Last time I refuted you, I got hit by 2400 sites trying to abuse our relays for 10 days. Sorry. Not this time. You're too late for this discussion anyway. Your points were already made by others. There is no point to rehashing them with you. --Dean On Thu, 29 May 2003, Scott Francis wrote: > On Mon, May 26, 2003 at 06:17:23PM -0400, dean@av8.com said: > [snip] > > > Spam on my measured-rate cellular-data PDA is real cost. Spam on my > > > measured-rate ISDN line (California) is real cost. Extra staffing to > > > counteract spam at my [isp|university|business] is real cost (setting > > > aside other costs that you seem willing to ignore). There are plenty of > > > examples to pick from. > > > > Don't get email on measured rate services, then. Or don't publish the > > email to measured rate services. Put your measured rate services on the > > do-not-send list. There are many options besides banning commercial email. > > Want to lay odds on how many of the hardcore spammers (spamsites hosted on > Chinanet, etc.) will respect a do-not-send list? They already ignore various > state legislations against spam (I'm a California resident, for instance, and > get any number of spams to various accounts daily that ignore existing > legislation on this topic); why would they pay any attention to a do-not-send > list? > > (I'm also fairly sure such a list will not allow wildcards, and for those of > us running a domain where one address receives *@domain.org, listing every > unique address we've created over the years would be tiresome, to say the > least. I'm sure if this is not the case, someone will correct me.) > > > > These are abnormal expenses which go directly into maintaining the > > > usefulness of my property and which do not increase its value. The right > > > to commercial speech would not warrant these costs for any other venue, > > > and there is nothing sufficiently different and unique about this venue to > > > warrant it here. > > > > These are not abnormal expenses. You have deal with abuse no matter what > > so, because I have an abuse person to deal with legitimate abuse problems > (both ingress and egress), I should consider it part of the cost of doing > business to put up with whatever the spammers want to do to me? > > I wonder if AOL considers the cost of dealing with 2 billion spams _daily_ an > "abnormal expense". Especially when comparing their costs for dealing with > spam from 2 years ago. Or 6 months ago. > > > the form. You have to have an abuse person. Persons intent on performing > > abuse will abuse whatever is handy. > > Only too true, but it doesn't mean we have to 1) make it easy for them, or 2) > ignore it when they do. > > > There are no costs to warrant. Spam cannot cost you more than $1 or $2 > > per month per user. It doesn't matter how many abuse administrators you > > have, or how big and expensive your servers are. Email (including spam) > > is too cheap to meter. It is practically free, per person. Sites that > > have 10 million users are going to have larger expenses than sites that > > have 10 users. That isn't a surprise, nor a compelling reason to ban spam. > > Tell that to AOL. Or Hotmail. Or any other large provider for whom the vast > majority of their network traffic is unsolicited commecial email. Your > assertions simply do not hold water. I bet they consider the costs of dealing > with that illegitimate traffic a fairly compelling reason to ban spam. > > > Anyway, I think commercial speech including spam _could_ be regulated, but > > there so far is no justification for doing so. I don't think there is any > > If you can make that statement after considering the cost (personnel, > bandwidth, and intangibles like degradation of the quality of Internet > experience the average consumer has) of spam traffic now, compared with the > cost just 18 months ago, I guess there is no chance you will ever see the > flaws in your reasoning. > > > chance whatsoever that spam will ever be banned completely, and if it > > were, it would suffer the same fate as the Junk Fax law, which had much > > more signficant costs (consumption of paper at 10 cents per page) and > > 10 cents per page, but there was also no single organization handling 2 > billion incoming junk faxes a day. Apples and oranges, Dean. > -- > Scott Francis || darkuncle (at) darkuncle (dot) net > illum oportet crescere me autem minui >