On Dec 27 2004, Barry Shein wrote:
I guess you've decided you're just always right a priori, must be
nice. Put another way, I'm trying to imagine any circumstance, right
or wrong, your sentence couldn't apply to.
Because I say that I see large holes in your approach? I'm glad that
you consider my single opinion so valuable, thank you, but I just call
it as I see it.
> What bothers me here with your approach is that you're not attacking
> the spam problem, you're attacking the user apathy problem and
> *hoping* that this will somehow solve the spam problem. But there's no
> guidance as to what users will or should do if they wake up from their
> apathy.
Not really, someone pointed out that a big problem (of charging for
email) would be that virus-infected zombies would be charged.
I said, well, if the charges were adjusted into the right range, a
dollar or two perhaps, they might even motivate people to get their
machines fixed w/o sending them into a murderous rage.
Just looking at a possible positive aspect. Or, more importantly,
pointing out how people draw their examples only to illustrate the
point they want to make. For example, positing a charge for an
infected zombie as being so immense that it converts the average PC
user into Osama bin Laden.
It looks like I got lost in this thread. I had the impression
that you were arguing that a charging model (cause) would
make people keep their PCs zombie-free (effect). Sorry.
We're talking about near and likely futures.
I'll keep that in mind below.
I'm talking more about people in some near future, you know, when all
this charging is deployed, who continue to resist upgrading their
computers etc. because they're too cheap or whatever reason. Ok,
they'll get infected, they'll incur nag charges, their choice.
I believe that's likely. I also believe that in such a future, a
free alternative mail system will spring up lead by open source
client applications, which will use available unmetered channels
to send email.
Also, the assumption is that that OTHER ISP would treat you the same
(or similarly), so what's the point?
That's a new assumption, at least to me. Are you exploring a future where
all ISPs collude? If so, I think an interesting question would be whether
such collusion forms a stable market limit, or would it have a tendency
to e.g. fragment.
One reason for this is because in this future ISPs, and probably Tier
N-1s, are metering each other and that machine is going to show up as
a high-mail user which might even incur your ISP charges. So why would
any ISP put up with your zombie-infected spam-spewer?
I don't think that ISPs put up with zombies willingly. It's just part
of the massively decentralized internet.
I'd like to speculate that in yet another future, ISPs will be faced
with new mail transports which bypass metered SMTP. In such a future,
mail is indistinguishable from binary data, and charged as part of the
flat monthly fee.
--
Laird Breyer.
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