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:

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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



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

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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
 

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Stopping "spam" is stopping free speech.

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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
 

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Stopping "spam" is stopping free speech.

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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
 

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Stopping "spam" is stopping free speech.

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


q/q

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[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
 

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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.

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

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

Re: Free market solution to spam
 

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

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