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jester121
Premium
join:2003-08-09
Lake Zurich, IL
 ·surpasshosting
 ·ViaTalk
| reply to gwion
Re: Spam-subsidized e-mail?
The shortcoming in your description is your definition of "spam". If it just means bulk mail, then your comments are mostly valid. However, if it means unsolicited bulk mail, which most people agree with, then it doesn't apply.
I don't have a problem with getting mailings from companies that I've done business with, as long as there's a way to opt out. Of course, this is a tiny fraction of the problem -- the real problem is the scum-spammers, the ones firing off millions of e-mails per day for Viagra, mortgages, porn, and other nonsense.
If nothing else, this system should make intelligent filtering much easier for ISPs. | |
gwion
wild colonial boy
Premium,ExMod 2001-08
join:2000-12-28
Pittsburgh, PA
| One of the problematic parts of this equation, to me, is that it "legitimizes" spam... that is, if you pay your "tariff", you get a "spam stamp", and it becomes, like a form of postage, a business - we want to sell spam stamps, to subsidize the overall mail service. It becomes harder to suggest a "zero tolerence" attitude. In other words, it amounts to complete, absolute, and barely conditional (pay your spam toll, we leave you alone) surrender.
It essentially makes your and my ISP complicit in the propagation of spam.
Shall we draw an analogy? Junk mail makes the Post Office millions. So many millions, that there are special mailing rates for "postal spam". The Post Office actively encourages and makes special accomodations for junk mail, because it's such a volume-intensive medium that it makes big money, in the aggregate. Is this a model we want borrowed and applied to e-mail? Do we want spammers subsidizing the e-mail system? That's something for consideration... because that's precisely what will eventually happen, on the slippery slope of this proposal...
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Semper Eadem
In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost...
Dante, Inferno, Canto I | |
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