Spam Control Considered Harmful

Tue Oct 28 23:13:54 UTC 1997

If you're willing to do for FREE, all the better! The point that I was making is
that as a customer I see "value" in having SPAM blocked. This would be an
extremely valued "feature" for business customers. You may lose customers by not
telling them even though you may be filtering for other reasons such as network
abuse. They may go to another ISP who is promoting a "SPAM free network" whether
or not it is technically feasible -- just as long as they're trying and working
with customers to eliminate it.

The bottom line...if you do filter, tell us [customers], and we thank you...

As far as letting spammers run rampant for a while, well, what's done is done.
The same thing should have been said about computer viruses. Viruses will be
with us for a long time, if not forever...and a lot of money has been made on
virus protection. Hell, who ever thought McAfee could buy a $1.3 billion dollar
company...

Cheers,

Marty

J.D. Falk wrote:

> On Oct 28, Martin Cox <mcox at yagosys.com> wrote:
>
> > As a customer with separate ISP connections for business and personal use,
> > I would pay, as a feature, for SPAM blocking that was managed by my ISP. I
> > believe ALL your major business customers would pay to have SPAM blocked
> > from delivery to their employees.
>
>         I really don't want to get into moral arguments on NANOG, but
>         this one I really take issue with.
>
> <SOAPBOX>
>
>         Specificially, I feel that it is Very Very Wrong[TM] to charge
>         people so that they don't receive messages that almost everybody
>         agrees should not be sent to them in the first place!
>
>         If the spammers had not been allowed to run rampant for as long
>         as they currently have (and we all know who let them do that),
>         this would not even be considered a viable option.
>
> </SOAPBOX>
>
> *********************************************************
> J.D. Falk                         voice: +1-650-482-2840
> Supervisor, Network Operations      fax: +1-650-482-2844
> PRIORI NETWORKS, INC.              http://www.priori.net
>
> "The People You Know.  The People You Trust."
> *********************************************************

--
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YAGO Systems, Inc.           http://www.yagosys.com
Martin Cox                   mailto:mcox at yagosys.com
Director, Product Management
795 Vaqueros Ave.            Phone: 408-774-2900 x244
Sunnyvale, CA 94086          Fax:   408-774-2908
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