[CS-FSLUG] My analysis of the email spam problem

[Norbert Bollow]

You may remember my call to pray for a week in preparation for
addressing the problem of spam.  I don't know if anyone besides
me prayed in this matter.  (If you did please drop me a quick
private email to let me know.)

I want to go forward, with the following goal:

  It should be possible to freely use email, without wasting
  any significant amount of time on dealing with the issue
  of spam, at least for the following purposes:

   (a) publishing an email address and inviting people to
       contact you

   (b) communicating with people from whom you have previously
       received email

   (c) participating in email discussion mailing lists (like
       CS-FSLUG)

   (d) subscribing to "newsletter" type mailing lists


Let me first explain how I see the problem, and why I feel
that prayer is absolutely central to successfully dealing with
it.

First of all, we need to understand what spam is, and why it is
a particular big problem in the area of email.  Spam is not
limited to just email.  For example, the problem existed on
usenet long before it became practical for spammers to send their
annoying stuff by email.  Over the years I have used many forms
of electronic communication, and the matter of spam has been an
issue with each of them.

Here is my definition:  Spam is any form of communication which
someone sends, through an automated process, to many recipients,
without having authority to do so.

This definition is a generalization of the standard definition
of email spam, "unsolicted bulk email", to include other forms
of communication and not just email. 

Here are a few examples:

- CS-FSLUG mailing list postings are not spam even though the
  mailing list server sends them to many recipients through an
  automated process, because the subscribers have, by means of
  submitting a subscription request, given the mailing list
  server authority to send them the messages.

- If a government contacts all citizens inviting them to
  participate in public elections, that is not spam, because
  the government has authority to do that.

- If I preach on the streets in a town and use a megaphone to
  make my voice so loud that people have no choice but to listen
  to it, that is spam because I have no authority to do that.
  (I only have authority to minister in ways which follow the
  example of Jesus, and this approach does not follow His example.
  See Isaiah 42:2.)

- A few years ago I read about people who would, when seeking to
  establish a new church congregation, use an automated machine
  to phone all people in the neighborhood, and play to those who
  answer the phone a tape which gives information about the new
  congregation.  I consider this also a form of spam.

Because the issue of spam is not specific to email, I believe that
those proposed solutions are likely to fail which are based on
the belief that the spam problem results from kind of flaw in the 
specs for the SMTP protocol (the protocol which is commonly used
to transport email over the internet).

I think that the main reasons why spam is a particular bad problem
with email are that (i) so many people use email, (ii) email is
important to many of the users of the system, and (iii) the email
system is a genuine peer-to-peer system.  (Upholding the peer-to-
peer nature of internet based communication is of great importance;
especially since there are concerns that it may come under attack,
see http://fourmilab.ch/documents/digital-imprimatur/ )

The fundamental problem is twofold:

1. In comparison to the value of the human attention of many people
   dealing with an email message that they have received, it is
   relatively inexpensive to send the message to all those people.

2. Today's worldwide economic system is not based on righteousness,
   but rather on deceiving all nations through what the Bible calls
   sorcery (Rev 18:23).  This implies among other things that, as
   long as they can, wicked people will use spam to further their
   economic goals and other agendas.

Many anti-spam measures are focused on making it more difficult to
determine valid email addresses, or on decreasing the percentage of
spam that arrives at the destination.  This kind of approach will
have some temporary benefits for those implementing it, but as soon
as any given spam-reduction strategy of this kind comes into
widespread use, the spammers will work around it.  That has happened
again and again.

I believe that the only way to really solve the spam problem in
email is to deal with the underlying twofold problem which I outlined
above.

First of all, prayer is of essential importance.  We need to walk
closely with the Lord in order to have the full benefit of His victory
over the forces of darkness and spiritual powers of sorcery.

Secondly, we need to address the economics of email (point 1 above), 
by establishing a mechanism how I can get someone who sends me an
unsolicited email message to pay me a small amount of money if I feel
inconvenienced by that email.  This amount must be small enough that
people who want to communicate with me about something of importance
will still do so (because that amount of money is small in comparison
to the value of their time that they invest in composing a thoughtful
personal email message to me), but the amount must be large enough
that email spam is not a problem anymore because the spammers pay me
so well for deleting their trash that it's actually worthwhile for me
to do so.  An amount in the order of magniture of SFR 1 or USD 1 or
EUR 1 that would be held in escrow for each email message (which is
neither a response to a previous email from me, nor a message from a
mailing list to which I have subscribed) may have the desired effects.


Ok, the above is my analysis of the email spam problem.  I'm hereby
submitting this to the CS-FSLUG mailing list for discussion; after
the discussion I will probably post a Call To Action to collaboratively
create a whitepaper that describes a solution.  Publishing a whitepaper
as early as possible is important for legal reasons related to the
totally broken patent systems of some countries.  (Any patent system
which allows software patents is totally broken.)

After the whitepaper is published and in a satisfactory state, the
next steps will be a proof-of-concept implementation, and starting a
free software business around the idea.

Blessings,
Norbert.