This is new...

From: Hotze <photze_at_batelco.com.bh>
Date: Wed Apr 15 07:46:08 1998

>It's easy to blame novice users and get rich quick spammers, but I can't
>agree with you. I look on the 'Net as evolution in action. Right now
>we have the feeding frenzy of spammers drowning us in unwanted email.
>The easy, and wrong, solution is to force them to stop. The right way
>is to make it uneconomical for them to send spam. How? I don't really
>know, I just ignore it, sort of like background static noise on a
>shortwave radio.
In general, it is ignored. I know someone, who recently got online. They
own a small company, and were offered 15,000 eMail addresses at .01 per
person. That sounded like such a great deal! So, they sent the e-mail, and
got 200 eMails that bounced, then in 3 months, had recieved 6 orderes for $5
and over 500 eMails about the bad business practices of spamming. They knew
no better, but still...
>But consider, what kind of response rate do spammers get? Now junk
>snail mailers have to actually pay per piece, although at a reduced
>rate. They have to make the junk mail attractive to readers so they can
>get a high enough response rate to justify the mailing. Maybe we need
>the same mechanism for mass commercial postings. In other words, the
>ISP specifies in the terms of service that mass commercial mailings (aka
>spam) are charged at the same mailing rates as the local post office,
>something around 20 cents per item. Now you have a legal means to get
>back if the ISP catches a spammer, because they are liable for the
>contracted costs.
Spam should be illegal. The commercialization of the Internet's what we
needed for a long time: a worldwide information resource. Allowing people
to profit by it (by ads, etc.) gives you more information available, and a
wider user base. Even sci-fi writers didn't envision a global information
resource like ours for another ten to twenty years. Let's face it: Until we
go past the money-stage, for many things to become popular, they seemingly
MUST be commercial.
Received on Wed Apr 15 1998 - 07:46:08 BST