for it, expecting they send
me one also. [I know, I know, that which we don't like must be
impossible due to its potential for errors or contentiousness.]

They don't have to charge their customers, they can pay it out of
their own pocket if they think that's more a more attractive marketing
model, I don't care.

But if they refuse to pay me the solution is easy, don't let their
servers in.

But that's a worst case scenario [I know, I know, you're ready to hop
all over that one with reductio ad absurdum], and I think most
legitimate ISPs etc can come to some agreement that everyone can live
with, yet still punishes those who tolerate or abet spammers.

> > I am not proposing a charge for the average user. I'm saying
> > that a base service be included with the standard service and 
> > some parameters be biult around that for "normal" usage.
> How do you propose to get every ISP in the world to do this?  It won't
> work if mailers (both spammers and non-spammers who send a lot of
> mail) can simply move to ISPs that don't hassle them with annoying
> meter-ware.  For that matter, how do you plan to meter the mail coming
> out of legitimate high volume mailers like Sparklist or Whitehat?
> That's a lot of traffic to sniff at the router, and I doubt either one
> would be very interested in installing your meter-ware on their mail
> servers.
>
> Once you've done that, you've now added the meter evasion problem.
> Spammers are crooks, and they will certainly do whatever they can to
> circumvent any limits that people put on them and avoid paying for the
> resources they use.  Why do you expect the meter evasion problem to be
> any more tractable than the spam problem?
-- 
        -Barry Shein

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