Re: forged cancels (Re: Entrust Technologies's Solo - free download)

[Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>]

At 10:36 PM 7/30/97 -0400, Ryan Anderson wrote:
>"Make Money Fast" are killed because they're illegal scams in the US and I 
>think in most of the world.

They're illegal in the US primarily because the Post Office is confused
about whether its job is to deliver the mail or to censor it,
and delivery of MMFs by mail is policed by Postal Inspectors just as
delivery of obscenity by mail is.  It's a side effect of having services
provided by a government monopoly rather than the free market,
though I'm sure that to some extent it's because people started 
complaining to the Post Office that they were receiving junk mail,
and complaining to their legislators that they lost money on these scams.

On the Internet, on the other hand, not only is the stuff spam and a scam,
but it's abusing flat-rate prices for service, and service providers
don't like it.  Julf's remailer used to block MMFs.

Pyramid scams like the MMF, and the government's inability to deal with it,
brought down the Albanian government recently.  Here in the US that would
_never_ happen (:-), assuming of course you don't consider Social Security
to be a Ponzi scheme....

#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#   (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)