[LINK] NYT/SMH: To beat spam, pay to send email

[Daniel Rose]

The spammer could then perform an even better joe job by spamming on behalf
of a legitimate website, with links to the paypal or purchase page or
whatever.

This would be completely out of the control of the retailer, who would then
end up in court.

It's similar to the "post no bills" signs -- do the authorities just
prosecute the nightclub or band being plugged in the glued-up poster?


Regards,


Daniel Rose                     62621599
Postmaster/Helpdesk
National Library of Australia




-----Original Message-----
From: Howard Lowndes [mailto:lannet at lannet.com.au] 
Sent: Wednesday, 4 February 2004 10:12 AM
To: James Pearce
Cc: link at anu.edu.au
Subject: Re: [LINK] NYT/SMH: To beat spam, pay to send email


On Wed, 2004-02-04 at 10:02, James Pearce wrote:
> I was reading Technology Review today, and it had an article about
> innovations - one was by Microsoft and proposed to combat spam. This
article
> was printed before Gates' speech, BTW. Anyway, this technique involved
> having computers perform a calculation that would take around 10 seconds
> before an e-mail could be sent - limiting the number of messages sent to
> around 8,600 a day. Dunno how this would work with lists.

Very badly, and it also wouldn't work with any reasonably sized
corporate mail server either.


Are we missing something with dealing with spam, or am I having another
blind spot?

We don't look like getting a technological solution RSN, so maybe we
have to look at a legal solution, better than the one's that we
currently have.

The whole purpose of spam is to sell something - right?
To sell something the purchaser has to somehow contact the vendor -
right?
Therefore the vendor must be locatable - right?  Even if it is a PO Box
or some subterfuge, it still is locatable.
So why not go for the vendor instead of the spammer? - Legal hammer,
rattle bars!
No vendors = no market for spammers - end of problem.

Like I say, I could be having a blind spot, perhaps caffeine is called
for.

-- 
Howard.
LANNet Computing Associates - Your Linux people <http://www.lannetlinux.com>
------------------------------------------
Flatter government, not fatter government - Get rid of the Australian
states.
------------------------------------------
To mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it;
to mess up your Windows box, you just need to work on it.
 - Scott Granneman, SecurityFocus

_______________________________________________
Link mailing list
Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link