Re: [Asrg] Spam, defined, and permissions

On Dec 28 2004, Hannigan, Martin wrote:
> There is no single solution. SPAM is never going to go away in it's
> entirety. If you can minimize it where you can actually measure it
> accurately, you can educate people to handle the rest.
Great, we are mostly in agreement.


> > It seems to me that the problems faced by ISPs are quite 
> > different than 
> > the problems faced by end-users or the problems faced by major webmail
> > providers. 
> Not really. Internet services are from the bottom up, and the funding of
> those products/services is top down. The users major problem is always
> the ISP's major problem. Major problem impacts call centers, sales,
> operations,
> usage, capacity models, etc.
The differences are there. 

End users don't have a storage problem, nor do they get DDOSed by mail
to invalid usernames. End users don't need to be connected 24/7.  End
users don't have a zombie problem. Their computers can easily handle
hosting a zombie without appreciable direct impact.

ISPs don't have a content and information overload problem. In fact, ISPs
wouldn't need to care what users read or send, if it weren't for that pesky
heavy resource use. 

Put more simply, ISPs have the problems of middle-men. They are
concerned with efficiently moving content. End users are concerned
with actual content, not with efficiently filing it for retrieval. 
 
> > I believe my criticism is valid, but if I am looking at things too
> > simplistically, please enlighten me: The charging model is 
> > intended to 
> > push the problem from the ISPs to the end users. End users who don't
> > do their bit to fix the spam problem are priced out of the network.
> No. It's a mechanism to substantially reduce the amount. SPAM will never
> be stopped in it's entirety.
I don't think I claimed that charging people would stop spam dead in its 
tracks. However, now that you brought it up, do you have some rough estimate
for the expected reduction? 

If say you're offering a 50% reduction for the price of building a
universal mail metering system, then I'd say install SpamAssassin or a
bunch of other filters, they can easily handle a 50% reduction with
probably a competitive pricetag. However, your system probably creates
more jobs in the economy, and I'm not seriously suggesting that you
claim only 50%. So do you have something in mind when you say
"substantially reduce"?

> > But pricing doesn't tell the users just what they are supposed to do
> > under this scheme. There's the nebulous idea of "keep your PC zombie
> > free".
> The users aren't supposed to have to do anything.
They are supposed to pay, no?

> > Presumably, email is such a vital resource that end users who are
> > priced out of the mail network will do everything possible to return
> > to it, and that will somehow acts as a kind of breeding ground for a
> > true solution to the zombie problem. Perhaps that can truly happen, I
> > don't know.
> Youre fantasizing "War of The eWorlds". I'm suggesting a cap on current
> services so that any obvious overuse (spam?) is paid for - which in turn
> drives entities to act by either a.de-zombify or b. not sending
> junk mail - because it's not cost effective ie. comcast charges a commercial
> rate for the line, a fee over the cap, a higher cost plan, etc. 
Continuing on from your previous comment, if users are not the entities,
then what other entities should do a. or b.?

> > I imagine that the same hackers who gave us P2P will find a way to
> > send email transparently, without necessarily using the existing email
> > network. Then we'll have two email networks, a free one and a 
> > metered one.
> Grasping at straws. There is NO SUCH THING as a free network. This
> is 2004. In 1994 there was the appearance of free, but univerisities
> bore the brunt of the "cost" for "free".
My mistake, I didn't mean free, rather unmetered per email, ie charged
by data volume as any other binary traffic already is. Also, you'll
note that the above is a "big picture" vision as per bzs's request on
this thread.


-- 
Laird Breyer.

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