SendMail CTO Sounds Off On Spam and FTC

CowboyRobot writes "Eric Allman takes his well-deserved turn in commenting on the state of spam, the dark future, and the need for intervention. He calls spam an "arms race" where "in the long run everyone loses (except the arms dealers)." As you might imagine, he's on our side, and he does a good job of clearly describing the current state of spam, and the possible solutions."

Comments

Re:I'm calling bullshit on this part:

[dinivin]

Just curious, but do you have any proof that shows that clicking on one of those unsubscribe links actually removes you from the list?

Dinivin

Re:If everyone would just ...

[curunir]

If everyone (where everyone is the three single entities of Microsoft, AOL and Sendmail) would agree to implement a compatible HashCash solution (spec publicly available, of course), then SPAM would be prohibitively expensive (too slow since the sender is paying in CPU cycles).

As soon as you cross the threshold from profitability to loss, SPAM all but disappears from the internet. And unlike your "If everyone just..." scenarios, the everyone I'm describing is actually realistic.