>[it's] not that convenient
>for those who Internet subscribers pay for access by the hour or
>minute. If you've a glut of email, whether due to intentional
>mailbombings, true spam or bona fide email, it eats the time spent in
>connection with your ISP, which in most cases is charged (if you pay
>in that manner, which some people are forced to do).
A 600 byte message costs 3 ten thousandths of a cent to download over a typical 33.6 connection, assuming you have to pay for long distance, which most people don't.
Almost everyone has gone to flat rate, or mostly flat rate. First 10 or 20 or 40 hours free, then 5 or 10/hour after that. So at the 10.00 per hour rate, the 600 byte message costs just shy of 4 ten thousandths of a cent to download. If you pay $10/per hour and long distance, its about 7 ten thousandths of a cent.
This isn't anything to get worked up about. People are inflamed, but behind the flame, there really isn't an issue. Just a bunch of inflamatory statements:
a) Spammers don't pay for internet service
b) End users subsidize spammers
c) Spammers steal resources from end users
d) Spammers deny email service and force people to have to close accounts.
If any of these were true, I'd be upset too. But a close look reveals these claims to be false and misleading. There isn't any substance to the issue.
It surely isn't justification to deny the rights of business who sell genuinely useful products.
It surely isn't justification to eliminate anonymous email and the social benefits that go along with it, such as whistleblowing.
It surely isn't justification to make ISP's print email and postal it to the owners of accounts which have been closed for less than 60 or 90 days.
It surely isn't justification to force ISP's to discontinue anonymous 1-900 dialup services.
It surely isn't justification to force ISP's to implement software which can prevent one from sending anonymous email.
It surely isn't justification to hold the ISP responsible for civil penalties for a commercial email sent from one of their accounts.
I agree that mailbombings are wrong, and can result in denial of service. But mailbombings aren't commercial.
What I dispute is that one ever gets more than a few actual commercial emails per day, and that legitimate commercial emailers are denying service to anyone through normal operations.
I might go further to assert that volume of spam you get is related to the volume of mail that you post on public lists, and elsewhere that spammers may find email addresses. So if you send and receive 200 emails a day, getting 10 or 20 spams isn't going to deny service. But if one sends an occasional email, you aren't likely to get many commercial emails.
Also, just like junk postal mailers, they resell lists of people who purchased services (a hot list). These lists get the most email. So if you purchase something, a lot more solicitations will come your way.
While there are possible mistakes by commercial emailers, the same could happen with commercial postal junk mailers. You could get 10 thousand copies of a junk postal mail. But that would be recognized as an unintentional mistake. And not some sort of anti-social behavior that needs to be banned.
Consider that back in January, someone sent out a 300Kbyte spam message. When it goes to a system with 20,000 users, it gets multiplied, one copy for each user. So a message this large poses a bit of a problem for the online provider.
But that can be addressed without banning commercial email. Such a message certainly isn't common. Indeed, it appears that most messages are under 600 bytes.
I suspect part of the reason online providers are so upset is that it is much easier to sign up 20,000 users than it is to provision and manage sufficient resources for them.
I was also surprised the inability for online provider to look at the problem from another viewpoint. We had this exchange about motivations of spammers;
>He continues to send thousands of msgs to my system every day, every
Perhaps he feels you don't have the right to speak for your users. I agree
with your view, you have a private service. You can offer the services you
please, and charge what you want. Users don't have a lot of rights to
receive mail. But they do have some rights, once you offer the service.
Such as privacy.
>I suspect he does it purely in the hope that it will annoy ISPs like
Perhaps he's pissed that you are denying him access to the public. Maybe
you don't have that right, any more than you have a right to read your
customers email. You were against the censorship stuff, right?
>single one of which is refused.
>me, and no doubt a certain amount of adolescent "no one tells me what
>to do" (well, spamford, in fact, we do, with our filters etc.)
This drew rage. Spammers have been so demonized in the mind of this online provider, that the thought that they might have a point of view drew personal attack on myself.
I'm not a spammer, and like I said, I don't enjoy spam any more than junk postal mail. But I think that people need to exercise a little reason and sensibility.
The obvious problem is that the person couldn't think rationally about the problem, much less propose a reasonble solution. All they could think about was that commercial emails must be stopped, no matter the cost to themselves, or to others.
A common theme I hear from anti-spammers is that spammers don't pay for the services they use. That the spammers are somehow stealing resources.
This is false. Spammers buy leased lines, or accounts, and they pay what their provider charges for them.
Actually, this "no pay" argument sounds quite a lot like the "no pay" claims that were circulated a few months ago by the phone companies. They were apparently upset that they weren't getting a cut of all this business that is being conducted over the internet, and decided that they should have a cut.
So, the phone companies tried to capitalize on the advertisements made by some ISP's that offer free long distance over the internet. The phone companies then made a claim that ISP's weren't paying for their services. The said they needed to "pay by the minute". Well, the "free long distance" isn't really free, its just flat rate, and its included in the online providers fee. Its nowhere near as good as regular phone service, and if you just use that, you would probably find that you pay *more* for long distance.
Actually, flat rate long distance is nothing new. For $7000.00 per month (approximately) you can get a leased T1 line (24 voice channels) from Boston to San Fransisco, and connect your company PBX phone systems together so that the Boston office can talk to people in the San Fran office as if they are on a local extension. They "don't pay" for long distance. Well, actually, they pay a flat rate of $7000.00 a month for long distance to San Francisco.
ISP's connect to each using these same kind of lines, called leased lines. They pay the same rates for a T1, T3, etc as anyone else. Using internet phone and video phones are less efficient than directly connecting PBX's together, except that you can send files and email and other kinds of traffic of the internet line.
Each ISP pays the phone company for leased lines to other ISP's. Thus we have the internet.
So it was completely false that ISP's "weren't paying". The phone companies obviously knew this, but wanted a pretext to raise rates, and get a cut of the internet action.
Well, this would have been a FSL issue, but it appears it that the FCC saw through the lies and denied the phone companies, so I'm too late.
While there really are a number of things happening with email that are wrong , the anti-spammers seem more concerned with the "payment" issue.
They aren't very concerned about the swindles and pyramid schemes, etc. But they are quite upset that the "spammers don't pay".
I distinctly get the feeling that they are most upset that they aren't getting a cut of the action,
I have also recieved mail from people claiming that spammers "crashed his providers system and caused him to lose 9 mailing lists." I'm sure thats what his provider told him, but thats not what happens when the mail spool fills up. I suspect that some online providers use "spam" as an excuse for poor management, and a cover for mistakes.
"Don't tell the customer that you accidently deleted their mailing lists, or accidently crashed the system, and that you don't have any backups. Tell them "We were spammed, and the system crashed, and thats why your mailing lists were lost."