Forwarded message:
From daemon Sun Aug 25 06:35:39 1996 Message-Id: <199605140403.EAA00545@fountainhead.net> Subject: Re: Spamming To: jad@dsddhc.com (John Deters) Date: Tue, 14 May 1996 04:03:55 +0000 (GMT) Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960822220224.006a0ff0@labg30> from "John Deters" at Aug 22, 96 05:02:24 pm From: Vipul Ved Prakash <vipul@pobox.com> Reply-To: vipul@pobox.com X-Organization: Positive Ideas Content-Type: text Sender: owner-cypherpunks@toad.com Precedence: bulk X-Status:
At 02:55 PM 8/22/96 +0000, Vipul Ved Prakash wrote:
At 06:09 PM 8/20/96 -0700, Rich Graves wrote:
[deleted]
1. Junkmail requires the SENDER to pay for it, not the recipient. Internet pricing models are complicated and debatable, but you surely end up paying for snail-junk-mail. Not directly, but hidden in the high first-class mail costs. More mail, more infrastructure, higher costs. This could be quite true for the net also, if we consider bandwidth costs money.
I beg to differ. The USPS considers "junk" mail their bread-and-butter. Huge mailings of all manner of bulk mail (especially those that are PostNet barcoded by the sender) pay the bills around the Post Office. Your "more mail, more infrastructure, higher costs" argument is flawed. The post office has many fixed costs related to maintaining their huge presence, delivering to so many rural addresses. If we had to pay a per-letter basis *discounting* the value provided by the infrastructure already in place supporting the bulk-mail handling systems, we'd be paying roughly Federal Express 2-day letter rates for each piece of mail (around $6.00, if memory serves correctly.)
Alright, I agree. Though this could very easily differ with size and reach of a PS. But on the net it means more bandwidth right? Which means more bandwidth, and more money. Hang on. This might not be a problem in US (as jim bell points out there is tons of untapped bandwith), but it is in other not so well connected countries. For example, if somebody spams an Indian Network from india, the spam goes to US and comes back to india (since our govt sayz you cant connect 2 local networks!) and eats up most of the 20 MBps bandwidth. Gov't will buy more bandwidth and will make us pay for it! - Vipul