RE: namedroppers, continued

On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Lloyd Wood wrote:
> "Sender pays" is good. The penny black stamp effectively introduced a
> flat-rate tax on sending letters, rather than a variable-rate tax on
> receiving them, effectively turning mail into a common good available
> to all society.
You assume this really means "the spammer pays" [more]. But that isn't the
case.  This is based on the myth that somehow the receiver pays the entire
cost of a spam message. This isn't true, and never was true. The sender is
already paying, whether they are spammer or mailing list operator, or
regular end user.  The fact is that email is so cheap that it costs almost
nothing per message to send and receive.  It gets cheaper every day, as
disks and bandwidth get cheaper and cheaper. The receiver doesn't pay any
more than the sender pays. Real commercial spam happens because the cost
of sending spam is less than the cost of sending letters or postcards.

If you artificially made email expensive, it would be expensive for list
operators and regular people as well. You mentioned a rate of one cent per
message.  That would not be enough to deter spam. A rate of ten cents per
message would still be cheaper than postal mail, and so spammers would
still exist.  Much non-commmercial spam is sent by KLEZ or Nimda viruses.
This sort of abuse would not be affected whatsoever.  Note that KLEZ
infections are already illegal.

Think how much it would cost to send out namedroppers, (and the entire
bulk of IETF standards related email) if each message to each recipient
cost, say $0.10.  Or even one cent per message per recipient.  This
proposal would essentially wipe out many if not most mailing list
operators, and most ISPs.

I made a proposal back in 1997 that would not eliminate spam, but would
keep it out of your mailbox. My proposal was rejected because radicals
demanded a complete ban on spam. In 1998, there was an opportunity to get
anti-spam legislation passed.  Unreasonable anti-spam radicals passed up
that opportunity when they insisted on unrealistic demands, and
exaggerated and factually wrong assertions about the cost of spam.  They
assumed they could "shout down" any opposition, as they shouted down more
reasonable proposals.  They were understandably and easily crushed by the
Direct Marketing Association (DMA).  You can still see my proposal at
http://www.av8.com/H.4581/better.html This proposal would have been
difficult for the DMA to challenge since they already accept these
restrictions on postal mail.  You have the radical anti-spam leadership to
thank for your spam, and the fact that you don't have a universal opt-out
list.

The anti-spam effort was for all practical purposes completely crushed
when Exactis successfully sued MAPS and demonstrated that blacklists are
subject to the Sherman Anti Trust Act and that blacklists weren't
protected by the First Amendment.  I told Vixie this would happen in 1997.
He assured me that anti-spammers could win by technical means. If it
wasn't clear that he was wrong in 1997, (and it seemed pretty obvious even
then), it is now painfully obvious that Vixie and the rest were very
wrong.

It is really time for new, reasonable, anti-spam leadership, not artifical
changes to the cost of email, or schemes to try to make sending mail more
expensive for the senders, and certainly not gyrations in the sending of
namedroppers.

Thanks to the ineptitude, lack of foresight, irrationality, and general
unreasonableness of the anti-spam leadership, spam is here to stay. It is
just a matter of degrees of how bad it will be.  I note there is some
legislation before the house and senate (HR 1017) on spam control, that
reportedly isn't opposed by the DMA. However, these only control
fraudulent spam.  HR 1017 proposes extensions of 18 USC 1030, which makes
it a fraudulent spam a crime, but the FBI probably won't bring charges for
small violations. There is no provision for a civil action.

Another bill (S.630) would require each spammer to maintain an opt-out
list.  You would have to contact each spammer, and have your email address
added to their list, one by one. There would be thousands of spammers to
contact.

Note that my proposal would had a single opt-out list (the Post Office
already maintains such a list for postal junk mail), and my proposal
probably could have been passed into law in 1998.

                --Dean