Re: Spammers and web hosting

----- Original Message -----
From: <jacquelin.hooker(at)ss.ps.ge.com>

> Susan wrote:
> <<When you add to this fact that many people pay high fees to pick up
> their email (especially people outside North America), and the fact that
> someone has to pay to move all this mail around, it becomes obvious that
> SPAM must be halted.>>
>
> Who do think sorts the regular paper mail - robots??  OUR tax dollars
(yes,
> both YOURS and MINE) pay thousands of US Postal employees to sort mail
and
> deliver it daily.  Therefore, I guess we could say that direct mail also
> "clogs" up the postal system, causes unnecessary work hours and salaries
> paid to employees otherwise not needed and creates unnecessary work that
> could otherwise be avoided.

I rather thought that the cost (in dollars, pounds, francs, whatever) of
posting something, at the very least defrayed the cost of running the
postal system (in the US, UK, France, wherever).  The more mail that is
sent, the more money comes into the various postal services, and so the
more there is to spend on the resources needed to handle that mail.  This
also means that there is a direct link for the marketer between the number
of people they bombard with messages and how much it costs them.  That link
doesn't exist in the same direct way when it comes to UCE.  As far as I can
see most of the cost is borne by those receiving the UCE and the owners of
the servers through which it passes, whereas the cost of unsolicited
commercial snail mail is mostly borne directly by the company sending it
out and indirectly by those who go on to purchase the service or product,
since it will be factored in as part of the price.

> It takes me just as long to throw away SPAM mail as it does to throw away
> unwanted direct paper mail.  I get tons of each every day and I spend no
> more than five minutes getting rid of it - usually the time spent
brushing
> my teeth.  It's a fact of life - we're always going to get sales calls,
> direct mail, UCE, etc., etc., etc.  It's a marketing channel (even though
> it's annoying), and that's how the marketing gurus make their living.
Chunk
> it or read it and move on.

Something that hasn't been mentioned, but which I think has a bearing on
this whole SPAM argument, is the fact that many usenet newsgroups drowned
in a sea of SPAM as the fringes of the commercial world began to latch on
to the "marketing possibilities" of the internet.  As the proportion of
SPAM to genuine info grew, people left, fed up with downloading a pile of
messages only to have to sift through them to find a diminishing number of
genuine posts.  I think that is something that has contributed to many 'net
savvy people detesting SPAM.  It's not inconceivable that it would happen
to email if everyone adopted the "just delete it if you're not interested"
approach - that's exactly what people said when SPAM started appearing on
the newsgroups.

My 2p worth...

Regards,
Donna
--
dms(at)zetnet.co.uk
Different Worlds:  http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/dms/
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