AOL Sues Spammers

mabu writes "Prompted by what they're reporting as over eight million complaints and the result of over a billion inbound junk e-mails, according to this press release, America Online is now stepping up its battle against spam by initiating five lawsuits against over a dozen companies and individuals. Let's hope this is the beginning of a more aggressive effort on the part of ISPs to prove to their users that they are seriously interested in addressing this issue, and at its source. I've maintained that this has never been a freedom of speech issue. It's more an issue of mail relay hijacking, forging header information, and exploiting third-party networks and resources. Perhaps if more ISPs took action, we might see the backbone providers doing so as well?"

Comments

Something is fundamentally wrong here

[Astrorunner]

As much as we hate junk (snail)mail, isn't it self limiting in that each advertisement represents a certain investment -- even if it cost only one penny to send a brochure through the postal system, you would only receive so much junk mail.

Now consider email. Sure, it sure is nice to be able to send an email for free to anyone. A single email is negligable.

Email, naturally, was developed by doe-eyed computer folk well before the commercial appeal of email was apparent. Isn't it our fundamental acceptance of this free model that puts us into the position we are in today? People will always be opportunists. Isn't it time to change the model? The post office charges folk irregardless if it is a personal or commercial mailing. Implement a pay-per-email system and you solve the problem.

Of course its not that easy. You can't just snap your fingers switch everyone to a pay-per-email system. No one wants to pay. It's all but impossible to get people to buy into something like this.

/obvious