TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Stop AOL's Email Scheme

Re: Stop AOL's Email Scheme

Mark Crispin (MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU)
Thu, 23 Feb 2006 21:40:06 -0800

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you, my spam-enabling friend, for
> explaining how you and spam can peacefully co-exist on the same
> planet. PAT]

Pray tell, just how does using effective filters enable spam?

There is no conspiracy among Internet architects to protect spammers. We
find spam and spammers to be at least as annoying as you do. But there
simply is no effective technical solution at hand. At best, there are
technical band-aids, which only serve to escalate the technical war that
is being waged against the spammers.

Email postage stamps sound attractive, until you realize that there is
no government monopoly running email the way there is one for the
posts. Who gets to collect the cost of the postage stamps? And by
the way, in case you haven't noticed, most of the mail that goes
through the posts is spam, and the government sells spammers stamps at
discount prices that you and I can't get!

Nothing, short of Taliban-like tribunals empowered to issue summary
death sentences and immediate execution, will stop spammers. The
profits to be made from spam are too much high. So are the costs to
investigate and prosecute spammers with anything approaching due
process.

Just take a look at the prosecutions of spammers in the USA (which is
by far the worst spam-producing country). These court cases were
ridiculously expensive to the taxpayer, with minimal recovery of the
spammers' ill-gotten gains, and jail sentences (again at taxpayer
expense) that amount to a slap on the wrist. At the same time, there
will be a hue and cry about jailing "non-violent criminals" while
rapists and murderers are getting early parole due to the prisons
running out of space.

You are just not going to see more than a few token prosecutions. Not
even in Red China (the world's #2 spam-generating country, but less
than 1/4 the USA's count), which has a very efficient system of
executing and of making it profitable for the state (by harvesting
organs).

The only thing that will put an end to spam will be it ceasing to be
profitable. But as long as cretins continue to buy penis pills, fake
diplomas from "prestigious non-accredited universities", penny stock
tips etc. ad nauseum there will be spammers.

-- Mark --

http://staff.washington.edu/mrc
Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate.
Si vis pacem, para bellum.

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