[SpamCop-List] How to get rid of junk mail?

[DevilsPGD]

Although the general feeling is that you are correct... And, don't get me wrong, I entirely agree with your argument, let me play devils advocate for a moment
here.  A comparison, one-on-one, USPS based marketing, and email based marketing.

The USPS marketer pays for sending his mail, right?   How does he do that?  He pays USPS, or some 12 year old punk, to deliver the junk, either as a "mass
delivery", or to a purchased mailling list.  Optout is generally not provided.  Either way, he pays the costs to get it delivered, up until it's in your
mailbox.  As a receiver of physical junk mail, I pay the costs (In time) to sort through the crap, (In time, money, and physical effort) to dispose of it.

The email marketing pays for sending too, he could just as easily hire some 16 year old punk to send all his junk.  He purchases a list of email addresses to
send to, or uses a mass-delivery system (Bruteforce, randomname) and he may even purchase a T1, and run his own servers, thereby taking on costs of
delivery himself.  Again, as a receiver of junk, I pay in time to sort through the crap (Just press DEL).

What about the argument "Well it crashes/slows/etc mail servers that aren't designed to handle that much mail"?   I can counter that one real easily.   "It
would backlog USPS too, if they didn't count bulkmail in their capacity planning"

The big difference, to me anyway, is that physical USPS junk mail is a timehonoured skill, and there isn't much we can do it stop it.  Spam, however, violates
contractual agreements, AUPs, etc.   In many cases, it's also forgery, and fraud.  It's also a heck of a lot easier to complain about spam.




On Sat, 6 Jan 2001 16:50:55 -0500, "Dilbert" <rivett> wrote:

>Unfortuantely, the difference between USPS and the 'net is that with USPS,
>the SENDER paid for the service and thereby entered into a contract
>requiring delivery of the snail mail where on the 'net, the RECEIVER pays
>the fees, which means ... .  You get the idea.