Ask ISP Owner Barry Shein About the Spam Wars

Spam sucks. But it's worse for ISPs than for the rest of us, because they get bounces and complaints and other behind-the-scenes spam-caused messes the rest of us don't see. AOL talks of spam as "public enemy number one." Barry Shein, who started (and still runs) the world's first full-service dialup ISP, likens spammers to organized criminals, and calls spam "an organized, vicious, sociopathic thing" in this article, which spurred an interesting Slashdot discussion. So what should we do about spam? Ask Barry. One question per post, please. We'll post his answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions sometime in the next week or so.

Comments

He's severely over-reacting

[doomdog]

From the article:

"The spammers are calling the shots, the spammers are in charge of my time, and they are in charge of the Internet."

In charge of the internet? Give me a break... Spam is definitely a problem, but spammers are _not_ running the show.

My guess is that the guy hasn't properly upgraded is mail servers (with more CPU power, memory, disk space, etc.) over the past few years and is currently suffering from e-mail overload (and blaming it on the spammers)...

Is this why God created (gasp) Government?

[release7]

No body ever said Government was perfect (and I defy you to find an institution that is), but dammit, it's the only thing we have to bring order and law to a world of chaos. The anti-government, anti-regulation libertarian rhetoric that has captured the popular mind in the last couple of decades has got to come to an end before the spam problem will be solved.