Should We Spam Proxies to China?

Frequent Slashdot Contributor Bennett Haselton is back with a story about fighting censorship with spam. He starts "Is it OK to send unsolicited e-mail to users in China, Iran, and other censored countries, telling them about new proxy sites for getting around Internet censorship? I hasten to add that I have NOT done this, am not planning on doing it and would not have any idea how to go about it anyway. Between the various companies that offer proxy services, I don't know of anyone who is doing it (no, not even people who swore me to secrecy about it). But I think the question involves ethical issues that would not apply to most discussions of spam." Hit that big link below to read the rest of his words.

Lest there be any doubt, I hate spam, getting about 10,000 of them a week with no way to filter them without blocking at least some of my important mail as well; I've tried suing some spammers mostly without success, and humbly proposed one anti-spam algorithm which caught on like wildfire, if the wildfire were spreading through a... rainforest, in the... rain. But I am not against spam a priori (Latin for "unless they are telling me I need to add extra inches"), I'm against spam because that follows from other principles, and in some situations there is some question as to whether those principles still apply. (It is not as simplistic as saying that it is OK to spam "for the greater good". Stay with me!)

Getting back to basics: Why is spam a problem? Because the cost of receiving a message, however minor, is more than the benefits, which are usually microscopic considering the probability that a typical recipient would buy what they're selling. Take a small cost that exceeds a small benefit, multiply by millions of messages per day, and the cost exceeds the benefit by about $70 billion per year.

But, just as a thought experiment, could you conceive of a kind of spam that would not be a nuisance? Suppose you sent an e-mail to millions of people offering them free $20 bills. And you actually followed through and sent the money to anybody who claimed the offer. Then the conventional argument against spam no longer applies, because the e-mails are benefitting people more than they're costing them. It's hard to think of any real-life examples, but if you had sent out mass e-mails telling people about the refund checks for anybody who had bought a CD (it was real, I got my $13.86 in the mail in 2004), I probably wouldn't have come to your house to egg your windows.

"Aha!" some spammer is thinking, "my product does benefit people more than the e-mail costs them! I can help them refinance their homes at a low rate, to take out money they can multiply many times with my new stock tip, and then spend at my friend Tiffanee's new site to help pay her way towards her physics degree!" Wait. Let's just say that you're offering some miracle product at a low price, conferring some huge benefit on each person who buys it. The only costs of spreading your bounty to the world, are whatever advertising costs are incurred in getting the word out. But if your product is really the miracle you say it is, then the benefits to people (even after subtracting the price they paid for it), exceed the costs of the advertising.

Then you have several choices. You can spam to advertise the product. In this case, the costs of the advertising are passed on to unwilling recipients. But if the benefits your product confers are greater than the cost of getting people's attention, then you've still arguably done more good than harm to the world, even if the net effect on some individual people was harmful (on annoyed recipients who didn't end up buying your product). By forcing the advertising costs on other people, you've saved that much more money; you can pocket that benefit yourself, or if you pass on the savings in the form of reduced prices (which you may have to do in a competitive market anyway), you've basically transferred that much benefit by stealing it from the spam recipients and distributing it to your customers. So the main benefit to the world was the wonderfulness of your product, and on top of that, you stole some small benefit from a large number of people and redistributed it to other people, which has no positive or negative net effect.

But, because the benefits of the product outweigh the costs of the advertising, that means in a mostly-free country where your product is legal, you can also buy advertisements to get people's attention, pass the costs on to the customers in the form of slightly higher prices, and have benefits for them left over (otherwise they wouldn't still buy what you're selling). The customers still get the major benefit, the benefit of owning your awesome product. What's missing in this case is the small extra benefit that they were getting before, from you stealing from all the spam recipients and passing the savings on to them.

So for that reason, spammers are prohibited from saying "The benefits of my products exceed the costs of people's attention span to read about it, so it's OK for me to spam", by the reply: "If the benefits really exceed the costs, then you can buy advertising to tell people about it like everyone else."

But now the big question: Would that argument still hold if you wanted to advertise proxies to people in China and Iran?

It doesn't seem that you could use conventional channels to advertise proxies to Chinese and Iranian users. If you bought ads on Google AdSense or a similar ad-serving network, China might threaten to block all ads served from that network unless they started screening out ads for anti-censorship services (especially in the case of Google, which seems to comply with most Chinese self-censorship demands). Then there's the question of how to charge Chinese and Iranian users even small amounts for the services. It would not be a good idea to have the charges show up on their credit cards issued by Chinese banks. Paying small amounts with PayPal would be a little bit better since the charge would simply show up from "PayPal", without revealing the recipient. And since all traffic to the PayPal site is encrypted over SSL, Chinese censors wouldn't be able to detect or block users who were paying to circumvent the Great Firewall, unless they blocked all traffic to the PayPal site. But could PayPal be leaned on to provide the identities of Chinese users who were paying for circumvention services, under threat of having their site blocked otherwise? And the biggest impediment of all would be that once you start charging even $1 for a service, there's a huge dropoff in people willing to sign up, even if they would have to spend much more than $1 worth of effort to find a free alternative somewhere else.

So, if circumvention services provide enough benefit to Chinese users, maybe spamming proxy sites would do more good than harm, and if the lack of freedom in the country means that you could not sell or advertise the services to Chinese users by conventional means, maybe that means spamming the proxy locations would be the only way to do this.

Reading over this, I just realized that if you also believed that pot was beneficial to society, this could also justify spamming to advertise pot. I expect we'll all start getting marijuana spam just as soon as the pothead reading this gets around to it... on, like Tuesday... maybe. Just make sure they don't really get their act together enough to get pot legalized, because if that happens, they lose their rationale for spamming to advertise it! (Thinking about the pot question more seriously, I'd say that if the government banned sales and advertisements of something beneficial like milk, then spamming to advertise milk would be a good thing. The only real argument against spamming for pot is that it isn't as beneficial as milk.)

So that's the mathematical argument in a nutshell:

1. Spam is bad because the costs to society are greater than the benefits. This would not be the case if you were spamming to advertise something whose benefits were greater than the costs of the spam.
2. However, in a mostly-free country where your product is legal to sell, #1 should never be used to justify spamming, because if the benefits of your product are really greater than the costs of the advertising, you can pay for the advertising, add the costs on to the cost of the product, and still have benefits left over to split between the seller and the customer.
3. #2 is not true in non-free countries like China, in which case if a product conferred more benefits than the costs of the spam but was not legal to sell, it might be OK to spam it.

Perhaps this logic is flawed, and I'm sure some people will tell me why they think so. The other question is whether these circumvention services really provide as much benefit to the Chinese and Iranians as those of us who run the services would like to believe. Earlier I argued that the real obstacle to most anti-censorship services is apathy on the part of the target audience, and that it was an unpleasant surprise, when I found some Chinese users on MSN Messenger to ask for help with some technical issue, to find that most of them either supported the Chinese government's censorship or didn't care enough to do anything about it. So for proxy spam to be defensible, it should -- come on, all together now, I can't believe I'm quoting the members of the industry that is the bane of my existence -- include an unsubscribe link that users can click to stop receiving any further e-mails. And a postal return address! Because who could have any cause to complain about an unsolicited e-mail that includes the sender's full mailing address in the footer?

Comments

This is like the pro-christian spam I get

[eodmightier]

Look spam is spam. I'm sure when the christian folks spam me about the lord or whatever nonsense, they really feel they are doing the right thing. I still don't want it though.

The people over there who know about the proxies don't want to see your spam. If anything this would do nothing more than make the situation worse and you'd probably see a tighting down of their firewall system.

Re:This is like the pro-christian spam I get

[evanknight]

Shutup and accept jesus already.

except it doesnt matter if the legit gets there

[wizardforce]

the problem is that it isn't below China and Iran to just block EVERYTHING that remotely resembles a method around the great firewalls they set up. the power to filter what people see overrides any consideration for getting legit emails/ads to the user. and unlike in many countries in the western world the government has no problem delving into technology to fix this little problem.

No for two reasons

[Sycraft-fu]

1) It is still unsolicited e-mail. You may think that there's something I really, really want. You may believe to the core of your being it is something I care about. You may still be wrong. There may well be people in those restricted countries that just don't give a shit. Perhaps all of the web they care about is allowed through the filters. Thus they really don't want to hear from you.

2) More importantly e-mail is not secure. The government will find out, they will monitor the spam, and they will use that to either block your proxies or arrest those that use them or whatever. Sending an unsecured plain text message advertising something illegal in a country known to monitor the Internet is, well, stupid.

Re:No for two reasons

[malsdavis]

3) Do people in those countries actually desire uncensored internet?

Although I personally hate the idea of censorship, the one thing I hate even more (or maybe equaly, but the two are closely related anyway) is others pushing their ethics and morales on me (e.g. Religious spam which is some of the most irritating around).

In the case of Iran in particular, there is no doubt that the current government was democratically elected by a large majority, despite the clear implication that the internet would be censored. Is there evidence that the average lay person (i.e. spam recipients) in these countries desire uncensored internet access?

If we start spamming them saying how they should all use methods to bypass censorship because we consider censorship immoral than we have to expect and support Iranians sending us spam saying how we should use censorship proxies (along with a plethora of "change your immoral, infidel culture" crap).

Short answer

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Is it OK to send unsolicited e-mail to users [...]

No.

Consent, not Content

[Kelson]

If they didn't ask for it, and you still blast it out to a bunch of people, it's still unsolicited bulk email -- in other words, it's still spam.

Besides, think of the unintended consequences: You'd be making users used to accessing random proxies. How long before the malware writers start spamming "Hey, use our proxy!" and advertising their fake proxy which will send most traffic through, but will sniff usernames and passwords, and redirect certain sessions to phishing sites?

Absolutely not

[eln]

What you are essentially asking is if it's okay to share information you think would be valuable to oppressed people by spamming them. Your thought is to share proxy site information with them. That's all very noble, but you are talking about is essentially using spam as a tool to give people you don't know information you personally believe they will find valuable.

So, who is to say this information is the most valuable thing they could receive? What if I believe what these people really need to change their lives is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Would if be okay in your view for me to spam them with religious messages? Why not? What if I think they would really benefit by hearing the word of Allah?

You argue that the big problem with spam is that the benefit is small and the cost is large to the recipient. But, you say, this information is enormously beneficial to the recipient, so it's worth the cost they pay. The problem is, you as the sender are not the one who gets to make that call. The value of the email is determined by the recipient, not by the sender. As a sender, I may think that my discount C1al1s is enormously beneficial and far outweighs the miniscule cost of receiving an email, but I doubt the recipients of my message feel the same way.

There's also the problem of just how oppressive these governments are. Will recipients of these messages be subject to punishment by their governments just for having it in their inbox? Will the governments use the emails as an excuse to crack down on proxies and block even larger swaths of the Internet, thereby defeating the purpose? There's no way you could blanket spam a country without its government noticing and taking measures to defeat your efforts.

Your heart may be in the right place, but this method just isn't a good idea.

Re:Absolutely not

[charlesbakerharris]

What if I believe what these people really need to change their lives is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? Would if be okay in your view for me to spam them with religious messages?

I guess we could just call this guy a Good Spamaritan.

Outsource it

[biocute]

would not have any idea how to go about it anyway

If India is too expensive, consider hiring Chinese to do this spam.

No

[Leto-II]

The people who really want to know already know.

The people who don't will just be annoyed by your spam.

And, by the way, the people who don't really care to know vastly outnumber those that do.

Longer answer

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

It is not okay to send things to people just because you think they need it. That includes instructions on how to avoid internet censorship, penis enlargement devices and democracy to middle-eastern countries.

Let's take an example: what if some chinese dude gets your email, and the chinese police raids his house because he's now on a dangerous dissidents list for having been in communication with, and detaining computer data from dangerous anti-censorship groups? Still think your kind email would be welcome?

Re:If only it were that simple

[MrNaz]

I don't suppose anyone would agree with me if I said that we should just let the people in that country deal with their government the way they see fit? There are many places around the world right now that see the inbred offspring of the private sector and government in the US as a de-facto totalitarian state, but if anyone decided to assist in freeing the American people from the yokes of the capitalism cum fascism system, they'd get labeled "terrorist" on short order. Here's a novel idea: Leave other countries and societies alone. It didn't work in Vietnam, it resulted in untold misery and suffering in Chile and its causing the same suffering in Afghanistan and Iraq. Interfering in other peoples' lives, even if you *do* mean well (which governments never do), very rarely works, if ever.

Re:If only it were that simple

[evilandi]

But one way of changing a law is to make it completely unenforceable by a mass civil disobedience campaign

Never, ever, assume that "not being able to execute huge numbers of people fast enough" is equivalent to "unenforcable".

The road to hell is paved w/ good intentions

[Presto Vivace]

Would that argument still hold if you wanted to advertise proxies to people in China and Iran? Just getting email like that could get the recepients thrown in jail. Want to help people in countries like that? Read up on their INTERNAL human rights movements and work in solidarity. Give them credit for being able to lead their own struggles. Nobody likes an interfering nosy parker.

Not well thought out

[ILikeRed]

Talk about making it easy for Chinese secret police as well - we will train Chinese internet users to trust proxies sent to them in anonymous spam. Their government will NEVER think to make their own proxies and anonymous spam to catch users attempting to break the law and bypass their filters.

Re:Not well thought out

[h4rm0ny]

And there, in a single post, is the best argument that it isn't ethical to do this. Not because the intention or the aims are wrong, but because the effect is likely to be detrimental.

There's a qualitative difference between the spam you receive and the "spam" that he's talking about sending to China. With our spam, it is trying to direct us to something that we are free to find ourselves if we so want to. With the China "spam" idea, it is trying to provide something that the recipient is not free to find for themselves. In other words, it's increasing the recipients freedom of choice. There's also a difference that what is contained in the "spam" is something that is useful, as opposed to the amount of viagra adverts I receive.

But if what was sent would just make things worse for the recipient, as the parent says, then it would be wrong to send it.

Re:Not well thought out

[1u3hr]

. With the China "spam" idea, it is trying to provide something that the recipient is not free to find for themselves. In other words, it's increasing the recipients freedom of choice. There's also a difference that what is contained in the "spam" is something that is useful, as opposed to the amount of viagra adverts I receive.

No, it IS almost exactly like Viagra spam. The spammer in both cases claims that it's something the recipient needs, and doesn't know where to find. And in both cases they're wrong. 99% of Chinese on the net don't care about censorship (except perhaps of porn) and the 1% who do are perfectly capable of finding proxies without the help of some American crusader, who is just going to stir up the authorities like an evangelical Christian in Afghanistan.

If you do happen to want either viagra or a proxy server, the last and least trustworthy way to find it safely is from spam.

Typical American Hubris

[Dusty00]

I can't fathom why Americans haven't gotten over the idea they everyone else always needs our help. Here in America, neither FOX nor CNN provide news, they provide whatever version of the story will generate the best ratings. There are millions of Americans out there who don't realize that other news sources will provide a more accurate picture of what's going on, like Reuters or AP. So why should these news sources not spam the world and show us the light, because we don't want it. Those of us who want their product will go and find it, those who don't will not. Same with what this article is proposing. Those who want information the government is censoring will find a way to get it, those who don't will not.

Re:If only it were that simple

[nuzak]

> But one way of changing a law is to make it completely unenforceable by a mass civil disobedience campaign

You first. I suggest a nice busy and visible public space, like Tianmen Square.

Absolutely, you beat me to it.

[Anonymous Coward]

But since I can see how you were immediately modded as flamebait and I can predict my post will get the same treatment, I'm going to go annon.
        This whole American obsession with the "Great Firewall" is really absurd and misplaced to anyone who has actually lived in China as I have done for many years. Getting around the blocks is trivial. It's a merely symbolic thing basically saying hey these topics are off limits. Within China you would have to be blind to not know how to find out the latest scoop on the groups that are specifically targeted by the media ban like the Fa Lwun Gong or Tibetan activists. Their messages are, if anything, amplified by the policy which is why it is implemented in such a half ass way. There's no real motivation to make it iron clad because it's obvious to the powers that be that the harder they push the more they strengthen the hand of these groups and encourage new ones to form. The idea is to turn down their volume, not to amplify their strength.
          It's the American nut jobs who think it's some kind of total media ban and that the Chinese are wholly ignorant of the great free world outside their hellish prison island. The image of the Berlin Air Lift seems kinda etched into their memories of how the world is. That was the nineteen forties. It's really not like that anymore.
      In fact, people in China get free-to-air satellite TV with hundreds of channels and even free hardcore porn 24-7. Americans don't even know what free-to-air satellite is. America is the only country in the world that doesn't get free-to-air satellite. The land of the free. Yeah right.
      Furthermore, people in China these days get way cheaper and faster broadband than what you get in the States. Yeah, there are blocks on some web sites, but people can exchange whatever torrents they like. Yeah, that's right, the Chinese use bittorrent to trade files just like Americans and Europeans. If you think the people of China are blind to what's going on in the world, you're just wrong. They probably have better access to news than most Americans.
      Finally, I would like to echo Noam Chomsky by pointing out that the greatest restriction on free expression in the media that was ever created in human history is called advertising. Now that is fucking repression.

Re:If only it were that simple

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that would be a good place... my google.cn search of Tiananmen Square says that nothing like this has ever occurred there before.