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Counting The Cost Of Spam
Bender Unit 22 writes: "According to a study by the EU Commission, spam costs over 10 billion euro (1 euro is about 0,92$) a year worldwide. The study's analysis of e-mail marketing concentrates on the US market. The commision have made a proposal to update the 'directive on data protection and privacy' in the telecommunications sector. This proposal favours the opt-in approach. Today, opt-ins are required in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy and Germany."
Not really. The reason that spam costs us (Internet users and ISPs) is the cost of storage and transmission. By the time it hits your computer, the cost has already been imposed. Second, what you are implying by such a proposal is that spam is OK as long as it has ADV: stuck in the subject line. At the moment, spamming is against the AUPs of most ISPs and backbone providers, and many will boot spammers when they are discovered. If your proposal were to become law, spammers may argue in court that such a law would set up a framework by which they can legally spam without their provider being able to cut them off, no matter what the AUP says. Finally, I doubt that such a tag would cut into a spammer's profits too much simply because so few folks respond to spam right now. The reason most spammers do what they do is because a) they've been conned by the spamware vendors into thinking that this is a way to make money on the Net, b) their costs are so low, since the most they usually lose is a $19.95 Internet account, if that, and c) they only have to get a couple of suckers to respond out of the millions of spams they send out in order to turn a profit, albeit a small one. Believe it or not, most spammers aren't getting rich doing this, but the common wisdom is that they've convinced themselves that they're on the road to riches. And don't underestimate the stupidity of people when it comes to making money on the Internet. If you were going to open a business in a brick and mortar store, what general steps would you follow? The usual method is to first come up with a product or service that you see a market for, then build the business around that product or service. I can't count the number of calls I've taken from people who wanted a Web site because they wanted to make money on the Internet, then the next thing they asked me was what products they should be selling once they built the site. Now, these were fairly intelligent people, and they had their priorities totally backwards. Most spammers strike me as borderline to complete idiots with dreams of riches in their heads, so they're willing to eke out whatever profit they can, figuring the big payoff is just around the corner. No, I don't think this proposal is what we need. What we need, IMHO, is a law similar to the junk fax law. Outlaw the garbage, then make high-profile examples of some spammers. If you do that, many of the rest will run scared and find some other scheme that poses less risk. Actually, we really don't need a law to begin doing this; I think that if ISPs made sure they had financial penalty clauses in their AUPs, then aggressively used them against spammers, it'd make a lot of difference. Perhaps ISPs could share the legal costs of court actions by contributing to a common fund that could be drawn upon by participating providers. This would allow smaller ISPs to band together and have the financial resources to go after spammers they might otherwise choose not to sue. They wouldn't have to sue them all; they could sue just enough to turn the anxiety factor way up for anyone considering spam as a way to make money.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
Using the SPAM can as the topic icon goes against Hormel Foods', the makers of SPAM, requests that their product not be used in conjunction with unsolicited commerical email. (Full statement on their webpage along with the story of why UCE is called "spam.")
Anyway, I'd like to suggest a new icon for this topic, since the current icon really should be changed. My suggestion is to create an image of three Vikings with the words "spam spam spam" over their heads. It would invoke the original "spam" meaning, which is what the spam topic is truly about, without violating Hormel Foods' quite reasonable request that their product image not be used in conjunction with UCE.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
I see alot of posts saying to the effect "a little bit of spam doesn't cost or hurt" but it does really hurt.
When a kid can register for an hotmail address and a couple days later be receiving emails for porno that he didn't even ask for. That's just WRONG.
It's also wrong to have to "forge" email headers to deliver spam, because putting your real email address there would get you into trouble. Having to lie to do something is just plain WRONG.
The spam I get in my email box are not from anybody who wants to do me a favor (like get paid for having sex, we have free money to give you), but rather from people who want to rip me off. That's just plain WRONG.
Scraping my email off a website/newsgroup and because I like to participate in a specific discussion - and using it to try and rip me off is just plain WRONG.
There are no "good" spammers. Just people who think sending 50K emails an hour is "good". They're just plain WRONG
For the same reasons we have a post office that handles junkmail/direct marketing in a specific way with specific laws, so to we need laws to handle the "spam disease".
The lame "we can't pass any laws because the internet is "international" is bullshit. The telephone is international too, that doesn't mean you can harass me with it. Besides, all the companies above are US based. Let's start with taking out the bastard trash in our corner of the world, and worry about the rest later.
There is so much time-sucking, bandwidth-sucking, hassle-sucking spam out there, that for the same reasons people pass laws against mail and telephone fraud, so to people need to get sick of spam mail and pass laws against Unsolicited Bulk Email.
Here's a little something to help those of us who are fed up cope a little.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"