Re: Why not virus/worm blocklist?

From: Jim Richardson (warlock_at_eskimo.com)
Date: 10/17/03 

Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2003 00:10:33 -0700

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On 17 Oct 2003 05:13:28 GMT,
 William Park <opengeometry@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> Jason Wade <savon1414.ostrich@earthlink.invalid> wrote:
>>> I don't like this... too many lawyers. My solution is simpler, and
>>> everyone makes money.
>>>
>>> 1. Government legislate a fee for SMTP packets going through telecom
>>> backbone. [ chomp ]
>>>
>>> 2. The fee applied to anyone using the backbone, ie. local ISPs
>>> inside the country or outside. [ chomp ]
>>>
>>> 3. The user will pay for every email they send. [ chomp ]
>>>
>>> End result: spammers pay real money.
>>
>> Interesting ideas, since they will let the market solve the
>> spam problem.
>>
>> But what happens when someone trojanizes your Windows computer,
>> makes it part of a zombie network and sends 100,000 spams
>> with it?
>
> Whoever opened the Internet account with the ISP. ISP don't care
> whether you have infected machine or not. They just meter the
> outgoing port 25. And, that person will be billed accordingly, along
> with your total bandwidth usage or login time, as it is already done
> now.
>

It's a shitty idea, getting the govt involved in email. You honestly
think that they can write a law that *won't* screw us while letting the
spammers get away with what they allready get away with? Look at the
post office, when you send something with a stamp, you subsidize the
bulk rate junk mail they send you.

Greylisting, Blackholes, and bayesian filters pretty much cover the
problem for me. Get more people Greylisting, and it will do even better.
The network effects of Greylisting go against the spammer, and benefit
the "real" users of Email.

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-- 
Jim Richardson     http://www.eskimo.com/~warlock
"Hello, and thank you for calling MicroSoft technical support.  May I
ask what version of Code Red your server is running?"