Government actions to limit spam
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Let me first say that I abhore spam as much as anyone else. Every single time CodeProject send out our 'CodeProject Offers' it's like going through root canal surgery. Everyone who gets one has the 'Send me third party offers' box ticked in their profile, and it's very simple to remove yourself (or to email me if you have problems). We don't, and never will send out spam, but even sending out a carefully selected, relevant and interesting opt-in email makes me nervous since I'm relying on everybody to recognise our good intentions. I have to have faith in 300,000 people that they have faith in us. I could never be a Spam King - my nerves would be shot. So the question is: what does everyone think about having the governement (any government) legislate against spam? Let's assume for a moment that once spam was outlawed, you would no longer get any unsolicited email, ever. Not even from another country. Most people's reaction would be 'yay'. Mine was too till I started talking to a few people about it and thinking about it a little deeper. Here are some things that started me wondering. - How much spam do you get vs. email virus messages? For me it's a ratio of about 1 spam per 4-5 email virii. If spam was stopped would your inbox be any safer? (from explicit images maybe, but you'd still be downloading 80% as much crap each morning) - Does banning spam infringe on a business's constitutionally protected (in the US) right to commercial free speech? Or anyone's right to free speech? Do you care about this? - On whose side would the law operate? The spammer or the spamee? Let's say a porn site spams you. They get fined, go to court, and go through the legal process with the intent of the government to shut them down. Now suppose CodeProject was accused of spamming because someone get's a newsletter after joining and not bothering to check the sign up form where it says 'News;etter'. Do you expect that we too would immediately be fined and have to go through due process to explain ourselves (while being banned from sending out a single email - including automatic update notices, forum replies, etc). Assuming we got through OK, how long would we have our hands tied? How much would the legal bills come to? How would our advertisers feel? OR - would the law let us go until due process was completed and we were exonerated. Would spammers exploit this and keep hammering away until the last second they were shut down? - What's the difference between junk postal mail and junk email? If you ban spam shouldn
Here in the Bluegrass State (that's Kentucky, USA) the state government recently instituted a "no call" list. You call or sign up on a web site, and telemarketers are not able to legally call you. (If they do, you can sue for damages.) It has worked extremely well. Something similar could be set in place for e-mail. The problem with this is that it may be dificult to enforce, since it is hard to trace the source of most spam. If digital signatures were more prevelant, this would be less of a problem... you could always block any e-mail that doesn't have a valid signature or something. I think the 'freedom of speech' argument doesn't hold in the case of spam, for reasons others have said. Unless you have an 'all-you-can-eat' ISP (like me :-D), it costs YOU money to receive e-mail. The Constutition doesn't give you the right to charge somebody else to hear you. Just my two cents. "When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute and it's longer than any hour. That's relativity." - Albert Einstein
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Let me first say that I abhore spam as much as anyone else. Every single time CodeProject send out our 'CodeProject Offers' it's like going through root canal surgery. Everyone who gets one has the 'Send me third party offers' box ticked in their profile, and it's very simple to remove yourself (or to email me if you have problems). We don't, and never will send out spam, but even sending out a carefully selected, relevant and interesting opt-in email makes me nervous since I'm relying on everybody to recognise our good intentions. I have to have faith in 300,000 people that they have faith in us. I could never be a Spam King - my nerves would be shot. So the question is: what does everyone think about having the governement (any government) legislate against spam? Let's assume for a moment that once spam was outlawed, you would no longer get any unsolicited email, ever. Not even from another country. Most people's reaction would be 'yay'. Mine was too till I started talking to a few people about it and thinking about it a little deeper. Here are some things that started me wondering. - How much spam do you get vs. email virus messages? For me it's a ratio of about 1 spam per 4-5 email virii. If spam was stopped would your inbox be any safer? (from explicit images maybe, but you'd still be downloading 80% as much crap each morning) - Does banning spam infringe on a business's constitutionally protected (in the US) right to commercial free speech? Or anyone's right to free speech? Do you care about this? - On whose side would the law operate? The spammer or the spamee? Let's say a porn site spams you. They get fined, go to court, and go through the legal process with the intent of the government to shut them down. Now suppose CodeProject was accused of spamming because someone get's a newsletter after joining and not bothering to check the sign up form where it says 'News;etter'. Do you expect that we too would immediately be fined and have to go through due process to explain ourselves (while being banned from sending out a single email - including automatic update notices, forum replies, etc). Assuming we got through OK, how long would we have our hands tied? How much would the legal bills come to? How would our advertisers feel? OR - would the law let us go until due process was completed and we were exonerated. Would spammers exploit this and keep hammering away until the last second they were shut down? - What's the difference between junk postal mail and junk email? If you ban spam shouldn
Chris Maunder wrote: Does banning spam infringe on a business's constitutionally protected (in the US) right to commercial free speech? I'm not sure there is a constitutional right to commericial free speech. Is there? There is however, a right to free speech. This irks me, in my opinion an advertisement is not free speech. It is a solicitation, an appeal, a teaser, etc to produce the end result of a sale. I really believe that the terminology has to be clarified. I'd like for a lawyer or someone who really knows the constitution address this particular issue, commercial free speech. If commercial free speech is to be defined, I would define it as a manufacturer, service provider, etc. is commenting on issues related to his/her industry. Example: If the govt decided to tax an industry or regulate it and I received an informational email related to this, I would not consider it spam. Yes, it is unwanted email but it is not an advertisement. IMHO this is no different than all of these emails we receive about appeals for saving Tom's Cat or "Support our Troops" or "Light a Candle at 8 o'clock Tuesday". You can't do anything about those emails and there are not that many of them. If you want to send me an advertisement, send it via the mail and not to my email account. That way you pay for it and not everyone else. Secondly, if I opted to receive advertisements or a newsletter from a particular company, I would like to see a law requiring that any second or third party advertisement emails, identify the primary source of which my email address was obtained. Example: You subscribe to Company A but Company B sends you email advertisements with "you have subscribed to this email advertisement from us or one of our subsiduaries". That way I can go back to the original source and b*tch slap them.
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Chris Maunder wrote: What's the difference between junk postal mail and junk email? Junk postal mail costs me nothing to receive or dispose of. Junk email costs me money in the form of ISP costs and telephone line charges. End of argument. OK, long version: It's worse in other countries where local phone calls are more expensive (charged by the minute). Over the course of a month, a person might spend say 15 minutes downloading spam emails, which means they spent money as a result of receiving spam. The spammers are usually thieves, using other people's resources (hacked ISP accounts, hacked machines, open mail relays) to send out spam. That right there outweighs all the BS "freedom of speech" arguments. No one has any right to make me pay to hear their speech. I find it extremely pathetic that our gubment can't get their act together and use the existing anti-junk-fax laws as a template for anti-spam laws. Junk faxes, by the way, were made illegal for exactly the same reason. The receiver of the fax pays for it in the form of phone charges, ink, and paper. --Mike-- Yeah, payin' the bills with my mad programming skillz. Defraggin' my hard drive for thrills. Homepage | RightClick-Encrypt | 1ClickPicGrabber "You have Erica on the brain" - Jon Sagara to me
Michael Dunn wrote: Junk postal mail costs me nothing to receive or dispose of. Junk email costs me money in the form of ISP costs and telephone line charges. End of argument. Just being the Devil's advocate... You don't feel your tax dollars help the USPS to deliver unwanted mail to your door? David
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Let me first say that I abhore spam as much as anyone else. Every single time CodeProject send out our 'CodeProject Offers' it's like going through root canal surgery. Everyone who gets one has the 'Send me third party offers' box ticked in their profile, and it's very simple to remove yourself (or to email me if you have problems). We don't, and never will send out spam, but even sending out a carefully selected, relevant and interesting opt-in email makes me nervous since I'm relying on everybody to recognise our good intentions. I have to have faith in 300,000 people that they have faith in us. I could never be a Spam King - my nerves would be shot. So the question is: what does everyone think about having the governement (any government) legislate against spam? Let's assume for a moment that once spam was outlawed, you would no longer get any unsolicited email, ever. Not even from another country. Most people's reaction would be 'yay'. Mine was too till I started talking to a few people about it and thinking about it a little deeper. Here are some things that started me wondering. - How much spam do you get vs. email virus messages? For me it's a ratio of about 1 spam per 4-5 email virii. If spam was stopped would your inbox be any safer? (from explicit images maybe, but you'd still be downloading 80% as much crap each morning) - Does banning spam infringe on a business's constitutionally protected (in the US) right to commercial free speech? Or anyone's right to free speech? Do you care about this? - On whose side would the law operate? The spammer or the spamee? Let's say a porn site spams you. They get fined, go to court, and go through the legal process with the intent of the government to shut them down. Now suppose CodeProject was accused of spamming because someone get's a newsletter after joining and not bothering to check the sign up form where it says 'News;etter'. Do you expect that we too would immediately be fined and have to go through due process to explain ourselves (while being banned from sending out a single email - including automatic update notices, forum replies, etc). Assuming we got through OK, how long would we have our hands tied? How much would the legal bills come to? How would our advertisers feel? OR - would the law let us go until due process was completed and we were exonerated. Would spammers exploit this and keep hammering away until the last second they were shut down? - What's the difference between junk postal mail and junk email? If you ban spam shouldn
Personally, I think the key to all of this is to charge for advertising emails. Basically, make it illegal to send spam unless it is distributed by a duly authorized mail house and have those mail houses charge the advertiser for their placements. Even just $.01 per email would have a dramatic effect on the quantity of spam. Also, by using an authorized source with rules and procedures, like the postal service does, programs like spamcop could automatically whitelist these emails. A benefit to the advertiser, and a reason they would want to fall in line. I can't see any effective way the government can hope to manage this problem, really. Because there is really no solution, they will be tempted to make it the responsibility of the ISPs (forcing innovation), just like they are trying to hold the ISPs accountable for child porn and hate material. David
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Chris Maunder wrote: - What's the difference between junk postal mail and junk email? If you ban spam shouldn't postal mail be banned too? Junk postal - Sender pays. Junk email - receiver pays. Chris Maunder wrote: Business depend on advertising to survive. Businesses survived successfully for hundreds of years before email arrived. I have serious doubts about the effectiveness of spam as a form of advertisement. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has NEVER bought ANYTHING based on spam email. Chris Maunder wrote: The more you advertise the more sales you get and the cheaper you can then sell products. FALSE! I only need one example to prove the fallacy of that statement. Audio CD's have been successfully advertised for about 20 years. Millions have been bought. They're the same price today as they were two decades ago. Number of sales does not drive pricing. What the buyer is willing to pay drives pricing. [Basic marketing fact]. Let me rephrase: If your customers are willing to pay $25 for your product, and you've sold millions with more orders on the way, WHY would you lower the price? If you're a publicly owned company, you may end up losing your job by popular demand. Chris Maunder wrote: The more you advertise the more consumers are made aware of price comparisons between companies and the lower the prices go as companies compete for buyers. Partially true, partially false. For starters, see above response. Advertising is not about making buyers aware of prices. In fact there are many advertisements out there where NO price is listed. Advertising is about creating demand, often artificial (who needs a pet rock??), for a product in order to drive sales. [Another basic marketing fact]. I submit that spam does not increase demand nor cause prices to be lowered. Why then would an owner/reseller of a product spam when it clearly is not cost effective? Well, there's your answer isn't it? Spammers don't pay for spam, the recipients pay for it. -Sean ---- Shag a Lizard
Sean Cundiff wrote: I have serious doubts about the effectiveness of spam as a form of advertisement http://www.thebee.com/bweb/iinfo34.htm quotes "Frankly, the effectiveness of spam e-mail as a means of advertising remains consistently low". I can't find anything else. Remember though that most spam is just untargeted, unrefined crap. Sean Cundiff wrote: Chris Maunder wrote: The more you advertise the more sales you get and the cheaper you can then sell products. FALSE! I only need one example to prove the fallacy of that statement. Audio CD's have been successfully advertised for about 20 years. ... They're the same price today as they were two decades ago. Actually they are more expensive now than they were when they were a few years back. I apologise for generalising about specific cases I had in mind (eg some consumer electronics etc). This states "...some economists argue that advertising is economically valuable because it increases the flow of information in the economy and reduces the asymmetric information between the seller and the consumer. This intensifies competition, as consumers can be made aware quickly when there is a better deal on offer.". Of course it goes both ways too: "Some economists reckon that advertising merely manipulates consumer tastes and creates desires that would not otherwise exist. By increasing product differentiation and encouraging brand loyalty advertising may make consumers less price sensitive, moving the market further from PERFECT COMPETITION towards imperfect competition (see MONOPOLISTIC COMPETITION) and increasing the ability of firms to charge more than marginal cost" Sean Cundiff wrote: If your customers are willing to pay $25 for your product, and you've sold millions with more orders on the way, WHY would you lower the price? Maybe because your competition sells it at $20? Sean Cundiff wrote: Advertising is not about making buyers aware of prices. In fact there are many advertisements out there where NO price is listed. Advertising is about creating demand, often artificial (who needs a pet rock??), for a product in order to drive sales. [Another basic marketing fact]. I beg to differ. Advertising can be used to create demand. It can also be used to inform consumers who al
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It should also be possible to make changes in the protocols that deliver emails. Ex. sending an mail without an existing sender should delete the email. The technical problems are not that big. Or why don't demand spammers to mark their emails with the word spam in the email header. That would make it easier to filter away. I would probably filter away all emails "spam_enlagement" and keep "spam_happy_christmas"
jhaga wrote: Or why don't demand spammers to mark their emails with the word spam in the email header This is one of the things suggested (and some spammers do this). Problem is enforcement. [Edit: Sorry, they are talking about the Email Subject, not the header.] cheers, Chris Maunder
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Let me first say that I abhore spam as much as anyone else. Every single time CodeProject send out our 'CodeProject Offers' it's like going through root canal surgery. Everyone who gets one has the 'Send me third party offers' box ticked in their profile, and it's very simple to remove yourself (or to email me if you have problems). We don't, and never will send out spam, but even sending out a carefully selected, relevant and interesting opt-in email makes me nervous since I'm relying on everybody to recognise our good intentions. I have to have faith in 300,000 people that they have faith in us. I could never be a Spam King - my nerves would be shot. So the question is: what does everyone think about having the governement (any government) legislate against spam? Let's assume for a moment that once spam was outlawed, you would no longer get any unsolicited email, ever. Not even from another country. Most people's reaction would be 'yay'. Mine was too till I started talking to a few people about it and thinking about it a little deeper. Here are some things that started me wondering. - How much spam do you get vs. email virus messages? For me it's a ratio of about 1 spam per 4-5 email virii. If spam was stopped would your inbox be any safer? (from explicit images maybe, but you'd still be downloading 80% as much crap each morning) - Does banning spam infringe on a business's constitutionally protected (in the US) right to commercial free speech? Or anyone's right to free speech? Do you care about this? - On whose side would the law operate? The spammer or the spamee? Let's say a porn site spams you. They get fined, go to court, and go through the legal process with the intent of the government to shut them down. Now suppose CodeProject was accused of spamming because someone get's a newsletter after joining and not bothering to check the sign up form where it says 'News;etter'. Do you expect that we too would immediately be fined and have to go through due process to explain ourselves (while being banned from sending out a single email - including automatic update notices, forum replies, etc). Assuming we got through OK, how long would we have our hands tied? How much would the legal bills come to? How would our advertisers feel? OR - would the law let us go until due process was completed and we were exonerated. Would spammers exploit this and keep hammering away until the last second they were shut down? - What's the difference between junk postal mail and junk email? If you ban spam shouldn
What I think they should crack down on is: 1) Ad email without a notice telling how to unsubscribe 2) Non-requested ad email that would not pass the PG rating The rest is annoying but not terrible. Sean Cundiff wrote: I'm sure I'm not the only one who has NEVER bought ANYTHING based on spam email Same here. But it's different if it's a company we've bought from before. I would really like to see all the places I give my email address out to provide a way to opt out of email ads at the same place where they request my email address. This way, if I want to recieve their email, I can, but otherwise, I can have the option of not recieving it. But this can't really be legitimately enforced without intrusiveness. I'm really annoyed by emails I get from sites that I only visited once and didn't even give my email. (How did they manage to get my email address when I didn't give it to them? :suss: )
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." - Jesus
"An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind." - Mahatma Gandhi -
Let me first say that I abhore spam as much as anyone else. Every single time CodeProject send out our 'CodeProject Offers' it's like going through root canal surgery. Everyone who gets one has the 'Send me third party offers' box ticked in their profile, and it's very simple to remove yourself (or to email me if you have problems). We don't, and never will send out spam, but even sending out a carefully selected, relevant and interesting opt-in email makes me nervous since I'm relying on everybody to recognise our good intentions. I have to have faith in 300,000 people that they have faith in us. I could never be a Spam King - my nerves would be shot. So the question is: what does everyone think about having the governement (any government) legislate against spam? Let's assume for a moment that once spam was outlawed, you would no longer get any unsolicited email, ever. Not even from another country. Most people's reaction would be 'yay'. Mine was too till I started talking to a few people about it and thinking about it a little deeper. Here are some things that started me wondering. - How much spam do you get vs. email virus messages? For me it's a ratio of about 1 spam per 4-5 email virii. If spam was stopped would your inbox be any safer? (from explicit images maybe, but you'd still be downloading 80% as much crap each morning) - Does banning spam infringe on a business's constitutionally protected (in the US) right to commercial free speech? Or anyone's right to free speech? Do you care about this? - On whose side would the law operate? The spammer or the spamee? Let's say a porn site spams you. They get fined, go to court, and go through the legal process with the intent of the government to shut them down. Now suppose CodeProject was accused of spamming because someone get's a newsletter after joining and not bothering to check the sign up form where it says 'News;etter'. Do you expect that we too would immediately be fined and have to go through due process to explain ourselves (while being banned from sending out a single email - including automatic update notices, forum replies, etc). Assuming we got through OK, how long would we have our hands tied? How much would the legal bills come to? How would our advertisers feel? OR - would the law let us go until due process was completed and we were exonerated. Would spammers exploit this and keep hammering away until the last second they were shut down? - What's the difference between junk postal mail and junk email? If you ban spam shouldn
Chris Maunder wrote: Now suppose CodeProject was accused of spamming because someone get's a newsletter after joining and not bothering to check the sign up form where it says 'News;etter'. The checkbox should be unchecked initially, so I have to consiously choose to receive anything. Right now it seems to be checked by default and I have to find it and unselect, that puts Code Project right in the same cathegory as every other spammer.
/* I C++, therefore I am... */
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Let me first say that I abhore spam as much as anyone else. Every single time CodeProject send out our 'CodeProject Offers' it's like going through root canal surgery. Everyone who gets one has the 'Send me third party offers' box ticked in their profile, and it's very simple to remove yourself (or to email me if you have problems). We don't, and never will send out spam, but even sending out a carefully selected, relevant and interesting opt-in email makes me nervous since I'm relying on everybody to recognise our good intentions. I have to have faith in 300,000 people that they have faith in us. I could never be a Spam King - my nerves would be shot. So the question is: what does everyone think about having the governement (any government) legislate against spam? Let's assume for a moment that once spam was outlawed, you would no longer get any unsolicited email, ever. Not even from another country. Most people's reaction would be 'yay'. Mine was too till I started talking to a few people about it and thinking about it a little deeper. Here are some things that started me wondering. - How much spam do you get vs. email virus messages? For me it's a ratio of about 1 spam per 4-5 email virii. If spam was stopped would your inbox be any safer? (from explicit images maybe, but you'd still be downloading 80% as much crap each morning) - Does banning spam infringe on a business's constitutionally protected (in the US) right to commercial free speech? Or anyone's right to free speech? Do you care about this? - On whose side would the law operate? The spammer or the spamee? Let's say a porn site spams you. They get fined, go to court, and go through the legal process with the intent of the government to shut them down. Now suppose CodeProject was accused of spamming because someone get's a newsletter after joining and not bothering to check the sign up form where it says 'News;etter'. Do you expect that we too would immediately be fined and have to go through due process to explain ourselves (while being banned from sending out a single email - including automatic update notices, forum replies, etc). Assuming we got through OK, how long would we have our hands tied? How much would the legal bills come to? How would our advertisers feel? OR - would the law let us go until due process was completed and we were exonerated. Would spammers exploit this and keep hammering away until the last second they were shut down? - What's the difference between junk postal mail and junk email? If you ban spam shouldn
Chris Maunder wrote: - How much spam do you get vs. email virus messages? For me it's a ratio of about 1 spam per 4-5 email virii. If spam was stopped would your inbox be any safer? (from explicit images maybe, but you'd still be downloading 80% as much crap each morning) :confused: I get average 5-6 spam mails everyday and 1-2 virus mails every month! Been that way for years now. Nish
"I'm a bit bored at the moment so I'm thinking about writing a new programming language" - Colin Davies My book :- Summer Love and Some more Cricket [New Win] Review by Shog9 Click here for review[NW]
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Let me first say that I abhore spam as much as anyone else. Every single time CodeProject send out our 'CodeProject Offers' it's like going through root canal surgery. Everyone who gets one has the 'Send me third party offers' box ticked in their profile, and it's very simple to remove yourself (or to email me if you have problems). We don't, and never will send out spam, but even sending out a carefully selected, relevant and interesting opt-in email makes me nervous since I'm relying on everybody to recognise our good intentions. I have to have faith in 300,000 people that they have faith in us. I could never be a Spam King - my nerves would be shot. So the question is: what does everyone think about having the governement (any government) legislate against spam? Let's assume for a moment that once spam was outlawed, you would no longer get any unsolicited email, ever. Not even from another country. Most people's reaction would be 'yay'. Mine was too till I started talking to a few people about it and thinking about it a little deeper. Here are some things that started me wondering. - How much spam do you get vs. email virus messages? For me it's a ratio of about 1 spam per 4-5 email virii. If spam was stopped would your inbox be any safer? (from explicit images maybe, but you'd still be downloading 80% as much crap each morning) - Does banning spam infringe on a business's constitutionally protected (in the US) right to commercial free speech? Or anyone's right to free speech? Do you care about this? - On whose side would the law operate? The spammer or the spamee? Let's say a porn site spams you. They get fined, go to court, and go through the legal process with the intent of the government to shut them down. Now suppose CodeProject was accused of spamming because someone get's a newsletter after joining and not bothering to check the sign up form where it says 'News;etter'. Do you expect that we too would immediately be fined and have to go through due process to explain ourselves (while being banned from sending out a single email - including automatic update notices, forum replies, etc). Assuming we got through OK, how long would we have our hands tied? How much would the legal bills come to? How would our advertisers feel? OR - would the law let us go until due process was completed and we were exonerated. Would spammers exploit this and keep hammering away until the last second they were shut down? - What's the difference between junk postal mail and junk email? If you ban spam shouldn
The thing that bothers me most about spam isn't the fact that it is unsolicited. Nearly all advertising is unsolicited. I would much rather be watching that movie on TV without being interrupted every 10 minutes by an ad. Spam is just another advertisement. What bothers me about spam, the two things that annoy me in fact, is that it is secretive, and that it is forcefully intrusive. When you watch TV, the ads are relatively easy to trace, and in fact the advertising companies can get in trouble if they breach the code of practice rules. Most spammers deliberately try to hide themselves by using unusual names, or by spoofing someone else email address. This in fact happened to me on an old email account I had. I started receiving bounce backs from email addresses I had never mailed. When I looked at the contents it appeared that someone had been using my address to send spam. The other thing that annoys me, and annoys me most, is the way that spammers try and get around legitimate spam blockers. If I have turned on my junk mail rules, or have installed a spam blocker, it means that I DO NOT WANT SPAM! Why then do the spammers try and get around these blocks. I used to receive spam from one source that came in from the same domain with different users. Why not always use the same email address? why change it if not to avoid simple spam blockers? The only way to get around it is to block entire domains. One of the things that most shows the bloody minded atitude of the spammer is a recent attempt by a bunch of the buggers to sue companies that produce spam blockers. (I'm sorry, I don't have a link) These are all opt in services used by people who do not want spam. To try and put them out of business truely shows how spammers view the rights of the people that they want to peddle to. Cheers The universe is driven by the complex interaction between three ingredients: matter, energy, and enlightened self-interest.
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Let me first say that I abhore spam as much as anyone else. Every single time CodeProject send out our 'CodeProject Offers' it's like going through root canal surgery. Everyone who gets one has the 'Send me third party offers' box ticked in their profile, and it's very simple to remove yourself (or to email me if you have problems). We don't, and never will send out spam, but even sending out a carefully selected, relevant and interesting opt-in email makes me nervous since I'm relying on everybody to recognise our good intentions. I have to have faith in 300,000 people that they have faith in us. I could never be a Spam King - my nerves would be shot. So the question is: what does everyone think about having the governement (any government) legislate against spam? Let's assume for a moment that once spam was outlawed, you would no longer get any unsolicited email, ever. Not even from another country. Most people's reaction would be 'yay'. Mine was too till I started talking to a few people about it and thinking about it a little deeper. Here are some things that started me wondering. - How much spam do you get vs. email virus messages? For me it's a ratio of about 1 spam per 4-5 email virii. If spam was stopped would your inbox be any safer? (from explicit images maybe, but you'd still be downloading 80% as much crap each morning) - Does banning spam infringe on a business's constitutionally protected (in the US) right to commercial free speech? Or anyone's right to free speech? Do you care about this? - On whose side would the law operate? The spammer or the spamee? Let's say a porn site spams you. They get fined, go to court, and go through the legal process with the intent of the government to shut them down. Now suppose CodeProject was accused of spamming because someone get's a newsletter after joining and not bothering to check the sign up form where it says 'News;etter'. Do you expect that we too would immediately be fined and have to go through due process to explain ourselves (while being banned from sending out a single email - including automatic update notices, forum replies, etc). Assuming we got through OK, how long would we have our hands tied? How much would the legal bills come to? How would our advertisers feel? OR - would the law let us go until due process was completed and we were exonerated. Would spammers exploit this and keep hammering away until the last second they were shut down? - What's the difference between junk postal mail and junk email? If you ban spam shouldn
My 2 cents. Chris Maunder wrote: How much spam do you get vs. email virus messages? For me it's a ratio of about 1 spam per 4-5 email virii. I get 30 to 50 spam per day and not a virus for 3 or 4 weeks. But see below. Chris Maunder wrote: Does banning spam infringe on a business's constitutionally protected (in the US) right to commercial free speech? Or anyone's right to free speech? Do you care about this? To some limited degree yes it does. I do care about that very much. However totally free speach is not allowed and never has been. Most of the spam I recieve is porn and or body part enhancement adds. I find it not acceptable. Now I am also not nearly as stupid as my 16 year old boy thinks Chris Maunder wrote: What's the difference between junk postal mail and junk email? As many have stated they pay vs you pay. Also there are regulations on what can be sent. Chris Maunder wrote: Business depend on advertising to survive. Some advertisement I do not mind. But let it be from places I do buisness with. CP or other professional groups that do not send me repeat messages every 1/2 hour all day long. Chris Maunder wrote: At the moment spam is totally and utterly untargeted, unregulated, and pretty much confined to porn sites, mortgage brokers, viagra That is the problem. ""
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Sean Cundiff wrote: I have serious doubts about the effectiveness of spam as a form of advertisement http://www.thebee.com/bweb/iinfo34.htm quotes "Frankly, the effectiveness of spam e-mail as a means of advertising remains consistently low". I can't find anything else. Remember though that most spam is just untargeted, unrefined crap. Sean Cundiff wrote: Chris Maunder wrote: The more you advertise the more sales you get and the cheaper you can then sell products. FALSE! I only need one example to prove the fallacy of that statement. Audio CD's have been successfully advertised for about 20 years. ... They're the same price today as they were two decades ago. Actually they are more expensive now than they were when they were a few years back. I apologise for generalising about specific cases I had in mind (eg some consumer electronics etc). This states "...some economists argue that advertising is economically valuable because it increases the flow of information in the economy and reduces the asymmetric information between the seller and the consumer. This intensifies competition, as consumers can be made aware quickly when there is a better deal on offer.". Of course it goes both ways too: "Some economists reckon that advertising merely manipulates consumer tastes and creates desires that would not otherwise exist. By increasing product differentiation and encouraging brand loyalty advertising may make consumers less price sensitive, moving the market further from PERFECT COMPETITION towards imperfect competition (see MONOPOLISTIC COMPETITION) and increasing the ability of firms to charge more than marginal cost" Sean Cundiff wrote: If your customers are willing to pay $25 for your product, and you've sold millions with more orders on the way, WHY would you lower the price? Maybe because your competition sells it at $20? Sean Cundiff wrote: Advertising is not about making buyers aware of prices. In fact there are many advertisements out there where NO price is listed. Advertising is about creating demand, often artificial (who needs a pet rock??), for a product in order to drive sales. [Another basic marketing fact]. I beg to differ. Advertising can be used to create demand. It can also be used to inform consumers who al
Chris Maunder wrote: Sean Cundiff wrote: If your customers are willing to pay $25 for your product, and you've sold millions with more orders on the way, WHY would you lower the price? Maybe because your competition sells it at $20? Maybe, but there's also the question of perceived worth. Quick question: Which are you more likely to buy at the market, the $5 bottle of wine or the $30 bottle of wine? The web server hand-built by Sassy Sheila down the street for $500, or the PowerEdge from Dell for $3000? Chris Maunder wrote: Sean Cundiff wrote: Advertising is not about making buyers aware of prices. In fact there are many advertisements out there where NO price is listed. Advertising is about creating demand, often artificial (who needs a pet rock??), for a product in order to drive sales. [Another basic marketing fact]. I beg to differ. Advertising can be used to create demand. It can also be used to inform consumers who already have a demand about the availability and pricing of goods. Eg food advertisements in supermarkets. I hadn't thought of that. I'll concede that it can go either way here. Chris Maunder wrote: But what about my final point: would you welcome advertising that was about stuff you were truly interested in? That I agreed to receive? Yes. I agree to this all the time for 'free' trade magazines. I get the free subscription in exchange for some possibly unwanted but focused advertisements. Unsolicited? Not by email. It's a waste of both my and my employer's time and money. I believe that it is the devious and unscrupulous behavior of spammers that really turns people off. P.S. Your link from the Economist web site is currently the 'Great Debate' among Marketing professors at many universities. They are trying to define the modern state of ethics in advertising. -Sean ---- Shag a Lizard
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It should also be possible to make changes in the protocols that deliver emails. Ex. sending an mail without an existing sender should delete the email. The technical problems are not that big. Or why don't demand spammers to mark their emails with the word spam in the email header. That would make it easier to filter away. I would probably filter away all emails "spam_enlagement" and keep "spam_happy_christmas"
jhaga wrote: It should also be possible to make changes in the protocols that deliver emails. Ex. sending an mail without an existing sender should delete the email. The technical problems are not that big. :wtf: Changes in the protocol? Change the protocol just a tiny tiny wee bit and all the email servers and clients out there suddenly break down. What you probably mean when you say that mails without an existing sender should be deleted is that the mail servers should be made to incorporate this. It is possible for mail servers to do this while following the existing protocol. No need to change the protocol at all. :)
Regards,Rohit Sinha
Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
- Mother Teresa -
Sean Cundiff wrote: I have serious doubts about the effectiveness of spam as a form of advertisement http://www.thebee.com/bweb/iinfo34.htm quotes "Frankly, the effectiveness of spam e-mail as a means of advertising remains consistently low". I can't find anything else. Remember though that most spam is just untargeted, unrefined crap. Sean Cundiff wrote: Chris Maunder wrote: The more you advertise the more sales you get and the cheaper you can then sell products. FALSE! I only need one example to prove the fallacy of that statement. Audio CD's have been successfully advertised for about 20 years. ... They're the same price today as they were two decades ago. Actually they are more expensive now than they were when they were a few years back. I apologise for generalising about specific cases I had in mind (eg some consumer electronics etc). This states "...some economists argue that advertising is economically valuable because it increases the flow of information in the economy and reduces the asymmetric information between the seller and the consumer. This intensifies competition, as consumers can be made aware quickly when there is a better deal on offer.". Of course it goes both ways too: "Some economists reckon that advertising merely manipulates consumer tastes and creates desires that would not otherwise exist. By increasing product differentiation and encouraging brand loyalty advertising may make consumers less price sensitive, moving the market further from PERFECT COMPETITION towards imperfect competition (see MONOPOLISTIC COMPETITION) and increasing the ability of firms to charge more than marginal cost" Sean Cundiff wrote: If your customers are willing to pay $25 for your product, and you've sold millions with more orders on the way, WHY would you lower the price? Maybe because your competition sells it at $20? Sean Cundiff wrote: Advertising is not about making buyers aware of prices. In fact there are many advertisements out there where NO price is listed. Advertising is about creating demand, often artificial (who needs a pet rock??), for a product in order to drive sales. [Another basic marketing fact]. I beg to differ. Advertising can be used to create demand. It can also be used to inform consumers who al
Chris Maunder wrote: Advertising can be used to create demand. It can also be used to inform consumers who already have a demand about the availability and pricing of goods. Eg food advertisements in supermarkets. What you are saying here is basically the difference between creating Primary Demand and Secondary Demand. Primary Demand is the demand for a new product category, for example when you try to convince someone that they need a car. Secondary demand is the demand for a particular brand in a category, for example when you try to convince someone that they need a BMW or a merc. Most of the ads that talk about availability or pricing are trying to create secondary demand for their products (those who just show cool ads are trying to do that too, most of the time, since for example you don't need to be convinced that you need a toothpaste). What did I just say? :confused: Bah, just ignore me. It's too early in the morning as far as I am concerned. Just 8am! :eek: I got up full two hours earlier today.
Regards,Rohit Sinha
Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
- Mother Teresa -
Chris Maunder wrote: Now suppose CodeProject was accused of spamming because someone get's a newsletter after joining and not bothering to check the sign up form where it says 'News;etter'. The checkbox should be unchecked initially, so I have to consiously choose to receive anything. Right now it seems to be checked by default and I have to find it and unselect, that puts Code Project right in the same cathegory as every other spammer.
/* I C++, therefore I am... */
I don't agree. I think it's absolutely universally accepted that if you register on a site in any manner, you're added to the site's newsletter by default. That's certainly my understanding and expectation. If I truly don't want to be contacted, I look for the opt-out checkbox, which is almost always there. David
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Let me first say that I abhore spam as much as anyone else. Every single time CodeProject send out our 'CodeProject Offers' it's like going through root canal surgery. Everyone who gets one has the 'Send me third party offers' box ticked in their profile, and it's very simple to remove yourself (or to email me if you have problems). We don't, and never will send out spam, but even sending out a carefully selected, relevant and interesting opt-in email makes me nervous since I'm relying on everybody to recognise our good intentions. I have to have faith in 300,000 people that they have faith in us. I could never be a Spam King - my nerves would be shot. So the question is: what does everyone think about having the governement (any government) legislate against spam? Let's assume for a moment that once spam was outlawed, you would no longer get any unsolicited email, ever. Not even from another country. Most people's reaction would be 'yay'. Mine was too till I started talking to a few people about it and thinking about it a little deeper. Here are some things that started me wondering. - How much spam do you get vs. email virus messages? For me it's a ratio of about 1 spam per 4-5 email virii. If spam was stopped would your inbox be any safer? (from explicit images maybe, but you'd still be downloading 80% as much crap each morning) - Does banning spam infringe on a business's constitutionally protected (in the US) right to commercial free speech? Or anyone's right to free speech? Do you care about this? - On whose side would the law operate? The spammer or the spamee? Let's say a porn site spams you. They get fined, go to court, and go through the legal process with the intent of the government to shut them down. Now suppose CodeProject was accused of spamming because someone get's a newsletter after joining and not bothering to check the sign up form where it says 'News;etter'. Do you expect that we too would immediately be fined and have to go through due process to explain ourselves (while being banned from sending out a single email - including automatic update notices, forum replies, etc). Assuming we got through OK, how long would we have our hands tied? How much would the legal bills come to? How would our advertisers feel? OR - would the law let us go until due process was completed and we were exonerated. Would spammers exploit this and keep hammering away until the last second they were shut down? - What's the difference between junk postal mail and junk email? If you ban spam shouldn
Chris Maunder wrote: Now suppose CodeProject was accused of spamming because someone get's a newsletter after joining and not bothering to check the sign up form where it says 'News;etter'. Do you expect that we too would immediately be fined and have to go through due process to explain ourselves (while being banned from sending out a single email - including automatic update notices, forum replies, etc). To save yourself from a lot of trouble, you can make all of this "opt in" instead of "opt out". Keep the default configuration so that people don't recieve anything by default. Let them check a checkbox or choose a radio button to recieve the third party email offers. Don't have these things checked on by default just to have more people on the send list. And even to recieve the reply notifications. Keep the checkbox unchecked initially. Let people make the effort to click and check it. Just like in a software license agreement, by default the radio button "I don't accept the agreement" is checked. Because once the user checks it, he can't claim afterwords he/she got into it because it wasn't obvious, visible, or whatever. Maybe do this to people already registered too. Just like Yahoo did once. You go and change your configuration within a specified date, or you will automatically be opted out of everything. Don't send them an email to tell about it. Just make them see this the first thing when they sign in. Then, when they have changed the settings, or clicked the "I'll do it later" button, they can be taken to wherever they were going. Then people will basically be giving you their consent to send them emails. This can be held up in court, I think, though IANAL. And you can also watch the load on your mail servers come down. Most people here have just signed up to be able to download stuff, and are getting newsletters every week without knowing what's going on. Some of these will go complain to maintainers of some blacklist or the other. Kaboom!
Regards,Rohit Sinha
Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
- Mother Teresa -
Let me first say that I abhore spam as much as anyone else. Every single time CodeProject send out our 'CodeProject Offers' it's like going through root canal surgery. Everyone who gets one has the 'Send me third party offers' box ticked in their profile, and it's very simple to remove yourself (or to email me if you have problems). We don't, and never will send out spam, but even sending out a carefully selected, relevant and interesting opt-in email makes me nervous since I'm relying on everybody to recognise our good intentions. I have to have faith in 300,000 people that they have faith in us. I could never be a Spam King - my nerves would be shot. So the question is: what does everyone think about having the governement (any government) legislate against spam? Let's assume for a moment that once spam was outlawed, you would no longer get any unsolicited email, ever. Not even from another country. Most people's reaction would be 'yay'. Mine was too till I started talking to a few people about it and thinking about it a little deeper. Here are some things that started me wondering. - How much spam do you get vs. email virus messages? For me it's a ratio of about 1 spam per 4-5 email virii. If spam was stopped would your inbox be any safer? (from explicit images maybe, but you'd still be downloading 80% as much crap each morning) - Does banning spam infringe on a business's constitutionally protected (in the US) right to commercial free speech? Or anyone's right to free speech? Do you care about this? - On whose side would the law operate? The spammer or the spamee? Let's say a porn site spams you. They get fined, go to court, and go through the legal process with the intent of the government to shut them down. Now suppose CodeProject was accused of spamming because someone get's a newsletter after joining and not bothering to check the sign up form where it says 'News;etter'. Do you expect that we too would immediately be fined and have to go through due process to explain ourselves (while being banned from sending out a single email - including automatic update notices, forum replies, etc). Assuming we got through OK, how long would we have our hands tied? How much would the legal bills come to? How would our advertisers feel? OR - would the law let us go until due process was completed and we were exonerated. Would spammers exploit this and keep hammering away until the last second they were shut down? - What's the difference between junk postal mail and junk email? If you ban spam shouldn
Chris Maunder wrote: - How much spam do you get vs. email virus messages? For me it's a ratio of about 1 spam per 4-5 email virii. If spam was stopped would your inbox be any safer? (from explicit images maybe, but you'd still be downloading 80% as much crap each morning) Ouch, thats a bad ratio, may be because you deal with email in thousands, we normal have to deal with lot less. Frankly, I don't remember the last time I got a virus email, may be more than a month, but I do get lot of spam mails every day. Its interesting you say that spam is a form of advertising (atleast thats what I inferred from your post) I have always wondered who would read that scum. Is there a study somewhere that suggests people actually are able to sell something through spamming. Even ad. banners irritate lot of people, just look at the no. of s/w available to block popups and ads. May be this[^] holds the answer, but its a huge undertaking. I think I have to agree with David here, unless the free-tag is removed from mail service, its going to be difficult. Cheers, Kannan
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I don't agree. I think it's absolutely universally accepted that if you register on a site in any manner, you're added to the site's newsletter by default. That's certainly my understanding and expectation. If I truly don't want to be contacted, I look for the opt-out checkbox, which is almost always there. David
David Cunningham wrote: I think it's absolutely universally accepted that if you register on a site in any manner, you're added to the site's newsletter by default. If I don't make a consious choise then I didn't agree. Take the license agreements we are typically presented when installing any software as a reference point - they will never assume you agree to the terms, you have to click the damm checkbox and only then it's a valid agreement. You can not make an assumption that just because I double-clicked the setup executable I agree for the terms. Same applies to the websites - if I don't check the checkbox myself then I didn't agree. And when it comes to the newsletters it's particularly annoying to have all those checkboxes pre-selected because it indicates the site has created the traps for me fall into.
/* I C++, therefore I am... */
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Chris Maunder wrote: Sean Cundiff wrote: If your customers are willing to pay $25 for your product, and you've sold millions with more orders on the way, WHY would you lower the price? Maybe because your competition sells it at $20? Maybe, but there's also the question of perceived worth. Quick question: Which are you more likely to buy at the market, the $5 bottle of wine or the $30 bottle of wine? The web server hand-built by Sassy Sheila down the street for $500, or the PowerEdge from Dell for $3000? Chris Maunder wrote: Sean Cundiff wrote: Advertising is not about making buyers aware of prices. In fact there are many advertisements out there where NO price is listed. Advertising is about creating demand, often artificial (who needs a pet rock??), for a product in order to drive sales. [Another basic marketing fact]. I beg to differ. Advertising can be used to create demand. It can also be used to inform consumers who already have a demand about the availability and pricing of goods. Eg food advertisements in supermarkets. I hadn't thought of that. I'll concede that it can go either way here. Chris Maunder wrote: But what about my final point: would you welcome advertising that was about stuff you were truly interested in? That I agreed to receive? Yes. I agree to this all the time for 'free' trade magazines. I get the free subscription in exchange for some possibly unwanted but focused advertisements. Unsolicited? Not by email. It's a waste of both my and my employer's time and money. I believe that it is the devious and unscrupulous behavior of spammers that really turns people off. P.S. Your link from the Economist web site is currently the 'Great Debate' among Marketing professors at many universities. They are trying to define the modern state of ethics in advertising. -Sean ---- Shag a Lizard
Sean Cundiff wrote: Maybe, but there's also the question of perceived worth. Quick question: Which are you more likely to buy at the market, the $5 bottle of wine or the $30 bottle of wine? :D I never said dropping your price to combat someone else's price drop is savvy marketing ;) Sean Cundiff wrote: I hadn't thought of that. I'll concede that it can go either way here. Maybe we should take this to the soapbox. We're being far too polite here ;) Sean Cundiff wrote: would you welcome advertising that was about stuff you were truly interested in? That I agreed to receive? Nope - that you knew nothing about. I've talked to some friends about this and I realised that I truly would like to get advertising if it's very carefully targetted. I *love* reading catalogs of gadgets. I love drooling over snowboards or roadbikes. I'll even spend an entire subway journey leafing through computer ads to get an idea of just how out of date my 6 month old laptop is. Anyone who wants to send me ads for wrist computers or the latest and greatest cellphones can knocki 'emselves out. BUT: send me another ad about brake rotors in China and I will start looking for my postal worker's trenchcoat. My feelings are that it's not the ads - it's the irrelevance, frequency and inappopriateness of them that is the real cause. Irrelevance because I'm never going to buy; frequency because while 10 ads a month mean nothing, 10,000 will mean I'm paying a surcharge on my ADSL connection. Inappropriatness because if a spam with porn pops up in my preview pane while I'm talking to someone in my office then that's just not on. Sean Cundiff wrote: They are trying to define the modern state of ethics in advertising. I'd imagine that would depend on the media and the segment. Do you have any good links to the highlights? cheers, Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote: Advertising can be used to create demand. It can also be used to inform consumers who already have a demand about the availability and pricing of goods. Eg food advertisements in supermarkets. What you are saying here is basically the difference between creating Primary Demand and Secondary Demand. Primary Demand is the demand for a new product category, for example when you try to convince someone that they need a car. Secondary demand is the demand for a particular brand in a category, for example when you try to convince someone that they need a BMW or a merc. Most of the ads that talk about availability or pricing are trying to create secondary demand for their products (those who just show cool ads are trying to do that too, most of the time, since for example you don't need to be convinced that you need a toothpaste). What did I just say? :confused: Bah, just ignore me. It's too early in the morning as far as I am concerned. Just 8am! :eek: I got up full two hours earlier today.
Regards,Rohit Sinha
Do not wait for leaders; do it alone, person to person.
- Mother TeresaRohit Sinha wrote: since for example you don't need to be convinced that you need a toothpaste :~ cheers, Chris Maunder