🚀 go-pugleaf

From: Mike Fisher <mfisher@harborcom.net>
>UCE is only a working marketing mechanism if people purchase what is being
>marketed.

Unfortunately, that's not necessarily true.

Try this: Graffitti is only a working marketing mechanism if people
purchase what is being marketed...therefore, if not, we conclude
graffitti should long ago have ceased to exist? How many people make
money off of spray painting graffitti on buildings etc?

The problem with working forward from a completely rational world is
that the world is not completely rational, or not rationally derived
from the principles one might find desirable.

And, given the incredibly low cost to spammers, the market incentive
needs to be just about zero.

Hell, like the graffitist (or "tagger" if you prefer) the spammer
might just get a kick out of seeing his name "in lights".

Once you already have the PC, and know how to get a net acct, spamming
a thousand newsgroups or mailing lists (eg) costs much less than a
single can of spray paint.

And, like tagging (graffitti), the "cost of entry" is so low that
waiting for every scam artist or sociopath to personally come to the
conclusion that it's not in his or her best economic interest to spam
is futile. In fact, it may not even be true.

Consider for example the religious nut spammer, what are you going to
boycott? his only motivation is thinking that his message is getting
out.

>Many effective boycotts have taken place in this country for many reasons:
>tuna boycotts to save dolphins, 7-11 boycotts because of pornography sale
>policies, etc.  A UCE boycott is the best way to handle the problem.

Yeah but 7-11 is an otherwise legitimate business.

Spammers, like graffitists, simply aren't.

Have you tried curing the problem of graffitti by boycotting taggers,
or maybe their gangs? Doesn't work too well, does it.

>More legislation means a larger government pointing guns in people's
>faces.  If the Internet is a free market, then unfriendly marketing
>tactics will eventually fall by the wayside -- without the necessity of
>guns to be pointed at those that are detested by a great majority of
>Internet users.

Legislation merely has to be extended to this new medium, no
fundamentally new ideas need to be invented.

You currently can't spray paint your ads on the front windows of my
business in the night, forcing me to go in every morning and scrub
them off, without breaking the law.

You shouldn't be able to do about the same thing with spam.

Spam is theft of service. There's nothing new about theft of service,
let's just make sure this time-honored idea applies to this new
medium, that's all.

You have one underlying idea right. With theft (spam) you have to make
it "economically" undesireable. Unfortunately, as with any theft, the
only possible way to make it undesireable (other than vigilantism or
similar) is making it illegal. That adds a realistic cost to theft.


-- 
        -Barry Shein

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