Re: FTC Do Not Call List

This must not be a true statement, since otherwise there would be no
> telemarketing calls, expecially. It is a labor intensive business and > must provide a sufficient return to the operators of such services to > make a profit. Otherwise they would go bankrupt.

Would you have any figures? How much does a telemarketing campaign cost to run and what is its rate of return?

Lately I've been innundated by political calls. How many recipients minds are changed and react as desired to the telephone request? (The calls lately aske me to call my congerssman in support or against some particular pending measure).

Spam is not nearly so expensive to originate, but it, too, has costs > and must provide a sufficient return that it is not true that ALL > consumers do not want it.

Again, what are the costs and benefits? Spam is particularly odious because the sender's costs are very low and the recipients end up paying for them.

In any event, people have always responded to socially undesirable antics. That doesn't mean we should accept or tolerate them. Most people think prostitution ought to remain illegal even though it has, is, and will be always well patronized. It doesn't mean we like it.

Actually, I have occasionally gotten e-mails, mostly spam, form > organizations or businesses with which I do have a legitimate business > relationship, which make offers that I have responded to favorably and > which, in at least one case, have saved me money.

The emails you describe fall outside a strict definition of spam. Most people associate genital enlargement or NIgerian oil ministers or get rich quick schemes with spam.

Defining spam in some cases becomes very controversial.

I d> The general problem is the considerable cost in going after spammers.

It is almost impossible to recover more than a fraction of these > costs, even when there is complete success in prosecution and seizure > of the spammer's ill-gotten gains.

Could you elaborate on this issue?

There are two aspects of enforcement. One is via the criminal justice system, where a spammer is prosecuted for violating a law and upon conviction, sent to jail. The government assumes the cost of investigation and prosecution.

The other is via the civil system, where a private party (or the government) initiates a civil lawsuit against another person in the hopes of collecting monetary damages. In some cases it is easier to win a civil case than a criminal case (note certain high profile murder cases recently), but "winning" a case is only part of it. The first part is winning your claim, that is, the court agreeing with your case. That in itself doesn't mean very much. The second part is the court awarding damages to you for your loss. You may be awarded only a nominal amount, ranging from literally $1.00 or a few hundred or thousand dollars (to a big corporation, this is meaningless). To the defendant, it is merely a cost of doing business and no big deal. The third part is the defendant's ability to pay. Even if you are awarded a large settlement, you must collect it from the defendant. Apparently some of these guys are pretty slimy and have their assets well hidden or declare bankruptcy. If there is ENOUGH willpower, the government can push aside those smokescreens, but it takes an enormous willpower not usually available. (In one rare case, a man claiming he is broke has been held in jail for ten years to force him to come up with the money the court believes he has hidden somewhere).

> I don't understand Internet message addressing, but it seems to me any >> initiated message should have a secured sender's address address. > Technically, this is impossible with the current mechanisms used by > Internet mail. Nothing short of a complete redesign from the ground > up will accomplish it. An effort to create a new Internet email > infrastructure would be extraordinarily expensive and complex. It > would make the conversion to TCP and SMTP in 1983 look trivial by > comparison.

I'm not at all sure it would be as a complex process as you suggest. The internet is software driven, not hardware driven; that is, it's not like someone going out and physically rewiring every PC and server in the world. Rather, it is developing new software and downloading it.

Very often I am offered upgrades for various Internet software compnents -- the PDF reader, basic browser, news reader, "flash player", basic PC operating system, etc. Actually I'm quite content with a bare bones system, but I've found that won't work. If you don't keep up, in a very short time your browser just won't work at all -- some site will simply reject you and tell you to get a new browser. My point is that with all these upgrades constantly going out it shouldn't be that big a deal to download new components. Must could be done on the gateway end.

The new email infrastructure will also give the world email postage > stamps. And this time, it won't be just governments who get a cut of the > profits. The biggest objection to SMTP in the SMTP vs. X.400 wars two > decades ago was that SMTP's fundamental design made it impossible to > impose email postage stamps. You can bet that the new redesigned Internet > email won't have that problem.

Email and internet use is NOT "free". Someone is paying for the servers, routers, and lines and people who install and maintain them. For consumers, many pay an Internet Service Provider, such as an AOL, for that service.

They say a very substantial amount of today's email traffic is spam. Reducing that traffic would reduce the need for routers and lines and that would save money. Maybe having email stamps isn't such a bad idea.

Telephone service is offered in many grades and prices including many "unlimited" use plans for local and long distance, even overseas calls are offered at cheap package rates. There is no reason Internet service can't be offered on a similar pricing scale -- those who use it a lot would pay a lot. That is, after all, our social policy regarding communications -- pay for usage and costs. The concept of rate averaging and universal service was discarded as social policy at the time of Bell System divesture.

Be careful for what you wish. You may get it. And there are plenty of > people who are quite happy to provide it to you (*ka-ching*!).

The costs of spam and fraud and high enough now, the cash register is going along quite nicely, except the thieves are getting the money.

How many people, other than myself, are holding back from participating in e-commerce and communications because of mistrust of the system?

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Quite a few of us are holding back. Lisa. I order via the net when it is absolutely neccessary, or appears to me to be very good deal (and have been assured it is legitimate. Usually I just deal with the local stores however. PAT]