Per message costs of email (was: Re: anybody else been spammed by "no-ip.com" yet?)

Sun May 5 16:18:04 UTC 2002

In a message written on Sat, May 04, 2002 at 04:36:40PM -0400, Scott A Crosby wrote:
> So far, other than Jared Mauch <jared at puck.Nether.net>'s calculation where
> he neither confirmed nor disputed $.02/email, I've yet to see *one*
> quantified per-message price bandied about..

It doesn't matter.

I will suggest that as long as the cost of e-mail advertisements
is cheaper than the cost of snail mail advertisements you will get
more e-mail advertisements than snail mail ones.

Even at $0.18/message (or whatever the bulk rate is these days),
plus the cost of paper, printers, machines/people to stuff envelops
I still get 2-3 unwanted physical ads in my snail mail box every
day.

Even if spammers had to pay $0.05, $0.02, $0.0002, or whatever the
cost is determined to be you will get spam.  Lots of spam.  In
fact, if the spammers did have to pay it would eliminate the 'theft
of resources' argument, and I bet spam would triple as more business
consider it a legal and ethical way of doing business.

Sadly, I don't see the virtual world working any better than the
real world.  The only real difference at the moment is the type of
products being sold.  In the end there will be a mechanism to make
spam legal.  It may be micro-payments, it may be something else;
but business will find a way to do it.  Then your spam will change
from "Viagra" and "Live xxxx Girls" to "Get your Capitol 1 No Hassel
Card" and "Publishers Clearinghouse wants to award you $1 Million!"

Maybe that wouldn't be so bad, the spam would be less offensive.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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