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

[Aaron Patrick Lehmann]

On Sat, Oct 09, 2004 at 09:22:59PM +0200, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> 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.

How is e-mail peer-to-peer?  Peer-to-peer would be if I sent my email directly
to your computer.  I don't.  I save it to a spool on my copmputer, which later
forwards it to your isp's mail server, which you contact in some way to
recieve.  Secondly, I think the scheme of pay-for-email has been proposed,
although more on the order of USD .01 than USD 1.  I would pay for the former,
but not the latter, but who would I pay to?  My ISP I would presume, which
would then pay to your isp, which would then pay to you.  The problem with this
is, what's to keep you from surreptuosly selling your own address to masses of
SPAM companies, so that you can collect the money that accrues in your email
account?  More troubling, what's to keep your ISP from declaring all your email
to be SPAM, taking the money check from te spam, and not forwarding your email
to you?

Aaron Lehmann

-- 
Sometimes you stay the course;
Sometimes the course stays you.