From: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb(_at_)guppylake(_dot_)com>
This would be a very interesting philosophical argument if in fact what
we were discussing was something that could take a significant bite out
of spam. In the absence of such an ability, however, the real question
is whether user accounts should be crippled in the name of spam
fighting when the crippling *isn't* going to help significantly with
the spam problem. And that's not a philosophical debate, just a matter
of common sense. Grocery stores probably have the right to require
their customers to wear formal attire, but if they don't have a good
reason to do it, they're going to drive away customers no matter what
the outcome of any philosophical debates.
Grocery stores frequently requires shirts and shoes. A better analogy
is that grocery stores that sell alcohol or other regulated drugs are
required to pay substantial extra costs. Complaints about monopolies
in the beer and wine trade are laughed at, as are demands that pharmacies
in grocery stores not charge prices high enough to pay their pharmacists.
As Mr. Borenstein knows, a substantial fraction and probably most spam
is current sent using $30/month consumer accounts. The spam that is
not sent using such accounts is very easily blocked. As he knows, if
providers of those services would either filter port 25 or terminate
customers running trojan zombies, that spam would stop. Providers of
those $30/month accounts have made clear that they cannot afford to
hire the people to monitor and deal with their abusive customers. That
is why many of the providers of those $30/month accounts submit their
own IP address blocks to various "dynamic" backlists or block port 25
themselves.
Stopping trojan zombies would not end the spam problem, but it would
be a major improvement. You can see the truth of that in the results
of UUNet's imposition of port 25 filtering on its dial-up resellers.
It would also significantly improve security problems caused by Microsoft
systems, because viruses and worms could be filtered by ISP SMTP servers
from outgoing mail.
My expectation is that ISP's
who implement anti-spam measures that are both intrusive and
ineffective are going to drive away customers as long as there's a
better alternative out there, and I'd be inclined to simply let them do
it unless they're in near-monopolistic market positions. The latter
exception is important, however; I'd certainly be upset if my cable
provider did it, because I don't have any good alternatives. --
It is dishonest to imply that cable TV providers have near-monopolistic
market positions in providing Internet service. They often have near
or true monopolies in providing cable TV service. However, in no U.S.
market do cable TV providers have anything like monopolies in providing
Internet service. They may have monopolies in providing some of
services at $30/month, including "Web connectivity," "Client only,
non-public address," and "Client only, public address." Mr. Borenstein
can buy Full Internet Connectivity from many service providers, although
not at $30/month.
Mr. Borenstein and others like him expect the rest of us to subsidize
their $30/month connectivity by dealing with the network abuse of his
fellow customers, because they find $30/month comfortable. That position
would be less despicable if they would demand free Internet connectivity,
since that is the only price that billions of other people can afford.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
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