spam control again

[John Whitfield]

>> people need to complain to their ISP, not their 
>> congressman.

> your ISP can't solve the problem.

Perhaps a better response would be to attack the business side of the problem.  Most spam is predicated on the idea that you can turn a profit even if only one person responds because the marginal cost of each email is near zero.  Spammers already complain (and we feel *SO* sorry for them) that their costs have been driven up by anti-spam efforts such as filters.

I don't think we need sophisticated laws or even laws which the government needs to enforce.  How about if current civil law is tweaked to recognize that ISPs bear the costs of mass mailings of unsolicited commercial email and allow them to recover those costs from the spammers?  

Here's my suggestion:  ISPs and their agents whose clientele receive mass mailings of unsolicited commercial email may recover the costs of processing that email at a rate of five cents per infringement from those who send or knowingly assist in sending such mail.  That's probably bad lawyerese, but you get the idea.

Big ISPs would probably have the best shot at enforcing this.  You only need to prove that the email is unsolicited (set up dummy accounts and monitor them) and commercial (the wording usually proves that).  Then it's a matter of counting all instances of that email and going after the person who wrote it.  If it's hard to find that person, buy something and go after whoever cashes the check.  Note that you can also go after someone who "knowingly assists" such as those who sell address lists, spam software and ISPs who don't have an anti-spam policy.

The important thing is to turn the "one person in a thousand" logic on its head.  At the potential penalty of a nickel per person, the one buyer would have to shell out $5000 just to break even.  And there aren't that many buyers like that out there.

Just my two cents,
John Whitfield
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