[73958] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: who's next?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Howard C. Berkowitz)
Thu Sep 9 13:55:05 2004
In-Reply-To: <6.1.2.0.2.20040908113702.05b28340@mira-sjc5-b.cisco.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 13:54:15 -0400
To: Fred Baker <fred@cisco.com>, Paul Vixie <paul@vix.com>
From: "Howard C. Berkowitz" <hcb@gettcomm.com>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
At 12:12 PM -0700 9/8/04, Fred Baker wrote:
>At 04:29 PM 09/08/04 +0000, Paul Vixie wrote:
>>i guess this is progress. the press keeps bleating about stopping
>>spam from being received -- perhaps if they start paying attention
>>to how it gets sent and how many supposedly-legitimate businesses
>>profit from the sending, there could be some flattening of the spam
>>growth curve.
>
>I think both approaches have value.
>
>Consider this by comparison to the "war against drugs". One line of
>reasoning says "if there is no supply, there will be no market".
>Another line of reasoning says "if there is no demand, there will be
>no market". A third line of reasoning notes that with purveyance of
>such come a multitude of other social ills, and focuses on the
>"businessmen" in the trade: "if there is no way for supply and
>demand to meet, the market will fail."
The solution lies in a combination of the two. If enough spammers
take enough drugs, they will be unable to spam. Properly propagated
rumors may variously suggest:
1. Becoming a spammer will put you into drug rehab at best.
2. Spammers now become a target for no-knock raids by the Drug
Enforcement Administration.
>
>
>Where this gets interesting is with so-called "legitimate spam". At
>least under US law, if you and I have a relationship as buyer and
>seller, the seller has a right to advertise legitimate services and
>products to the buyer. I travel in a vertical direction when I get
>spam from my employer; I have sat down with the designated spammer
>and have been told in detail that as a user of that equipment I am a
>buyer and they have a right to advertise to me, and take pretty
>serious steps to target and not annoy their audience. There is a
>part of me that wants to site in an 18" gun using their building as
>a target; there is another part of me that notes the photography in
>magazines and on billboards and the little jingles that go by on TV
>and the radio, and notices that legitimate advertising is in fact
>treated as (ulp!) legitimate.
And Jerry Springer is a legitimate means of advertising. I will
confess that after an especially long, exhausting day at an IETF
plenary, I have searched for something as mindless as Mr. Springer to
clear my brain for sleep. To the best of my recollection, I have not
reached that level of exhaustion at NANOG.
