By contrast, the transportation costs of e-mail are practically nil.
I can see we are now in a context-free loop.
As founder and CEO of an ISP for these past ~15 years I actually
provide e-mail systems to the general public and do the budgets etc so
have some actual, current, knowledge about the costs.
And you...?
I have a calculator and a rough idea of what a T1 line costs, plus I'm
making some assumptions which are probably valid in the US and many
other Western countries.Spammers happily paid for phat pipes to send mail through, before
widespread blacklisting forced them into using zombies. The cost is,
and has always been, the recipient's time spent in sifting through the
mess. (I count the recipient's ISP in this as well.)
Spammers use zombies for two major reasons:
1. IP mobility - to avoid blacklisting as you say.
2. Free resources - the economics of spamming is such that they must
steal resources, they could never pay for what they consume, their
service just isn't valuable enough which is why it tends to revolve
around cheesy come-ons for mostly phony penis enlargement pills and
similar.
Point 2 is in direct contradiction to what you asserted, that they
"happily paid for phat pipes", can you tell me what you base that
assertion on?
I've read a couple of media interviews with spammers, back when they
still did use their own T1 lines and servers. The journalist could see
all the equipment stacked up and working away.