> >if we could make spamganging so illegal that they were eventually not > >replaced, then their traffic would be replaced by bulk e-mail from every > >customer of every CRM (customer relationship management) company in the > >world. > > I'm not sure why this follows. Wiping out the fraudulent spammers would > take a War On Spam, with massive levels of propaganda to stir up public > opinion enough to justify the money it would cost. In that kind of > environment, even in the aftermath, no white hat would dare spam; their > customers would immediately turn against them. i apologize for sounding too much like a futurist in the above-quoted text. i did not mean to sound speculative. i've met with these people. not just a few, but with dozens. i know what they want to do and i know why they aren't doing it and i know how much money they think they can make/save/both if they could only send unsolicited bulk e-mail. the mere fact that "if everybody did it then no e-mail would ever again be read" does not sway them at all. the mere fact that the pond was once poisoned by evil-intending bad actors is completely irrelevant to them. what i don't understand about the internet engineering mindset is that y'all think you can build a universal "distributed system" for end to end communications and that somehow it won't be used to its full potential. you think other people will "leave money on the table". they just won't, ever! once thinking that smtp would be the right answer for a global population, or now thinking that smtp can be saved if we can just make abuse expensive, is indicative of designers who think that the only consumers are Just Like Them And Their Friends. they were but aren't, and they won't ever be again! get a grip! the full spectrum of humanity is impossibly broad and is not subject to the kinds of politeness rules that you think are implicit in the act of taking every breath or step in a life. and an interpersonal batch communication system addressing such broadness Won't look much like smtp. -- Paul Vixie