Now you are just being obtuse. But if travel brochures will help you come
to the real world, you should just log off and go outside for a bit.
Spammers pay for their connection, just like telemarketers, and for that
matter, just like Junk Mailers and anyone else.
But the costs of Junk Mail and telemarketing on either infrastructure or
the recipient were not issues, even though those "costs" are obviously
higher than the corresponding spam costs. It takes more time to take out
the trash, and to answer and hang up the phone, than it does to delete a
spam. It costs the telephone companies much more to complete a
telemarketing call than it costs ISPs to transport a spam. And it costs
the post office way more to deliver junk mail.
You want to focus exclusively on the Junk Fax law, and take it out of
context, and just completely make up issues (infrastructure costs on
telecoms) that weren't in its passage.
As I've pointed out, the Junk Fax law was unique due to the fact that
unlike either spam, junk postal mail, or telemarketing, faxes consume the
*recipients* paper, and consume the *recipients* ink, and causes the
*recipient* to run out of paper. This is a unique characteristic to junk
fax, which doesn't apply to spam, or telemarketing, or junk mail. Junk
faxes don't just borrow the paper, or borrow the use of the answering
machine. They *consume* the paper and the ink. And having consuming
these limited resources, they aren't available for other purposes. Thus,
there is a government interest in the utilization of those resources.
Whatever your hopes otherwise, they are not realistic.
My point (the goal of this whole discussion) is that you simply can't just
hope to wave your arms, quote some impressive numbers about infrastructure
costs, and win by shouting down your opponents. It doesn't work that way
in the world outside mailing lists. Your opponents are going to analyze
your numbers, point out the irrelevancies and inconsistencies, and
untangle anything that is confusing while you are forced to sit quietly.
And if you somehow lie to the FTC, and get the FTC to exclude your
opponents, as happened recently, they will eventually find out, and that
misinformation will be corrected. And the antispammers are discredited
(as a consequence of actions by radicals). Moderates are always expected
to reign in (and rat out) the radicals, whether they anti-spammers,
palestinians, or jewish settlers. You can be absolutely sure that this
won't happen in Congress, where the DMA maintains a presence.
--Dean
On Wed, 28 May 2003 Valdis(_dot_)Kletnieks(_at_)vt(_dot_)edu wrote:
On Wed, 28 May 2003 15:12:06 EDT, Dean Anderson said:
Type 1 spammers don't take that "discount". When they do, we make them
pay.
On Wed, 28 May 2003 15:00:39 -0400, Dean Anderson said:
Email, and thus spam, is practically a free service. Spam costs
practically nothing. That is a conclusion based on fact, not opinion.
What a strange and interesting world you live in, Dean. You simply *MUST*
write a guidebook so you can promote tourism there.
Alternatively, if spam is free, what exactly *do* the spammers pay, and
to whom?