Subject: Re: spam

From: "J. Noel Chiappa" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 08:50:46 -0400

> From: "Anthony Atkielski" <[email-masked]>

    > In the world of postal mail, the same problem of spam exists, and there
    > is no solution to it. .. the one and only way to separate the truly
    > useless mail from legitimate mail is to hire human beings to sort
    > through it. There isn't any other way.

Unfortunately, this option isn't available to us. We can't *all* hire N other
humans to sort our email.

    > It may be that spam is an insoluble problem.

It *better* be solvable, otherwise when email becomes 99% spam, everyone will
stop reading email.

    > No billing scheme can slow the flow of spam without equally affecting
    > the flow of legitimate e-mail, because there isn't really any
    > fundamental difference between the two, except in the eye of the
    > recipient.

I'm willing to spend $.25 to communicate with someone I've never sent email
to before. I doubt very much the spammers who boast of sending millions of
messages a day are willing to spend $.25 each message for the privilege.

	Noel

---

From: "Anthony Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 22:17:12 +0200

Noel writes:

> It *better* be solvable, otherwise when email
> becomes 99% spam, everyone will stop reading email.

I wouldn't worry about that.  When everyone stops reading e-mail, spam will
disappear again.  Remember, spammers only send out spam because people reply
to it.  If nobody replies, they'll stop.

Actually nearly 99% of my e-mail _already is_ spam, but I still read the
non-spam messages.

As for the problem being solvable, I'm not at all confident about that.

It's interesting to note that almost all spam references a handful of
products or services.  Clearly, there are quite a few people out there who
want larger penises, or are in tremendous debt, or are being crushed by
large mortgages, or are in search of pictures of teenage girls, otherwise
these advertisements would not dominate spam.  And somebody is still trying
to cut deals with mysterious executives of Nigerian Oil Development Central
Bank, judging by the number of letters I receive on that.

Maybe the real problem is that there are too many dolts on the Net who
actually reply to this spam.  Eliminate them, and the spam will go away.
Maybe an IQ test for each new Internet subscriber; anyone with a
single-digit score isn't allowed to sign up without adult supervision.

> I'm willing to spend $.25 to communicate with someone
> I've never sent email to before.

I'm not.  The e-mail only costs $0.000000007 to send, so why should I give
anyone $0.25 for it?

> I doubt very much the spammers who boast of sending
> millions of messages a day are willing to spend $.25
> each message for the privilege.

I don't blame them, nor do I think they should be required to pay that.  I
won't even spend that on one message.  If I want to throw money out the
window, there are already lots of other scams that will deprive me of my
wealth just as quickly.

---

From: Michael Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 13:56:01 -0700 (PDT)

> to it.  If nobody replies, they'll stop.

You mean I might yet achieve salvation without my
procmail rosary beads? Will it be preceded by the
RFC 822 apocalypse?

		Mike

---

From: "Anthony Atkielski" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 23:01:18 +0200

I simply mean that when the returns are low enough, spammers will stop.  If
spam produces so much noise that people stop using e-mail, that will stop
the spammers.

However, I think that for the vast majority of Internet users, spam is only
a minor nuisance, and they will probably continue to use e-mail with or
without spam.