ARTICLE: A Commentary on Spam
A Commentary on spam from CNet shows why legislation against spam won’t work.
I tend to agree. Spammers are unscrupulous and unethical. Although I dislike the idea of paying for email, I wonder if that is indeed the solution. According to article, even a nominal fee (1 penny for 4 emails) will seriously hinder the spammers’ economic model. That’s the most obvious cost model (per email) but I wonder if a different model might be better. Maybe one ISP fee gets you Internet access and, say, 25 emails per day. Fork over a little more and get 50 emails per day. Price it so that it still detsroys spammers motivation but allows the Average Joe to feel like he’s still getting free email.
Filed under: Science and Technology
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in these uncertain times when skilled and highly-paid positions are being robbed from our own shaky economy to feed foreign countries because corporate executives, who are worthy of nothing short of being thrown into the fiery depths of the lowest ring of hell (to paraphrase a friend of our time), want to line their own pockets with gold and gulf-stream jets, one just can’t help but wonder, in some of our darker moments, if participating in this lucrative trade before it is completely outlawed is perhaps the most prudent course of action, even if only for a short while…
This coming from the man who profitted from the “Ebay scam” in Everquest.
what ebay scam? I don’t think you understood the bug that i took advantage of…
i wonder if i could put it more simply as: “hey, if we’re going to lose our jobs, maybe we can make some cash on the side before they ban this altogether…”
Okay folks, maybe its just me – but its just a small delete away. I have multiple email accounts and to be honest – I am pretty sure the amount of spam I get is not worth this amount of stress. I rack it up like junk mail – sure I have to carry it into the house, but for the most part – I recycle it right out. If it weren’t for spam – a bunch of companies that make money on filters and other tools to handle it would not be making money. Lets just stop making a big deal out of it and move on….
Oh and legislation will not fix it – I point to the national no call list – have you seen the exception list for that? Sheesh!!!
Like you, Tim, I am fortunate enough to get very few spam mails. I am careful about giving out my real email address and even use my own domain to track any abuse. However, it was not until after being spammed at work with promises of a 14-inch penis did I wisen up. (For the record, and as a preemptive strike to the inevitable repartee, fourteen would be a reduction in my case.) The work address was becoming quite annoying and I finally had to have it changed. Corporations incur a real cost associated with spam, a cost that must eventually get passed along to the consumer.
And, as history is showing us, ignoring the problem is not making go away…it’s only getting worse.
I’ve notice that this works really well with Outlook — less than 14 spams a day. It takes about 14 minutes to train it, and I’ve been using it for about 14 days now with less than 1.4% misses…
Tim, I had the same attitude you do (and still do about it in my personal inbox) until I realized that the cost of spam is paid in bandwidth. That is, my downloads would be faster if it weren’t for all this spam. I also wouldn’t have to pay so much for internet access if the whole network wasn’t passing around so many bits worth of spam.
Now, I see spam as a blight – a huge drag on the net that should be curtailed in some way. I mean really, why should I have to wait for my pr0n download??!?
Do you honestly believe that the cost of your internet service would go down without spam? I agree it is a blight and I am not saying to ignore it. I just don’t think Washington should be making laws about it… And remember without spam -a bunch of companies would not be hiring Indian programmers…
I don’t think that if spam ended tomorrow that suddenly my ISP costs would reduce, no. But I do know that in businesses that pay per-byte for access (and that includes Time-Warner Telecom, the backbone provider for TWC) their costs would go down. This would be the same for all backbone providers (MCI, Sprint, etc.), and competition would do the rest – ultimately allowing for lower costs to me, the consumer (or at least slowing the rise of rates.)