Re: [Asrg] Anti-spam laws do work, FYI. There's proof.

["Walter Dnes" <waltdnes at waltdnes.org>]

On Sun, Aug 01, 2004 at 11:23:40AM -0700, David Wall wrote
> >   Please get this through your head, a non-filtered ISP is not going to
> > be available for under $100 a month.  The bandwidth and DASD farms and
> > mailservers necessary to handle all that spam (and the staff to admin
> > them) cost real money.  And, no, I am not cheap enough to sell my
> > personal info, or view a scrolling ad-bar, or allow GMail to rummage
> > through my correspondence in order to get a cheap/free big inbox.
> 
> Sounds far fetched to me since most businesses run their own smtp
> servers and they're not paying their ISP $100/month per user for
> disk and bandwidth.

  Did you factor in the cost of...
  - base charge for T1 or SDSL line to the company premises
  - extra bandwidth charge for T1 or SDSL line to the company premises
  - server(s) (including backups, UPS, power-consumption, air
    conditioning, commercial floorspace, etc, etc)
  - sysadmin salaries to admin the hard+soft ware

> Besides, capitalism should work as it was designed:

  The problem is that big ISPs are going after the big market.  That
means Joe-sixpack, etc.

> How about they instead increase their prices?

  That'll *REALLY* succeed in the mass market <G>

> How about instead, they charge customers to add blocking/filtering
> to their accounts for an added charge?  These are ways to MAKE money
> by allowing the end user to make the choice, like call blocking
> and caller id in the telephone world (it's not free).

  Unlike blocking spam at the smtp stage, or firewall, or router, call
blocking and caller ID do not reduce the company's expenses.

> In the end, when you walk in your town, you can't control who you
> will run into, or who will talk to you or what they will say to you.
> Freedom has a price to be paid,

  If you wish to pay that price, by all means feel free to do so.  Just
don't expect a large inbox for free.

> and that includes KKK marches from time to time.

  On public thoroughfares (==> websites) yes.  But to the best of my
knowledge, not through people's homes (==> inboxes).  Inboxes are
*PRIVATE PROPERTY*.  They are owned or rented in a similar fashion to
condos/apartments.  And those condos/apartments in many cases have "no
soliciting" policies.

> The ISPs would serve themselves best if they remained carriers and
> offered services they could sell, such as spam filtering, to those
> users that want it (many would, I figure, and those that don't
> probably have their own solutions in place).  They shouldn't be the
> judge of whether a message is worthy or not.

  As a simple matter of economics, unbundling special services, and then
charging seperately for each option causes a lot of paperwork and
billing overhead.  A single "bundle" costs less to administer.  Big ISPs
have chosen satisfying 90% of the market with a bundle, versus going to
the expense of a whole slew of options in an attempt to satisfy
everybody.  Here in Toronto, Canada I've chosen a 3rd-party ADSL ISP
rather than Sympatico.  The "bundles" are different, but bundles
nonetheless.  Part of the money I saved in the process goes for a remote
inbox in Logansport, Indiana (USA) which gives me fine-grained control
over spam-blocking.  Every customer gets that same bundle.  The bundle
includes that we can write our own rulesets if we have the expertise
and knowhow, which most users lack.

> Spamming is already illegal...

  No it's not, at least not in the western hemisphere.  Mind you, *ANY*
form of selling restricted narcotics from other than a registered
pharmacy, upon presentation of a prescription signed by a registered MD
who has personally examined the patient is what's illegal.  Ditto for
pyramid schemes and pirated software.

  One thing I should emphasize is that unlike you and me and the
denizens of this list, the vast majority of ISP customers don't have a
clue about how to put together a procmail or dnsblfilter ruleset.  It is
this vast majority that the big ISPs are aiming at.  I don't want to
deny that large majority the option of outsourcing their filtering to
the ISP if they so desire.   Capitalism does work.  You've found an ISP
that meets your specific needs, and I've found two that supplement each
other to give me what I want.  What are you unhappy about?

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes at waltdnes.org>
Email users are divided into two classes;
1) Those who have effective spam-blocking
2) Those who wish they did

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