Economics vs. spam

["David Farber" <dave () farber net>]

how often overthe past years have I heard this idea. Does anyone  read?  Dave

_______________ Forward Header _______________
Subject:        Economics vs. spam
Author: TClaburn () cmp com
Date:           17th May 2005 9:48:34 am





For IP if you wish...



http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=YYTPPCPEOJ5Z2QSNDBGCKHSCJUMEKJVN?articleID=163104354

The War On Spam Takes A Novel Turn   May 17, 2005

Professor Marshall Van Alstyne of Boston University School of Management has a
plan to win the war on spam. He wants spammers to pay you for wasting your time.


"We're really trying to give you back what is a property right in your own
attention," he says. "Since interruptions are costly, what you're basically
doing is asking the sender to make these interruptions worth your time."


Technology companies impose a cost on spammers by blocking spam. The government
imposes a cost on spammers by locking them up. But to date, the potential profit
for spamming continues to exceed the likely cost. Spam continues because it
pays.


Leave it to an economist to price spammers out of the market. Van Alstyne
describes his anti-spam scheme in "An Economic Response to Unsolicited
Communication," a research paper co-authored by graduate students Thede Loder
and Rick Wash that should be accepted by a prominent economics journal in a
month or so. He is proposing an "Attention Bond Mechanism," money put up by
E-mail senders as a form of spam insurance. In the paper, he argues that an
attention bond designed to promote valuable communication can outperform
technical solutions designed to block low-value content. Economics, in this
theory at least, trumps technology.





...



Thomas Claburn, Associate Editor
InformationWeek, CMP Media, Inc.
600 Harrison St., 6th Floor
San Francisco, CA 94107
tclaburn () cmp com
415.947.6820

http://www.informationweek.com
http://www.lot49.com



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