In article <telecom24.561.10@telecom-digest.org>,
<hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
> I don't understand at all why there's no "no-spam" law passed.
The DMA owns to many Congresscritters.
In article <telecom24.563.11@telecom-digest.org>,
<hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
> Wesrock@aol.com wrote:
> The emails you describe fall outside a strict definition of spam.
Spam (in this context) is Unsolicited Broadcast Email. Period.
> Most people associate genital enlargement or Nigerian oil ministers
> or get rich quick schemes with spam.
Most people are wrong, as usual.
>> Defining spam in some cases becomes very controversial.
> I don't think so.
It isn't.
>> Technically, this is impossible with the current mechanisms used by
>> Internet mail. Nothing short of a complete redesign from the ground
>> up will accomplish it. An effort to create a new Internet email
>> infrastructure would be extraordinarily expensive and complex. It
>> would make the conversion to TCP and SMTP in 1983 look trivial by
>> comparison.
> I'm not at all sure it would be as a complex process as you suggest.
> The internet is software driven, not hardware driven; that is, it's
> not like someone going out and physically rewiring every PC and server
> in the world. Rather, it is developing new software and downloading
> it.
Getting _everybody_ to change software just doesn't happen. New
systems are either completely new, or they're compatible with old ones
until all the old ones die off. That takes years, at a minimum.
(Look at Usenet, and the range of ages of server and client software
still in use.)
> Very often I am offered upgrades for various Internet software
> compnents -- the PDF reader, basic browser, news reader, "flash
> player", basic PC operating system, etc. Actually I'm quite content
> with a bare bones system, but I've found that won't work. If you
> don't keep up, in a very short time your browser just won't work at
> all -- some site will simply reject you and tell you to get a new
> browser. My point is that with all these upgrades constantly going
> out it shouldn't be that big a deal to download new components. Must
> could be done on the gateway end.
Your toy PC is the least of it. Companies that make their businesses
out of providing service don't switch software anywhere near as easily
(and the new software tends not to be so easily available, either,
especially as it often needs to be customized).
>> The new email infrastructure will also give the world email postage
>> stamps. And this time, it won't be just governments who get a cut of the
>> profits. The biggest objection to SMTP in the SMTP vs. X.400 wars two
>> decades ago was that SMTP's fundamental design made it impossible to
>> impose email postage stamps. You can bet that the new redesigned Internet
>> email won't have that problem.
> Email and internet use is NOT "free". Someone is paying for the
> servers, routers, and lines and people who install and maintain them.
> For consumers, many pay an Internet Service Provider, such as an AOL,
> for that service.
Taxing email is an idea that's been suggested for many years. It
ain't gonna happen. If you want me to pay in order to send you email,
you won't get my email. Nobody is going to make my mother pay to send
me email (or vice versa). Remember: my server, my rules.
> They say a very substantial amount of today's email traffic is spam.
> Reducing that traffic would reduce the need for routers and lines and
> that would save money. Maybe having email stamps isn't such a bad
> idea.
It's just one that won't work. Why would spammers pay for stamps?
Maybe they'd just steal them from the same people they steal smtp
service from now.
> Telephone service is offered in many grades and prices including many
> "unlimited" use plans for local and long distance, even overseas calls
> are offered at cheap package rates. There is no reason Internet
> service can't be offered on a similar pricing scale -- those who use it a
> lot would pay a lot.
It is. Dialup is cheaper than cable modem/adsl is cheaper than OC-3
is cheaper than OC-192, etc.
Seth
Seth Breidbart (sethb@panix.com)