Spam Control Considered Harmful

Jay R. Ashworth jra at scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us
Wed Oct 29 01:29:31 UTC 1997


On Tue, Oct 28, 1997 at 07:53:45PM -0500, Barry Shein wrote:
> The whole discussion is cuckoo.
> 
> Here's a better idea: If someone wants to advertise why don't they
> figure out a way to do business so everyone is reasonably happy,
> rather than starting wars and trying to appeal to some crazy
> interpretation of "rights" made to absolutely no one (letters to the
> editor, only there is no editor, as Larry Wall once put it)?
> 
> This isn't assisted suicide or abortion or some similar emotional,
> moralistic issue.
> 
> It's spam, it's advertising, it's business (or some bizarre perversion
> thereof.)
> 
> If it doesn't make those who have to pay for its resources a buck (or
> some equivalent tangible benefit) THEN TO HELL WITH IT.
> 
> All these crazy schemes proposing to make spam somehow more "fair" are
> just that: CRAZY.

Barry, I hate to have to say this, you are my revered elder...

but I think you missed the point of this thread.

No one's trying to make "spam more fair".

We're trying to stomp it out.

> Pay money and people will be happy.
> 
> Steal resources, annoy people to no possible benefit to them, bombard
> them 24 hrs/day with come-ons for porn and transparently fraudulent
> business claims and pyramid schemes and chain letters etc and they
> won't be happy.
> 
> It's not that hard to understand: Pissing people off is not a great
> way to do business. In fact, it doesn't work.
> 
> Anything else is nothing but a pretty good simulation of severe mental
> illness, very simple really.

Perfectly correct.  No one, even Phil Lawlor (surprisingly enough,
perhaps) is trying to advocate spam.  What was being debated was
whether the practice of implementing filtering on a transit site was
1) legal and 2) ethical.

The concensus seems to be that it's only even close to unethical if you
do it and don't at least inform users, much less let them opt out.  No
one's suggested it's illegal.

And I think even the "unethical people" wouldn't argue with BGP
blackholing if the target was engaging in denial of service attacks.

How do you configure your router for that?

See http://maps.vix.com.  :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff             Unsolicited Commercial Emailers Sued
The Suncoast Freenet      "Pedantry.  It's not just a job, it's an
Tampa Bay, Florida          adventure."  -- someone on AFU      +1 813 790 7592



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