Re: spam is a good thing (was Re: Spam IS Free Speech)

[John Deters <jad@dsddhc.com>]

At 09:13 AM 5/22/97 -0500, Willaim H. Geiger III wrote:
>In <199705221337.OAA00948@server.test.net>, on 05/22/97 
>   at 07:37 AM, Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> said:
>
>>The problem is that you and most of the rest of the internet world are
>>renting your mega phones/accounts out without charging for usage volume. 
>>You are also allowing completely free use of your account as a recipient,
>>and completely free use of your sendmail as a mail hub service.
>
>>If this causes you grief, you need to start metering, and charging
>>postage to receive mail, and metering mail hub usage.


>Bullshit! No metering of accounts is required. All that needs to be done
>is blocking of all mail from Spamford's sites. He nor anyone else has a
>"right" to use my equipment. If Spamford uses my equipment without my
>permission he can be charged with criminal trespass. I am under no
>contract with Spamford and am under no obligation to provide him so much
>as 1 bit worth of bandwidth.

I certainly agree with the cypherpunk theory of Strength Through
Mathematics instead of PseudoStrength-via-threats-of-imprisonment Through
Legislation.

Adam's "Tragedy of the Unmetered Commons" certainly provides a solution.
Metering and charging e$ for mail-routing services would allow it to occur
while stopping the freeloaders.

Blocking sites also provides a solution, although it proved too tough for
my ISP to keep up with the Chameleon that is Spamford.  To be honest, not
all the spam that struck my ISP's site was proven to be CyberPromo's fault.
 I recently saw in alt.2600 a "fan" program for spewing spam.  It runs
under Windows, and I imagine "3133t hack3rz" have been having a field day
running someone else's program to do what Spamford had to write on his own.
 They seem to be trading the addresses of unprotected sendmail demons
running on the net that they can abuse.

For now, preventing forwarding seems to be the only currently available
solution, until e$ makes its way into the protocol stack.  (Hurry up,
Robert!)  Of course, I'm not thrilled to think that every router on the
internet is going to start charging me for packet delivery, nor do I want
to spend .001 cents for visiting really.cool.foobar.com.  I'm also scared
to death of what my bill would be if I was charged a dime for every
AltaVista query.  The "bonus services", however, such as e-mail routing, or
ftp proxying, certainly could be provided for a nominal cost.

>Just because one has the right of free speech does not mean that we have
>to be forced to listen.

That's not ever been my point.  Again, the spammers are not even trying to
get this ISP or their customers to listen, they're just (mis)using their
computer facilities to blow spam about the earth.  Free speech is not the
issue.  It's "abusive overuse" of what used to be a publically available
resource.

John
--
J. Deters "Don't think of Windows programs as spaghetti code.  Think
          of them as 'Long sticky pasta objects in OLE sauce'."
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