Re: They has a Hammer . . .kengrAugust 19 2008, 22:55:40 UTC
I think the only "fair" thing that'd work would be if the recipient could send a copy of a message to their mail provider with a "this is spam". If the provider agrees (there'd be provisions for appealing, and read further to see why it would be in the providers interest to agree), they'd credit to user with (say) $5.
Then the provider gets to check the headers to see who they got that message from. And they get to do the same thing to them (plus a small handling fee)
Eventually, you hit either the sender, or someone with really poor security. They get stuck with the bill.
The two main problems with it are dealing with out-of-country providers, and end users with infected machines.
Other than international law (I don't see that happening, or if it does, the results being good) only way I can see is to add the charges to the "bill" for the link the stuff travels over. So the ISPs in the source country can either pay or get cut off from the net. Who they collect is their problem.
End users would fall into two categories. Ones who hadn't tried to protect their systems, and ones who'd gotten nailed because the protection wasn't good enough.
Ones who hadn't tried would be stuck. Maybe there'd be an amnesty for the first time.
Folks who were the victim of things like OS holes that hadn't had a patch released yet would be entitled to pass the fees on to MS/Apple/whoever.
Probably impossible to implement, but if it could be, it has the wonderful feature of making it in the interest of all the "good guys" (and the ISPs :-) to go after spam.
Then the provider gets to check the headers to see who they got that message from. And they get to do the same thing to them (plus a small handling fee)
Eventually, you hit either the sender, or someone with really poor security. They get stuck with the bill.
The two main problems with it are dealing with out-of-country providers, and end users with infected machines.
Other than international law (I don't see that happening, or if it does, the results being good) only way I can see is to add the charges to the "bill" for the link the stuff travels over. So the ISPs in the source country can either pay or get cut off from the net. Who they collect is their problem.
End users would fall into two categories. Ones who hadn't tried to protect their systems, and ones who'd gotten nailed because the protection wasn't good enough.
Ones who hadn't tried would be stuck. Maybe there'd be an amnesty for the first time.
Folks who were the victim of things like OS holes that hadn't had a patch released yet would be entitled to pass the fees on to MS/Apple/whoever.
Probably impossible to implement, but if it could be, it has the wonderful feature of making it in the interest of all the "good guys" (and the ISPs :-) to go after spam.
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