Subject: [Asrg] Projecting

From: Bart Schaefer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 11:28:50 -0800

On Nov 28, 12:19pm, Seth wrote:
}
} Barry Shein <[email-masked]> wrote:
} > I don't particularly care if it was solicited or not.
} 
} I do.  That's what matters.

Why?  What makes your opinion of what and how email should arrive in
your mailbox more valid than Barry's?

} I don't care whether the local Chinese restaurants pay somebody or not
} to slip menus under my door, *I don't want those menus*.

So if I _want to_ receive Chinese restaurant menus, you would prevent
that from happening (because neither the Chinese restaurant nor I am
willing to jump through whatever hoops you require)?

What if they were Italian restaurant menus, or menus from a coffee shop
you already visit every morning on the way to work?  Is there really
truly NOTHING you EVER want to see unless you explicitly asked for it?

Perhaps you're unusual as compared to the majority of the population.
 
} So if I _want to_ receive their ads, you would prevent that from
} happening (because neither Amazon nor I am willing to make whatever
} payments you want to require)?

I'm impressed that you know that about Amazon.  With the exception of
spammers, nearly everyone already pays to send bulk email, so Amazon
is pretty unusual too.  Even the people who are selling Canadian pharma
or pumping penny stocks are probably paying a spammer to send it.

Yeah, I'm being deliberately contrarian, but staying this course has been
so effective so far that I thought maybe we needed a little chance to
reflect on the past before we are swept off to the inevitable future
where everyone knows and respects the explicit preferences that everyone
else was able to state in advance.

Now excuse me while I go read my horoscope over a glass of MonaVie, or
I'll be late for my appointment with my personal psychic advisor.
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From: Seth <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:30:52 -0500 (EST)

Bart Schaefer <[email-masked]> wrote:
>}} Barry Shein <[email-masked]> wrote:
>}> I don't particularly care if it was solicited or not.
>} 

It's my mailbox.

> willing to jump through whatever hoops you require)?

No, all you have to do is _solicit_ those menus.

> truly NOTHING you EVER want to see unless you explicitly asked for it?

I don't want anything shoved under my door to trip me, period.  I have
no problem with them leaving piles of menus in the mail room where I
can look at them and take one if _I_ feel like it, and they don't get
in my way when I don't.  That's a lot like putting ads on their own
web site, isn't it?

> Perhaps you're unusual as compared to the majority of the population.

Sure; except for me, everybody likes having Chinese restaurant menus
shoved under their door.  Well, make that me and the entire population
of New York City.

> is pretty unusual too.

But if Amazon already pays, Barry is happy receiving their mail
because it's paid for.  So I concluded that Barry's system would
require _additional_ payment.

Seth

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 28 Nov 2008 23:59:44 -0000

>spammers, nearly everyone already pays to send bulk email, ...

Pays whom?  Amazon may pay some NSP to get their bits to a router
somewhere, but none of it pays for getting those bits from that router
into any recipient mailbox.

R's,
John

---

From: Bart Schaefer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 18:40:22 -0800

On Nov 28,  6:30pm, Seth wrote:
}
} > Why?  What makes your opinion of what and how email should arrive
} > in your mailbox more valid than Barry's?
} 
} It's my mailbox.

I knew you were going to answer literally as soon as I realized I'd
clicked "send" without rephrasing "your mailbox."

s/your/someone's/.  Generalize.  This discussion isn't (I hope) about
solving the problem for you personally, but in the way that would
best address the needs of the majority.

} I don't want anything shoved under my door to trip me, period. I have
} no problem with them leaving piles of menus in the mail room where I
} can look at them and take one if _I_ feel like it, and they don't get
} in my way when I don't. That's a lot like putting ads on their own web
} site, isn't it?

Actually, no, it's not.  Their web site isn't located where you might
happen to wander past twice a day.  Ads on their web site are more like
a pile of menus outside their *own* front door.

Besides, piling menus in the mail room hardly differs from shoving them
under your door.  If every restaurant in the city left a pile of menus
in your mail room, you'd trip over them just as surely.  But you know
that's not going to happen, because both you and the restaurant know
the relative value of a pile of menus in the mail room.

Email is sent because the sender thinks sending it has more value
than not sending it.  Your mail room isn't buried in menus because
it's not worth the effort; there's a menu under your door because
someone felt (even if wrongly) that it was worth the effort.  Either
way, your preferences didn't enter into it, and the shut-in upstairs
who never visits the mail room might be glad to learn about a new
place to order out delivery.  So maybe we should stop asserting that
preferences are all that matters, because even if that should be the
way the world is, clearly it neither is that way, nor headed there.
 
} But if Amazon already pays, Barry is happy receiving their mail
} because it's paid for.  So I concluded that Barry's system would
} require _additional_ payment.

And that led you also to conclude that Amazon would be unwilling to
make that additional payment?

To answer John L's question:  Pays an ESP, or pays to license mailing
list management or CRM software, or most likely in Amazon's case pays
a small army of DBAs and programmers and marketers and HTML designers
and MTA administrators.  That there's not currently any direct cost
for moving the bits into the recipient mailbox is not evidence that
they'd balk at one.
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From: Seth <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:33:11 -0500 (EST)

> a pile of menus outside their *own* front door.

Fine, then let them pay Google to put the ads on news.google.com, or
any other web site they choose (that they think I go to often
enough).  I don't object to that, either.

> under your door.

Yes, it does.

>  If every restaurant in the city left a pile of menus
> in your mail room, you'd trip over them just as surely.

No, the person in charge of the mail room would limit the number
allowed just like the owner of a web site probably limits the number
of ads.

>  But you know that's not going to happen, because both you and the
> restaurant know the relative value of a pile of menus in the mail
> room.

Actually, it _does_ happen.  My building's mailroom has several piles
of menus, free weekly publications, and similar stuff.

> someone felt (even if wrongly) that it was worth the effort.

I don't care about the sender's perceived value.

>  Either way, your preferences didn't enter into it,

The person who runs the mailroom _does_ take my preferences into
account (and those of my neighbors), since we could _fire_ him if we
didn't like the job he's doing.

> and the shut-in upstairs who never visits the mail room might be
> glad to learn about a new place to order out delivery.

So they're welcome to invite menus to be placed under their door, say
by a sign they put on their own door.  I'm still willing to have
anyone who puts a menu under _my_ door arrested.

> make that additional payment?

It doesn't matter: if Amazon is willing to make it, Barry remains
unhappy.  If they aren't, I get unhappy.

> list management or CRM software, or most likely in Amazon's case
> pays a small army of DBAs and programmers and marketers and HTML
> designers and MTA administrators.  That there's not currently any
> direct cost for moving the bits into the recipient mailbox is not
> evidence that they'd balk at one.

Therefore, adding such a cost will have no perceived effect (except to
their shareholders), so how does it solve any problem with Barry's
mailbox?

Seth

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 29 Nov 2008 11:25:24 -0000

>and MTA administrators.

Add it all together and it's a drop in the bucket compared to the
aggregate recipients' costs, despite a great deal of wishful thinking
by ESPs who would like to imagine that their business models are not
dependent on the charity of the world's mail systems.

No sender, legitimate or spammer, pays anything like the full cost of
handling their mail.  It's all subsidized by recipients.  As I've said
over and over, that's fine for the mail we want.

R's,
John

---

From: Michael Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 07:49:56 -0800

> over and over, that's fine for the mail we want.
Manifestly, it's "fine" for the mail we don't want in aggregate too. At
some level of unavoidable spam and/or equipment cost to maintain an
acceptable level, that will remain true. If that utility function changes to
not favor mail, people will just vote with their fingers. As will the
spammers if they start finding that the Next Best Thing gives them
better ROI.

That's pretty much why this email postage stuff is a waste of time. Even
if it were wildly successful, what other part of the net would you want
the spammers to focus their huge resources on instead? Ground up
redesigns based on lots of operational experience often produce amazing
results. The law of unintended consequences runs very deep in this area.

       Mike

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:29:17 -0500

> require _additional_ payment.

Well, other than basic operational costs like a pipe and some servers
it's not clear what "pay" means here.

But understand that absolutely nothing I've suggested prevents me from
sticking whatever filtering I want onto my mailbox and never seeing
another email from amazon or whomever if I so choose.

None of that changes.

It's more like paper bulk mail, they have to pay postage to send it,
and I'm free to dump it in the garbage unopened. That's the chance
they take.

    -b

---

From: Bart Schaefer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 09:59:08 -0800

On Nov 28, 11:33pm, Seth wrote:
}
} The person who runs the mailroom _does_ take my preferences into
} account (and those of my neighbors), since we could _fire_ him if we
} didn't like the job he's doing.

Hence the mail room is different because it has a spam filter, and if
the spam filter didn't work well enough you'd replace it with a better
spam filter?

} I don't care about the sender's perceived value.

Yes, we get that.  So what?  Except in a few cases where your goodwill
is also known to have value, has whether you care stopped the sender
from sending it?
 
} > That there's not currently any
} > direct cost for moving the bits into the recipient mailbox is not
} > evidence that [Amazon]'d balk at one.
} 
} Therefore, adding such a cost will have no perceived effect (except to
} their shareholders), so how does it solve any problem with Barry's
} mailbox?

If the only messages Barry was getting were from senders whose messages
are valuable enough [to the senders] for added cost to have no effect,
he might not be getting enough unwanted email to argue about.

That, however, is not the point.

The point is that the problem becomes managable when the aggregated
value of the messages to the sender is approximately the same as the
aggregated value of the messages to the recipients, and the assumptions
being made are IMO setting that value too low on both sides.

--

---

From: Bart Schaefer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:24:40 -0800

On Nov 29, 11:25am, John Levine wrote:
}
} Add it all together and it's a drop in the bucket compared to the
} aggregate recipients' costs, despite a great deal of wishful thinking
} by ESPs who would like to imagine that their business models are not
} dependent on the charity of the world's mail systems.

An ESP who doesn't recognize and promote the value of the goodwill of
the world's mail systems is doing a disservice to its customers.  A
mailbox provider who doesn't recognize the value of the mail is doing
a disservice to its users.  (Ignoring cases of mailbox providers who
explicitly do not offer that kind of service; your server, your rules.)  

The problem for both are the people who don't place enough value on
either.
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From: Bart Schaefer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:32:46 -0800

On Nov 29,  7:49am, Michael Thomas wrote:
}
} That's pretty much why this email postage stuff is a waste of time. Even
} if it were wildly successful, what other part of the net would you
} want the spammers to focus their huge resources on instead?

Don't bother treating your termite problem, they'll just move next door?

} Ground up redesigns based on lots of operational experience often
} produce amazing results.

The same would be true in terms of applying solutions, no?
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From: Michael Thomas <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 11:07:34 -0800

> Don't bother treating your termite problem, they'll just move next door?

Not really. It's more like we have a pretty well known front line for
this war. We're "winning" at an abstract level because email is still
usable, even at the cost of its war of escalation. If we really "won"
a final victory in email, they'd just pick a new battlefield to play
on. So we get the choice of containment where we're doing ok, or
fighting on a completely new battlefield where who knows what the
dynamics will be. Wishing for what you might get, and all of that.
> The same would be true in terms of applying solutions, no?

No, they get to choose from a set of interesting existing things to
attack. For all we know, the ability to defend them could be even
_worse_. Like, for example, in domains where text based content
filtering sucks. Forced, punctuated evolution is not necessarily in
our advantage.

       Mike

---

From: Bart Schaefer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 11:20:02 -0800

On Nov 29, 11:07am, Michael Thomas wrote:
}
} If we really "won" a final victory in email, they'd just pick a new
} battlefield to play on. So we get the choice of containment where
} we're doing ok, or fighting on a completely new battlefield where who
} knows what the dynamics will be.

Given the swift rise of link and blog spam and the increasing focus on
spamming social networks, it seems it's also wishful thinking to believe
the battle will stay on any front where we think we have a stalemate.
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From: der Mouse <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 22:42:22 -0500 (EST)

> anyone who puts a menu under _my_ door arrested.

Perhaps interestingly, in my city (Montreal), there is a way to opt out
of the "shove under your door" type flyers - which, here, normally go
in the mailbox.  (We don't have the "postal service owns your mailbox"
paradigm the USA does.)  It takes the form of a city-standardized
sticker to be put on your mailbox.

Yes, it's opt-out, not opt-in, but - like DNC lists - it's standardized
and single-action-for-all-senders, by fiat of applicable government.
And that it is present at all has something significant to say about
(local) public attitudes towards such material - even in the face of
the (much larger than email spam) sender costs and the limiting effects
they bring.

/~\ The ASCII				  Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML		[email-masked]
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
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From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:22:22 -0500

> their shareholders), so how does it solve any problem with Barry's

1. Right now this ISP gets a stream of hundreds of thousands of
messages per day to non-existant accounts.

The usual reason for those from "legit" bulk mailers is the account
has been closed, often closed for many years. We've been here since
1989, they accumulate.

If amazon et al were charged for each of these do you think they might
pay more attention to bounces?

2. There are approximately 1000 companies in the Fortune 1000.

Not all of them are net savvy or have any reason to email me.

But once one finds a reason to email me it's very rare that they stop
emailing me, some on a daily or near-daily basis.

That is, the volume tends to be a monotonically increasing value over
time.

So I might be facing O(1000) msgs/day from them alone. Now add in the
fortune 100,000. It's already very annoying and new sources seem to
pop up all the time (e.g., trade rags sell my email address.)

If they had to pay for this usage they might get more focused in their
marketing.

At any rate the bottom line is when a resource is free and desireable
this would be the expected result. There's a reason you don't get
O(1000) paper mail ads per day at home and that is the cost.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

The World              | [email-masked]           | http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD        | Login: Nationwide
Software Tool & Die    | Public Access Internet     | SINCE 1989     *oo*
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From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:37:35 -0500

> over and over, that's fine for the mail we want.

Well, perhaps that's fine as far as you are personally concerned, but
for those of us who have to come up with the resources and management
it's not so fine.

As an ISP comments like this make me empathize with politicians who
have to sit and listen to "feed the homeless!", "fix the bridges!",
and so on by constituents who rarely want to suggest where the money
comes from, only the righteousness of their request.

Granted thus far prices for resources per se tend to be falling which
has created this magic envelope, sort of like when a lot of
manufacturing first went to China, where prices just go down and down,
so what's the problem?

I would hope people here could at least try to be a little more
foresighted.

As the old expression (?) goes, jump off a 20 story building and you
can imagine you are flying...for the first 19 stories.

Or, perhaps more pertinently, there used to be a time when the idea of
charging for IPv4 address space horrified people.

And relatively smallish organizations of low tens of thousands of
people grabbed address blocks with ~24 million addresses and thought
nothing of it -- it was free! They even began assigning chunks of
their space to whoever they deemed "worthy". Why not? It was free!

And now we have a problem.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 13:54:44 -0500

> results. The law of unintended consequences runs very deep in this area.

By that reasoning anything we could possibly do here to curb spamming
is a waste of time, unless the solution applies equally to every
network application present and future.

That seems too high a hurdle.

That said, there is something quite special about email which makes it
attractive to spammers and that's that it is the major "push"
technology on the internet.

There really aren't too many other technologies which compare,
particularly in terms of injection.

Further, "Spammers" (well, ruthless marketeers) have tried to inject
into virtually every technology which has an audience already from
spim to blog comment spam (whatever that's called) to registering
"typo" domains, and on and on.

None has really been as pervasive (or, to most, obnoxious) as email
spam, but there's no reason to believe that they aren't trying as hard
as they can already to do what you describe.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 16:08:02 -0500

> dynamics will be. Wishing for what you might get, and all of that.

This projects an image of one, unified "enemy".

Closer to the truth is many miscreants, most unrelated, each also
competing with each other so each fully motivated to do whatever they
possibly can right now.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 1 Dec 2008 01:34:17 -0000

>for those of us who have to come up with the resources and management

Are you really saying that the cost of running your mail infrastructure
FOR THE MAIL YOUR USERS WANT is burdensome?  I've never heard another
ISP say that.  It's the other 98% of the mail that they don't want
that's the problem.

R's,
John

---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 1 Dec 2008 01:48:42 -0000

>has been closed, often closed for many years.

I get a lot of mail to dead addresses, too.  (My oldest addresses only
go back to about 1992, but that's far enough.)  Spot checking them,
it's plain old spam to addresses that were scraped or in some cases
were leaked by crooked employees.  I get precious little mail to dead
addresses from any sort of legit senders.

>So I might be facing O(1000) msgs/day from them alone.

You're an ISP.  If you've told them to stop, they owe you $25/message,
and unlike typical spammers, Fortune 1000 companies respond to lawyer
letters and pay up.  Why haven't you made it a $25,000/day profit
center?

R's,
John