Re: [Asrg] Re: ISPs and bigger fish

["David Wall" <d.wall at computer.org>]

> I have a sad thought about this... it seems to me that there is some
> economic disincentive for these folks to do anything. On the one hand
> taking any action on the spam problem would cost them money to cover
> the complexity, support costs, and hardware. On the other hand the
> level of spam is driving up the bandwidth needs for everyone - so
> solving the spam problem would depress their growth. Seems to me
> that's two reasons for backbone providers to do nothing - and finally,
> since they are only "network" they can more-or-less legitimately say
> that it's not their problem. Spam is an email problem - way above
> layer 3.

This is a good point.  Besides, the number of communications schemes out
there continues to grow, and email is just one of them.  Many, like IM, will
have their own issues, and secure document delivery is already being used by
many bigger businesses that don't want their communications lost in the mess
of email.  At this rate, soon all of your email will either be spam, viruses
or jokes!  The costs of processing spam will fall heavier on email users and
email servers (most of which are not ISPs), and they will be the ones who
use these other tools that continue to improve while email gets spookier.

David


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