RE: namedroppers, continued

[Dean Anderson <dean@av8.com>]

On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, Lloyd Wood wrote:

> On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Dean Anderson wrote:
>
> > On Sun, 8 Dec 2002, Lloyd Wood wrote:
> > > "Sender pays" is good. The penny black stamp effectively introduced a
> > > flat-rate tax on sending letters, rather than a variable-rate tax on
> > > receiving them, effectively turning mail into a common good available
> > > to all society.
> >
> > You assume this really means "the spammer pays" [more].
>
> that quote is excerpted out of context.

I don't think its out of context. You assume your scheme will only
increase the costs for the spammer, and make it less economical to spam.
This is a false assumption on your part. Your scheme increases the cost
for everyone, and indeed it increases the cost for legitimate email more
than it increases the cost of spamming. In other words, it makes it
_even_more_economical_ to spam.

This is the kind of "shoot your self in the foot" thing as when Sanford
Wallace and Cyberpromo lost his T1, and spammers turned to dialup. The
dialups cost less than T1's, and so it was even cheaper to spam, and
harder to find out who was behind it.  The anti-spammers made it cheaper
to spam, and harder to determine who the spammers really were. At least
CyberPromo could be identified, sued, made to obey the law and court
orders.

> > But that isn't the case.  This is based on the myth that somehow the
> > receiver pays the entire cost of a spam message. This isn't true,
> > and never was true.
>
> It's true. It's an attention economy, where the recipients' lives and
> time are finite. But placing a value on time is tricky.

This argument was raised (and rejected) in the 1970's with regard to junk
postal mail.

> > The sender is already paying, whether they are spammer or mailing
> > list operator, or regular end user.  The fact is that email is so
> > cheap that it costs almost nothing per message to send and receive.
> > It gets cheaper every day, as disks and bandwidth get cheaper and
> > cheaper. The receiver doesn't pay any more than the sender pays.
>
> only if a purely fiscal definition is taken.

That is the only definition you can take, absent additional legislation.

> > Real commercial spam happens because the cost of sending spam is
> > less than the cost of sending letters or postcards.
>
> this is very true. It's also true for physical commercial bulk mail,
> which gets special rates compared to individual letters or postcards.
>
> Bill Cunningham adds:
>
> $ Lloyd, in the US we pay .37 to mail a first-class letter. I don't
> $ know how many pence you pay in the UK but we still have "spam" bulk
> $ rate unwanted solicitations.
>
> ...that are paid for at commercial bulk rates vastly cheaper than the
> individual rate, which encourages them. That's what you get for
> running the postal service as a commercial business rather than as a
> emphasising the social good aspects.
>
> $ Forcing the sender to pay doesn't solve a spam problem.  I don't see
> $ how in could. It would force everyone to have to pay a price.
>
> if everyone pays the same price, then those sending the most are most
> penalised. flat-rate.

Uhh, not exactly. They pay more in total, but it doesn't matter as long as
the advertising costs are low enough that they are still selling products
at a profit.

> > If you artificially made email expensive, it would be expensive for
> > list operators and regular people as well. You mentioned a rate of
> > one cent per message.
>
> I did not mention such a rate; you've taken the Penny Black
> one-penny-over-150-years-ago and run with it. Perhaps you would care
> to actually read my entire message, and tailor your canned rant to it?

I read your whole message, and I read it again just now.  Perhaps I wasn't
clear:  Your assertion about the benefits of flat rate vs variable rate
are irrelevant. Whatever the value (flat rate or variable rate), if its
less than the bulk postal rate, plus the cost of printing, stuffing, etc,
it will still be more economical to send spam than to use bulk postal
mail.

And, as above, it is dubious there is a variable rate involved in spam.
However, even if there was a variable rate, it wouldn't make any
difference.

> The act of subscribing to a list indicates that you know the list, and
> you're less likely to reject mail from people you don't know that
> comes or also comes via the list, since you're interested in reading
> that list -- unless the list is a simple exploder with no filtering
> mechanisms itself, in which case, subscribers pester each other
> (rather than the list) for computational proofs until the list
> implements spam filtering.

The computational proofs cost you more than they cost the spammer.  And in
the end, the spammer can do them, and it won't make any difference so long
as the cost is still low enough to be economical.

		--Dean



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