🚀 go-pugleaf

Arthur D. Mira (admiral@ilos.net) writes:
> In can.infohighway, bs904@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Andrew Nellis) wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> 
> =>They appear to have no understanding that spamming requires, bu its
> =>very nature, a theft of other people' resources.
> 
> Theft of other people's resources? Who or which 'other people', and
> exactly what resources are being 'stolen'?

Who do you think pays for the bandwidth the unwanted junk uses up?  Who
pays for the processor cycles the mail server uses?  Who pays for the
space used to store all of this junk that nobody wanted or requested to
begin with?  The *recipient* does, that's who.  Junk e-mail is postage-
due advertising.

I run the spam desk at the National Capital FreeNet.  Last year we got so
much junk at one point that legitimate mail could not get through.  It was
taking hours to connect to the SMTP server, and e-mail was being lost as
it sat in queues for days waiting to be delivered.  AT&T says that UBE,
Unsolicited Bulk E-mail, accounts for as much as 20% of their incoming
e-mail.  AOL puts that figure closer to 30%.  Our own statistics showed
that it was 40%, and when we started rejecting mail from spamming domains,
more than 500,000 pieces of junk e-mail were turned away every day for
about 20,000 members.

Spammers routinely hijack unsecured third party mail servers to deliver 
their junk so as to avoid spam filters and use someone else's bandwidth to
do the dirty work.  I have heard horror stories from sysadmins about
finding several *million* pieces of junk e-mail queued up on their mail
server, waiting to be delivered.

Huge swaths of Usenet are now totally dead as a result of massive spam
carpetbombing by people like Sexzilla and Erosnet.  The Adultsights
spammer was posting the same advertisement 244,000 times per day just
before the UDP was declared against UUnet.  If you're carrying a full
Usenet feed, 80% of Usenet is now spam or cancel messages for that spam. 
Who pays for the bandwidth, who pays for the storage space all of this
uses up?  You do, of course.  We all do.  Well, all of us except the
spammers.

Freedom of speech does NOT entitle you to steal other people's resources
in order to state your view.  If I own a printing press, you cannot force
me to print your flyers for you at no cost simply because you don't own a
printing press and don't want to pay to use mine.

This has nothing to do with content.  It is merely coincidental that spam
is used to promote illegal pyramid scams, fly-by-night make-money-fast
schemes, and spamming services.  It is the theft of resources that is
intolerable.  How much more are YOU paying for your Internet access
because of spam?

Interested parties are invited to spend a little time reading the
news.admin.net-abuse.e-mail newsgroup for a better understanding of the
issues involved.

--
 +-=-=-=-Andrew Nellis-=-=-=-=-+ ... Don't worry about people stealing .....
 |  bs904@freenet.carleton.ca  | .   your ideas.  If your ideas are any    .
 | NCF Net Abuse Response Team | .   good you'll have to ram them down     .
 +-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+ ... people's throats.  [Howard Aiken] .....