Free market solution to spam
 

This little conversation started in the Ron Paul video thread, I thought I should really pull it out to an OP:

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Interestingly, Ron Paul was the only congressman to vote no on a bill passed in 2000 that fines spammers.

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2000/07/37665



[/ QUOTE ]
How is this interesting? It's not the Federal government's job to fine spammers, hence Paul voted no.

[/ QUOTE ]

Incidentally, this is a prime example of a situation where government intervention could crowd out a free market solution.

Various congresspeople have suggested government-size-12-interventions into email to prevent spam including imprisoning spammers (yes, already happens), levying a tax on email, and numerous other suggested programs.

The free market is failing to prevent the scourge of spam, right?

Enter an information economist from MIT: Check out this paper

And it has spawned this startup

The basic idea is to use an attention-bond mechanism to make it economically impossible to send spam. They've actually proved mathematically that it is possible for their solution to be *better* than a perfect spam filter.

Free market FTW!

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

The whole punish-paradigm was never intended to actually solve problems.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

Stopping "spam" is stopping free speech.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
Stopping "spam" is stopping free speech.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yup. This solution requires people to post a bond to ensure that you actually want to read the email. If you don't you take the bond. Enough people would claim the bond on spam that it would make it not feasible.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
Stopping "spam" is stopping free speech.

[/ QUOTE ]

Spam is a method of preventing free speech, flooding communication channels with noise in order to drown out unwanted discourse.


q/q

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Stopping "spam" is stopping free speech.

[/ QUOTE ]

Spam is a method of preventing free speech, flooding communication channels with noise in order to drown out unwanted discourse.


q/q

[/ QUOTE ]

[img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] your both right = [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

I have not seen a reduction in spam since this law was passed. A free market solution is necessary because government is incompetent and ineffective. To my knowledge, they caught one so-called mass spammer in the seven years this law has been in effect. Meanwhile I got 50 junk emails in my hotmail box today and the only one that made it into the junk folder was a legitimate email. On the other side, I almost never see spam in my gmail account. (Thank you Google!)

I don't consider spam prevention the suppression of "free speech." Are you infringing on someone's free speech rights if you tell them they can't come into your house and shout in your ear?

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

There has been a "free market" solution.

It was free for users and was successful. Some of the top ten spammers world-wide purged existing customers from their lists. The reminder of the top ten spammers escalated the war, threatened to bring down the net (and would have succeeded - they did display their skills in bringing down some top sites, in the world that had a remote association with the security firm).

The security firm was forced to cancel its services although it had just got to a successful raising of capital of millions of dollars. The inverstors, the security users and the net users lost. Many of the security users stated they were even prepared to pay for the service during the squirmish.

Think about how much worse spam would be without government intervention.

BTW, spam has fallen since the introduction of legislation in a number of countries. Decidedly a very good proof that AC or stateless community would NOT work.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
There has been a "free market" solution.

It was free for users and was successful. Some of the top ten spammers world-wide purged existing customers from their lists. The reminder of the top ten spammers escalated the war, threatened to bring down the net (and would have succeeded - they did display their skills in bringing down some top sites, in the world that had a remote association with the security firm).

The security firm was forced to cancel its services although it had just got to a successful raising of capital of millions of dollars. The inverstors, the security users and the net users lost. Many of the security users stated they were even prepared to pay for the service during the squirmish.

Think about how much worse spam would be without government intervention.

BTW, spam has fallen since the introduction of legislation in a number of countries.

[/ QUOTE ]
What does government do that's so special that any voluntary institution can't?
[ QUOTE ]
Decidedly a very good proof that AC or stateless community would NOT work.

[/ QUOTE ]
Please, markets not doing very well =/= government solution is better.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
BTW, spam has fallen since the introduction of legislation in a number of countries.

[/ QUOTE ]

Correction: Spam did fall following enactment of anti-spam legislation BUT is now reaching new high in traffic volumes again.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
What does government do that's so special that any voluntary institution can't?


[/ QUOTE ]
Protect the majority from bullies and gangsters. Enact and enforce the law.

[ QUOTE ]

Please, markets not doing very well =/= government solution is better.

[/ QUOTE ]

This wasn't a market failure it was a gangsters victory because of the government failure to enforce its laws. More government is what is needed here, maybe less in other areas.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
The free market is failing to prevent the scourge of spam, right?

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, and it has failed for many years. Hopelessly and miserably.

[ QUOTE ]
The basic idea is to use an attention-bond mechanism to make it economically impossible to send spam. They've actually proved mathematically that it is possible for their solution to be *better* than a perfect spam filter.

[/ QUOTE ]
Could someone please explain how this actually works in practice? Like everything you ACers post, it's worthless without specifics.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
Stopping "spam" is stopping free speech.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not at all. This is a silly statement. YOU and every internet user is paying for spam. What you are suggesting is that in the name of free speech everyone should be obliged to pay for a subscription to, say, AC broadsheet. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

Yeah it would suck to have to pay for things you didn't ask for. Good call, man I hate those ACists.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
Yeah it would suck to have to pay for things you didn't ask for. Good call, man I hate those ACists.

[/ QUOTE ]

Depends on the usefulness, to yourself or the community, of what you have to pay for, I guess. Spam is NOT useful.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

1 cent postage stamp on e-mails, refunded if you email less than 1000 times a day.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
1 cent postage stamp on e-mails, refunded if you email less than 1000 times a day.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not technologically possible since most spammers spoof sender addresses. Plus, I already pay my taxes very willingly. I wish the government would act on the spammers. If the government say they can't find them, get them give me a call [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] , but I would really doubt their abilities to ferret out terrorists.

The existing free market solution (Blue Security aka Blue Frog) was successful. It is simply the threat of the gangsters bringing down the net that prevented this free market solution from being effective. It could only be worse without a government, however incompetent or unwilling that government is. Bullies (aka gangsters) have absolutely no regards for governments, if they can get away with it, they are effectively one manifestation of "free" market forces at work.

Wiki - Blue Security/Frog

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

The government getting involved in the internet is just a plain bad idea.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

Don't you think a vast series of tubes needs to be regulated??

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
The government getting involved in the internet is just a plain bad idea.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, to get after spammers has nothing to do with regulating the internet. Just confiscate the parasites bank accounts... Those parasites are truly extorting money from me and every net user without any legitimacy... Get them, that is a good idea... like many other government initiatives and responsibilities.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

Gmail seems terrific at stopping spam... And you can pipe your email through their spam filter and even keep your current address if you want. All for free of course too. Clearly more govt is needed here.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
Gmail seems terrific at stopping spam... And you can pipe your email through their spam filter and even keep your current address if you want. All for free of course too. Clearly more govt is needed here.

[/ QUOTE ]

Obviously you don't understand the issue. You don't understand how you have been robbed. GMail is very good, I use it too, as my primary address, its spamming filters are good but nowhere as good as other free ones (bayesian PopFile comes to mind). But that is not the issue, it doesn't at all, either Gmail or PopFile, for that matter, hurt or prevent the spammer spamming, hence YOU pay for it. And yes, this is a good example of the free market failing because of bullying. Might is right is what AC'ers would like to revert to. Every state that I know of, correct me of I am wrong, is based on another state or ultimately on an AC society which was less desirable than a state and government. This is so obvious that it is painful to even have to mention it.

Your argument about Gmail has little to do with the issue. I am glad you enjoy Gmail, so do I, but not for the same reasons as you give, which are senseless in answer to my post.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Stopping "spam" is stopping free speech.

[/ QUOTE ]

Spam is a method of preventing free speech, flooding communication channels with noise in order to drown out unwanted discourse.


q/q

[/ QUOTE ]

LOL Ironyaments

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Stopping "spam" is stopping free speech.

[/ QUOTE ]

Spam is a method of preventing free speech, flooding communication channels with noise in order to drown out unwanted discourse.

q/q

[/ QUOTE ]

Right. The guy trying to sell you a whatever penny stock pump-and-dump is really just trying to keep you from reading your messages from match.com.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Stopping "spam" is stopping free speech.

[/ QUOTE ]

Spam is a method of preventing free speech, flooding communication channels with noise in order to drown out unwanted discourse.


[/ QUOTE ]

Undoubtedly, but it's also speech itself and Congress can't legally do a thing about it.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The government getting involved in the internet is just a plain bad idea.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, to get after spammers has nothing to do with regulating the internet.

[/ QUOTE ]

Uhm... yes it does, and while I hate to make a slippery slope argument, everything the government does seems to end up on a slippery slope.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Stopping "spam" is stopping free speech.

[/ QUOTE ]

Spam is a method of preventing free speech, flooding communication channels with noise in order to drown out unwanted discourse.

q/q

[/ QUOTE ]

Right. The guy trying to sell you a whatever penny stock pump-and-dump is really just trying to keep you from reading your messages from match.com.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm confused by the point of your post? You agree that spam is an initiation of force, right?

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Stopping "spam" is stopping free speech.

[/ QUOTE ]

Spam is a method of preventing free speech, flooding communication channels with noise in order to drown out unwanted discourse.

q/q

[/ QUOTE ]

Right. The guy trying to sell you a whatever penny stock pump-and-dump is really just trying to keep you from reading your messages from match.com.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm confused by the point of your post?

[/ QUOTE ]

q/q's use of "in order to" implies that the *objective* of the spam is to "drown out unwanted discourse". That's plainly false in the vast majority of cases. Denial of service attacks rarely, if ever, use spam as the weapon.

[ QUOTE ]
You agree that spam is an initiation of force, right?

[/ QUOTE ]

No. Unsolicited communications are part of the purpose for having an email address. Now if you specifically tell someone "I do not wish to recieve commercial messages, or bulk messages (or whatever)" we're in a different ballpark.

Personally, I'm pretty happy with my self-funded, free-market solution to spam. My filters have let through precisely two spam messages this month, and I've had zero false positives.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Stopping "spam" is stopping free speech.

[/ QUOTE ]

Spam is a method of preventing free speech, flooding communication channels with noise in order to drown out unwanted discourse.

q/q

[/ QUOTE ]

Right. The guy trying to sell you a whatever penny stock pump-and-dump is really just trying to keep you from reading your messages from match.com.

[/ QUOTE ]

Unregulated spamming completely destroyed Usenet as a system for political discourse.

Spam-bombing (involuntarily subscribing victims to bulk-email lists) is also used as a direct method of harassment and intimidation.

Lastly, mass-posting of political spam is used to disable and flood out unwanted discourse on many message boards, including this one.


q/q

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Stopping "spam" is stopping free speech.

[/ QUOTE ]

Spam is a method of preventing free speech, flooding communication channels with noise in order to drown out unwanted discourse.

q/q

[/ QUOTE ]

Right. The guy trying to sell you a whatever penny stock pump-and-dump is really just trying to keep you from reading your messages from match.com.

[/ QUOTE ]

Unregulated spamming completely destroyed Usenet as a system for political discourse.

Spam-bombing (involuntarily subscribing victims to bulk-email lists) is also used as a direct method of harassment and intimidation.

Lastly, mass-posting of political spam is used to disable and flood out unwanted discourse on many message boards, including this one.


q/q

[/ QUOTE ]

Is this your personal philosophy for posting on 2+2?

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
What does government do that's so special that any voluntary institution can't?


[/ QUOTE ]
Protect the majority from bullies and gangsters. Enact and enforce the law.

[/ QUOTE ]
OK, and why is the government so much better at it then the market?
[ QUOTE ]
This wasn't a market failure it was a gangsters victory because of the government failure to enforce its laws.

[/ QUOTE ]
Really? You mean the government has no incentive to actually laws such as this?
[ QUOTE ]
More government is what is needed here, maybe less in other areas.

[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, we really need government in more areas where it may or may not even do it's job.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Yeah it would suck to have to pay for things you didn't ask for. Good call, man I hate those ACists.

[/ QUOTE ]

Depends on the usefulness, to yourself or the community, of what you have to pay for, I guess. Spam is NOT useful.

[/ QUOTE ]
OK, so if *you* subjectively value it to be useful *I* have to pay for it. Gotchya.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Gmail seems terrific at stopping spam... And you can pipe your email through their spam filter and even keep your current address if you want. All for free of course too. Clearly more govt is needed here.

[/ QUOTE ]

Obviously you don't understand the issue. You don't understand how you have been robbed. GMail is very good, I use it too, as my primary address, its spamming filters are good but nowhere as good as other free ones (bayesian PopFile comes to mind). But that is not the issue, it doesn't at all, either Gmail or PopFile, for that matter, hurt or prevent the spammer spamming, hence YOU pay for it. And yes, this is a good example of the free market failing because of bullying.

[/ QUOTE ]

How exactly has the free market "failed"? No spam gets past the FREE spam filters on the FREE email system(s) that I use. What exactly am I paying for again? Does it matter if spammers aren't punished if they don't actually harm me in any way?

You know what actually DOES harm me? The physical spam that gets dumped in my mailbox every day by the representatives of the government you think is so fantastic that I can do absolutely NOTHING about, except waste my valuable time sorting out the spam. It becomes MY responsibility to fill up landfills with hundreds of pounds of this [censored] every year. I would use a different door to door mail delivery service, but guess what, THERE ARE NONE BECAUSE THEY HAVE BEEN OUTLAWED.

[ QUOTE ]
Might is right is what AC'ers would like to revert to. Every state that I know of, correct me of I am wrong, is based on another state or ultimately on an AC society which was less desirable than a state and government. This is so obvious that it is painful to even have to mention it.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are wrong. Your ridiculous argument says that Nazi Germany and communist Russia were more desirable than what came before them. Since "more desirable" is of course subjective, this might be true for you, but I assure you, the majority of people disagree.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
How exactly has the free market "failed"? No spam gets past the FREE spam filters on the FREE email system(s) that I use. What exactly am I paying for again? Does it matter if spammers aren't punished if they don't actually harm me in any way?

[/ QUOTE ]

Boro, I'm really surprised at this comment as you know nothing is "free". All the time and R&D costs spent fighting all this spam and staying a step ahead of the spammers is passed down through higher advertising costs, etc. We are indirectly paying for spam just as we are indirectly paying for our free Gmail.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
How exactly has the free market "failed"? No spam gets past the FREE spam filters on the FREE email system(s) that I use. What exactly am I paying for again? Does it matter if spammers aren't punished if they don't actually harm me in any way?

[/ QUOTE ]

Boro, I'm really surprised at this comment as you know nothing is "free". All the time and R&D costs spent fighting all this spam and staying a step ahead of the spammers is passed down through higher advertising costs, etc. We are indirectly paying for spam just as we are indirectly paying for our free Gmail.

[/ QUOTE ]

Conceded. However, so what? I spend money on a burglar alarm because burglars exist. Would I have more money to spend if burglars didn't exist? Yes, of course. However, they do exist, and the free market provides solutions that I am willing to pay for (like burglar alarms). The existence of spammers and spam filters doesn't signal a "failure" of the free market any more than the existence of burglars and burglar alarms. It represents the free market doing exactly what it is supposed to do: provide solutions to problem that cost less than the alternative of doing nothing.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

It's actually pretty funny to say 'the free market fails'. Because it says that people should be doing something that they are not doing. They then try to invoke a solution to people not doing something by waving guns around and making people do someting. Obviously what's the morality of all this? Well, people peacefully and voluntarily coexisting (the market) is defined as immoral, and people waving guns around is then offered as moral.

The point of this exercise ofcourse is to justify the use of violence in any way they can. It doesn't matter what it is, what the cause is, or anything of that, all that matters is that a scapegoat NEEDS to be found to justify violence.

"whoah smoking is bad for your health"
-> So is that why I cannot be free?

"whoah global warmings"
-> So is that why I cannot be free?

"whoah global war and danger and boogymans"
-> So is that why I cannot be free?

"whoah spam in your mailbox"
-> So is that why I cannot be free?



http://www.freedomainradio.com/Traff...ee_Because.mp3

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
It's actually pretty funny to say 'the free market fails'. Because it says that people should be doing something that they are not doing. They then try to invoke a solution to people not doing something by waving guns around and making people do someting. Obviously what's the morality of all this? Well, people peacefully and voluntarily coexisting (the market) is defined as immoral, and people waving guns around is then offered as moral.

The point of this exercise ofcourse is to justify the use of violence in any way they can. It doesn't matter what it is, what the cause is, or anything of that, all that matters is that a scapegoat NEEDS to be found to justify violence.

"whoah smoking is bad for your health"
-> So is that why I cannot be free?

"whoah global warmings"
-> So is that why I cannot be free?

"whoah global war and danger and boogymans"
-> So is that why I cannot be free?

"whoah spam in your mailbox"
-> So is that why I cannot be free?



http://www.freedomainradio.com/Traff...ee_Because.mp3

[/ QUOTE ]



Neils I agree with you but stop linking [censored] alex jones. The guy is a kook and hurts the cause.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The free market is failing to prevent the scourge of spam, right?

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, and it has failed for many years. Hopelessly and miserably.

[ QUOTE ]
The basic idea is to use an attention-bond mechanism to make it economically impossible to send spam. They've actually proved mathematically that it is possible for their solution to be *better* than a perfect spam filter.

[/ QUOTE ]
Could someone please explain how this actually works in practice? Like everything you ACers post, it's worthless without specifics.

[/ QUOTE ]

The way it works is that you have a whitelist of people who can send you email and anyone not on your whitelist has to post a bond for their email to be delivered. If you don't like the email they sent you just claim the bond. You can set what that bond should be and obviously the higher you set it, the less spam you receive. Really, you'd only need to set your required bond to a $0.01 and that would cut out virtually all spam. If you value your time very highly then you should set your required bond level much higher. A venture capitalist who gets a lot of email about ideas could set his bond level to $100. Then if the idea is stupid he can just claim the bond and the idiot will never send him email again. To start with they're also allowing people to fill out a captcha rather than post a bond. Captchas can be beaten though so eventually you'd want to turn that feature off.

I've been using their service for a while with my gmail account and interestingly every now and then i'll see gmail put something in my spam filter. It's always an email that shouldn't be in there. The reason for that is that the spammers send out emails with random collections of words to try to make the spam filters overly zealous. It's all part of the arms race. The great thing about this solution is that there's seemingly no way to beat it.

Again, a very clever free market idea that we might not have seen if the government came in with their size 12s.

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

Don't know if I did something wrong when setting this up, but a bunch of spam (in [censored] cyrillic no less) still got through. Cool idea, though. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

[ QUOTE ]
Don't know if I did something wrong when setting this up, but a bunch of spam (in [censored] cyrillic no less) still got through. Cool idea, though. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Woah, weird. It's always worked fine for me... It's still definitely in start-up mode so it's far from perfect. The theory behind the idea is really cool though.

One problem for me is that it requires a reasonable amount of management of your whitelist to start with. For example, if you want to get email receipts from an amazon purchase you'll have to add amazon.com to your whitelist. I've been using it for a while now and I barely ever have to mess around with the whitelist anymore.

The big hope is that they'll get bought by google and they'll make it standard... That would be most awesome.