Eric Cordian wrote:
Email is free. That is why we have a spam problem. If email required 37 cent stamps, it would be no more annoying than junk snailmail. it might be free in america - but it isn't here in the UK even at low bandwidths - say, 56K. The sort of bandwidth a professional spammer uses doesn't come cheap on any scale, and back when I was on dialup, the amount of spam I get now (expressed in bytes) would probably have been about 1/3 of my *total* traffic back then. These days of course I can be content to watch my filters remove the majority of it - but I still don't appreciate having to waste bandwidth downloading it.
I would suspect that after initial contact is made, and a "fee" is transferred, part of that money can be used to fund the appearance of the scam, and still make a profit. True - so what you are saying is that we aren't *actually* taking the spammer's $80, but money they took from some poor sucker who got spammed earlier?
I think this sort of scamming is a very highly leveraged activity, with an occasional large payoff, like playing a slot machine with the overall odds slightly in your favor. It probably doesn't take too much before these guys are out in the street with nothing. I am trying to think of a reason why this would be a bad thing.
Given the number of people worldwide currently in that situation, I probably won't behave in ways that increase it, even if the person in question is trying to pick my pocket. I agree that spamming 419'ers don't deserve being out on the streets with nothing - but only because I would prefer to see them (and all spammers) being slowly disembowelled with red hot hooks......
Visionary Philosophers should have higher moral standards than the scum of the earth. Ah. ok, that Explains it then - I am not a visionary anything :)