At 12:45 PM -0700 6/4/97, Declan McCullagh asked:
What are the costs to consumers of unsolicited e-mail? I guess the time it takes to delete it might be one, hard drive space might be another. I would like to know how to quantify it, and compare it with the cost of sending e-mail.
I don't think the costs of the 1-3 spam messages I get each day is significant. (But I don't post to Usenet.)
If you banned commercial e-mail, wouldn't it just affect legitimate commercial transactions? That is to say, wouldn't fly-by-night pyramid-scheme builders still be able to spam? I would think that if they are so untraceable that it's hard to block their spam that it wouldn't really matter if it were simply made illegal.
Can you say regulatory arbitrage? The current social controls on spam are good enough that no one with any positive reputation wants to have anything to do with it. This means that spammers have to use anonymous offshore answering services. The widespread hatred of spam and spammers should keep the total amount under control without the legal action and in spite of the very low cost of spamming. The recent problems Spamford has been having with denial of service attacks is just one example of the social control process. The flood of hostile email spammers who include real email addresses receive are another. Legitimate commercial email does not evoke these strong reactions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | The Internet was designed | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | to protect the free world | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz@netcom.com | from hostile governments. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA