Re: who's next?

["Howard C. Berkowitz" <hcb () gettcomm com>]

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.