[ale] OT: the Penny Black anti-spam proposal

[David Corbin]

> > > How (and how much) does it impact your
> > > ability to surf or use the Internet?
> >
> > That's not the issue.  Wouldn't you like to have a $10 dsl connection?
> > Don't you understand that the infrastructure of the internet must
> > support the wasted bandwidth, and is in turn showing up in the costs of
> > services?
>
> NO. I don't. Here your position seems to imply that bandwidth is sent via
> UPS. For each packet they sent, there is a cost. Lowering the bandwidth is
> NOT lower the price.
> <sarcasm>Man, my Roadrunner bill was HIGH this month, gotta cut down on all
> that spam and downloading. Bummer!</sarcasm>
> You seem to be living back in the days where bandwidth was sooo very
> precious, and people paid by how much time they were logged on, while only
> being able to transfer 14.4.
> Further, you position seems to imply that they set up more lines just to
> handle spam bandwidth and that translates directly to cost.

You're thinking in terms of the last mile, not the upstream bandwidth.   A 
hypoothetical ISP may have a 1 T1 (1.5MBS) connection serving a bunch of 
lower-bandwidth connections.   Managing this ratio of upstream and downstream 
capacity is a serious challenge to the ISP.  If too much SPAM is coming in, 
he has to get a larger upstream connection so that his users get responsive 
web browsing (as an example)

As of April 2003, AOL *blocks* over 2 billion spam *messages* each day. [ 
http://www.bizreport.com/article.php?art_id=4354 ].  That's not counting ones 
they miss.  This consumes bandwidth and human resources (to manage spam 
detection and develop anti-spam software), all of which add the cost of being 
an ISP - let me assure you, that cost is passed on.  I wouldn't be the least 
bit surprised to find AOLs between 10 and 50 people to fight SPAM fulltime.

It *should* be stopped at the source.  I don't know that it can be.  Most of 
the solutions I've heard tend to collapse in the face of mailing lists.  
Without solving that solution, the solution I like is that it costs someone 
some price (1 cent ?) to send an email to my inbox.  I get that 1 cent.  So, 
to carry on a bidirectional conversation, there is no real cost to the end 
user.  If I could configure my account to NOT charge certain people (like 
mailing lists, or subscribers to a list (if I run it)) that would be even 
better.

David