Re: Hardening lists against spam attacks

[Douglas Barnes <cman@c2.net>]

The problem with payment schemes like this is that they're hard
to rationalize (as Lucky points out here).

A direct mail piece (via snail mail) can easily cost the sender
more than a dollar when all costs are taken into account. This
does not seem to have appreciably slowed down junk mailers IRL.

Spam to a large mailing list has a multiplicative effect (although
it's also easier to throw out and/or ignore.) Certainly if someone
had a real product, it would be worth anywhere from $1 to $25 to
post an advertisement to a sizeable mailing list.

On the other hand, a blanket charge would serve as a disincentive
to people who make valuable contributions, unless it were a 
completely negligible cost, in which case the advertisers would
have no problem coughing up the money. There's a serious imbalance
between how annoying spam is and how much we're willing to pay 
to post (most of us would like to see them charged to the point
where they wouldn't do it at all.) 

Possibly a system of charging for non-list-members? Sort of a 
closed list with a way for outside posters to contribute if
they really wanted to?

In general it seems very difficult to balance the various aspects
of maintaining a lively discussion, fostering a sense of community,
allowing anonymous postings, and keeping the whole thing simple
enough to actually implement. 

The best approach I can think of for dealing with a lot of this
crap is to a) ignore outright spam, b) do not feed the energy 
creatures (the people on the list who thrive on conflict.) and
c) instead of responding to noise, contribute to signal.

I've been on the verge of responding to certain posters over the last
few months, and I've realized before I've hit the "send" key that
I'd be giving them just what they want -- attention -- while further
degrading the signal to noise ratio.


At 11:47 AM 12/31/96 -0800, you wrote:
>At 10:25 AM 12/31/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote:
>>The easiest and fastest solution is to set up toad.com to charge a
>>dollar per message.  (Proceeds to be spent by John Gilmore as he
>>sees fit.)
>>
>>We can then leverage off the existing e-cash infrastructure which
>>already provides blinding software for free on all major platforms.
>
>I am not sure that this proposal would work. Some of the spammers on this
>list are rather dedicated. They might gladly pay a dollar per message.
>
>
>
>-- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred
>   Make your mark in the history of mathematics. Use the spare cycles of
>   your PC/PPC/UNIX box to help find a new prime.
>   http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm
>