Then you are doing something wrong. This is not an "estimate". This is
what services actually charge.
Hotmail doesn't charge anything for mail. They probably get something
along the lines of about $1 per user per month in advertising revenue,
though. I'm just guessing, based on web add rates. Their real revenue
could be more, it could be less.
Other services charge $1 - $2 per month for mail.
All of these services are adding in all of the benefits and overhead
necessary to perform the service.
The only real arguable harm that spam causes is annoyance. Try to argue
costs, and you'll be trounced again. Just like in 1998.
No one has demonstrated any cost to spam, other than annoyance and
infrastructure costs which are passed on to users[1], and it seems there
is very little to add.
Despite Vixie's assertion, the "email producing/consuming" community
includes Type 1 spammers. As others have noted, legislation is necessary
for any progress, and trying to exclude Type 1 spammers from this effort
is doomed to failure.
Vixie and other radicals also continues to ignore Shannon's theorems. It
is impossible to carry on technical discussions with people who are
ignorant of, or simply refuse to acknowledge the relevant scientific
literature. What remains is no longer a technical discussion at any
level, and no longer relevant to the IETF.
The assertion that anyone who argues against the anti-spammer falacies is
a spammer is also false. It is nothing other than an ad hominem. It is a
small mind that can't respond civilly to civil argument. But as John
Gilmore writes, "anti-spammers are small-minded".
There seems to be no point in continuing the discussion. Vixie has taken
to ad hominem attacks, and someone on the IETF list is sending me
viruses[2]
--Dean
[1] Which is why you don't see telephone companies lobbying against junk
faxes or telemarketing--kind of funny, isn't it? You also don't see
telephone company employees sending junk faxes or making false
telemarketing calls to try to convince people that these things should be
banned, either. Which leads me to wonder whether it will turn out that
_all_ these Type 3 spams were sent by radical anti-spammers. I don't know
yet, but I expect we will someday.
[2] I would suspect that this could be a "normal" virus infection, but the
following text in the virus message wasn't in the message I sent:
> Get your FREE av8.com account now! <
So, it seems to be someone intentionally trying to infect me, or perhaps
defame Av8.com, but failed.
On Tue, 27 May 2003 Valdis(_dot_)Kletnieks(_at_)vt(_dot_)edu wrote:
On Tue, 27 May 2003 16:39:59 EDT, Dean Anderson said:
In other words, cost plays a big part in the decision. But as has been so
roundly demonstrated, the cost associated with email is practically
non-existant, and does not ever cost any user more than $1 or $2 per
month, which they pay for email services.
Umm.. it costs more than $1 or $2 per month. One you add in all the
encumbrances like benefits and overhead, I'm somewhere close to a dollar
a *MINUTE* - and I'm far from the highest paid person here. Assuming 20
8 hour work days in a month, I'd have to be able to "just hit delete"
on all my spam for each day in about 6 seconds or so to get in under $2/month.
Ignore all the bennies and overhead, and it's up to a whole whopping
10-15 seconds a day to deal with my entire spam load.
And you know what? I get more spam than that. And when you total across
all the employees of this place (some who make more than I do, some that
make less), all those 2 and 3 minutes add up to a *LOT* more than just
a dollar or two a month.....