who's next?

Thu Sep 9 17:54:15 UTC 2004

At 12:12 PM -0700 9/8/04, Fred Baker wrote:
>At 04:29 PM 09/08/04 +0000, Paul Vixie wrote:
>>i guess this is progress.  the press keeps bleating about stopping 
>>spam from being received -- perhaps if they start paying attention 
>>to how it gets sent and how many supposedly-legitimate businesses 
>>profit from the sending, there could be some flattening of the spam 
>>growth curve.
>
>I think both approaches have value.
>
>Consider this by comparison to the "war against drugs". One line of 
>reasoning says "if there is no supply, there will be no market". 
>Another line of reasoning says "if there is no demand, there will be 
>no market". A third line of reasoning notes that with purveyance of 
>such come a multitude of other social ills, and focuses on the 
>"businessmen" in the trade: "if there is no way for supply and 
>demand to meet, the market will fail."

The solution lies in a combination of the two. If enough spammers 
take enough drugs, they will be unable to spam. Properly propagated 
rumors may variously suggest:

   1. Becoming a spammer will put you into drug rehab at best.
   2. Spammers now become a target for no-knock raids by the Drug
      Enforcement Administration.

>
>
>Where this gets interesting is with so-called "legitimate spam". At 
>least under US law, if you and I have a relationship as buyer and 
>seller, the seller has a right to advertise legitimate services and 
>products to the buyer. I travel in a vertical direction when I get 
>spam from my employer; I have sat down with the designated spammer 
>and have been told in detail that as a user of that equipment I am a 
>buyer and they have a right to advertise to me, and take pretty 
>serious steps to target and not annoy their audience. There is a 
>part of me that wants to site in an 18" gun using their building as 
>a target; there is another part of me that notes the photography in 
>magazines and on billboards and the little jingles that go by on TV 
>and the radio, and notices that legitimate advertising is in fact 
>treated as (ulp!) legitimate.

And Jerry Springer is a legitimate means of advertising. I will 
confess that after an especially long, exhausting day at an IETF 
plenary, I have searched for something as mindless as Mr. Springer to 
clear my brain for sleep.  To the best of my recollection, I have not 
reached that level of exhaustion at NANOG.