🚀 go-pugleaf

Just wanted to interject some stuff here...

In article <3519CCCC.93222E2E@hotmail.com>, Buzz  <purphaze@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> In article <35189EF8.289B9C85@hotmail.com>, Buzz  <purphaze@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> >Hard drives do not cost very much anymore. You can buy a tower of
>> >9-18Gb drives for a few grand, to an ISP with a few hundred or a few
>> >thousand users, this is not a lot of money to spend. How much space, in
>> >your opinion, would be absorbed by spam on an average ISP's server?
>> >Just wondering.
>>
>> That's rather like saying that after a thief breaks into your house,
>> bypassing the reasonable controls you've put in place to prevent it,
>> that instead of jailing the thief for theft, you should buy more stuff
>> to keep him happy and coming back for more.  Do you have any concept
>> of what "property rights" mean?  Or trespass?
>
>The words trespass and private do not always apply on the internet.Am I wrong on
>this? Are you expecting these things over the internet?
>Your house is made of glass when it's on line. It is a public domain.

 I disagree. My CPU cycles, disk space, and network bandwidth
are mine, not the public's. Same goes for the CPU, disk space
and bandwitdth of my ISP. When I signed up with them, I signed
an agreement to be able to use thier systems, privately owned by
the company. 
  The only systems I can think of offhand, that can be considered
public domain, would probably be the Freenets. Even then, I'm not
clear that they are. In any case, that doesn't give free and 
public access to my email box.

>Your home is not a public domain, If you can't stop someone from
>physically stuffing things into your mailbox, how do you expect to
>do that with your email?  If a thief breaks into my house, he will get

  Actually, it'd be much easier to do, if the cost of sending were
on the sender, instead of the transport, and thus indirectly, the 
recipient. If spammers paid the cost of thier email, they'd be much
more careful what they spammed, and how. Also, when thier emails
are turned back by automated filters, they would suddenly find out
what is _really_ worth advertising via email, and what isn't. It
might even open doors for legitimate, and fair use of email as an
advertising medium.

>hurt or go to jail, period. That is the law.
>Since you can sue a spammer as others have pointed out,
>then that is the action to be taken in those cases.
 
 IMHO, that's treating the symptoms, not the root cause.

>When you ask if I have any concept of what property rights
>are, Remember, I didn't invent spam, so why are you asking me
>as if I set the rules? I didn't spam you, go ask the ones who did.
>I only asked for an approximate number of Mb's absorbed by spam.
 
 I think Chris quoted some numbers elswhere in the thread, in 
terms of percentages. I can't recall what they are. FWIW, you
di more than jsut ask that...you implied that the problem could be
solved by simply going out and buying the requisite RAID array to
cover the spam overhead.

>> We _don't_ want the spam coming in.  We tell the spammers exactly
>> that (in the few cases where we can figure out where they are), and
>> instead of complying, they come up with new and inventive ways of
>> getting around our filters, stealing our resource to spam others,
>> etc.  They are trespassing at the very least.
>
>Then sue them
 
 Again, a band aid solution, when it can be applied. How, pray tell,
does one effectivly sue someone in, say, Spain, when they're from
Australia?

>> Various ISPs estimate between 10 and 30% of all traffic coming into
>> their systems is spam.  When you're talking a few thousand customers
>> (or, say, AOL's 10 million +), you're not talking about a few pieces
>> of hardware that cost a few grand.  You're talking about infrastructure,
>> support, physical plant, space, wiring costs, financing costs, manpower,
>> increased bandwidth, backups etc.  That costs orders of magnitude more
>> than the Computer City cost for a few 9Gb disk drives.
>>
>> Ask AOL sometime how much it costs to provide email services to their
>> customers.  The answer is up in the 10s of millions.  Then, take 30%
>> of that.  Big number, right?
>> --
>
>Yes, that is a large number, much more than I imagined.
>It's an outrage to know that it has reached that level without
>any firm body or committee to be assigned to stop it.
>Chris, if the spam has been constantly coming in for a
>while now, and in huge numbers, doesn't that indicate
>that someone (or many someone's) are responding positively
>to it? Like someone has to be buying what their selling, or
>wouldn't even the most hardened advertise give up at that point?

  Why, if it costs nothing? Which is why it's so proliferate to begin
with - free, instant, unencumbered advertising. Even if they get
20 customers out of 2.3 million emails, that's 20 more customers,
and hey, for _no_ investment beyond a throwaway ISP account.
  I've followed this before, and maybe Chris can answer it - but
it seems the only relatively successful email spam campaigns usually
involve email lists, or spamming software. Talk about the snake 
eating it's tail. :)

>They risk being prohibited by ISP's, they risk being sued and
>risk the wrath of many knowledgeable computer users. Why do
>they continue to do this if no one is buying?

  Heck, why not, when it costs nothing?
  
  Start transferring the costs to the spammers, [be it actual finacial
or legal costs] and watch the patterns change, tho. Being tossed from 
an ISP is a minor thing, when so many are out there. The wrath of
knowledgeable computer users must be an impotent thing - half the 
time, they don't even see the flames, anyway. It's often the 
unsuspecting ISP that gets the brunt of attacks, long after the 
spammer has written off the account. As for suing, sometimes its hard
to even positively identify the spammer.

>And secondly, if people are reading and buying, then this
>would be considered a service not a dis-service. So
>does that mean you would be cutting off a "service" for some.
>Just wondering.
 
  I don't think theres any positive evidence that there's a service
being provided, given what I've written above, no?

-- 
--
Stephen Mercer <mercer@nortel.ca> 
Nortel Global Product Support. (613) 765 3214
Opinions are not those of Northern Telecom.