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

[hbbs at comcast.net]

I don't know if there will ever be a good solution.  I think we've seen that any kind of any-to-any mass communication gets spammed - mail, telephone, e-mail.  Some kind of send-time charge seems to be the only way, but who wants the admin overhead involved, and unless you made it grossly non-linear, i.e., negligible costs that go up roughly exponentially as a function of number of messages sent per unit time, then the spammers would just pay it and go.  

In any case, I feel like the Internet as an any-to-any medium can't go on forever.

- Jeff
> > > > 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
> 
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