spf(_at_)unobtainium(_dot_)net wrote:
Note that this could just as easily be a small business owner (I don't
mean to belittle non-profits...it's just that non-profits aren't the
only people trying to make it on a tight budget). The Internet is a
great enabler for small business in troubling economic times. Yes,
requiring that a business (or non-profit, school, library, or whatever
entity) pay for the privilege of sending email will stop some spam. It
will also hurt a lot of small business owners. It will not stop the
people who make millions sending spam.
Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater -- financial barriers
are the wrong way to go. If they are low enough to avoid collateral
damage, they are not effective. If they are high enough to be
effective, they will cause too much collateral damage.
--eli
Hello
I agree. I really don't think everything should be free, and I don't
have any
issue with capitalism. As long as the price for some sort of
members-only is along
the lines of cost + some profit (ie sane), and _not_ a nasty milking-it
price that
"feels like" extortion, then things will be reasonably swell.
The annual membership fee that the non-profit I mentioned was quoted was
about 20x
what a "sane" price would be, IMHO. The whitelist company easily has a
"value
per dollar" argument, I suppose, but that line of thinking - if
mainstream - would just
slaughter the Internet and re-package it. As long as the good many think
the
Internet is over-infancy, and ready to become somewhat like the copper
wires that
carry it, then perhaps that is the way things should go. But I believe
there are years
more development ahead, maybe even a decade. And there are a ton of
individuals
willing to lend energy - blocking that sort of opportunity can't be good.
I grew up in a town where long ago a couple of guys in a barn put
together an
electric starter that made a significant impact on humankind. Of course
you don't
have too many people making homebrew starters from scratch these days.
But I
think that keeping the Internet "available" to the tinkerers as long as
possible
will do more good overall.
Best Regards,
Waitman Gobble