Your Moral Imperative to Stop Spam

[turetzsr]

...This is well put, IMHO: Editor's Note: Your Moral Imperative to Stop spam, by Mark Cappel, in the April 2004 Edition of Windows Server System magazine.

...Some excerpts:

You, dear reader, and your fellow nerds responsible for the e-mail servers of the world, have the means necessary to stop unsolicited commercial e-mail.

<snip>

There are many ways to calculate the cost of spam. According to Nucleus Research, spam costs U.S. companies $874 per employee per year in lost productivity. According to IDC, the annual productivity loss is about $500. IDC, however, pegs lost revenue at about $900 per employee. We can also calculate the cost of spam in bandwidth and storage costs—less than $500 annually per employee, which is significant when spread across an enterprise. Of course, the parties responsible for sending spam don't pay for the cost of delivering and storing their messages. spam is a modern version of the tragedy of the commons—spammers don't pay for anything and as a result, use the commons as much as they wish.

<snip>

Both ISPs and enterprises should block the range of IP addresses used by spammers. [Note emphasis mine - SteveT]

We don't have to wait for an amended Can spam Act for effective legal tools to attack U.S. spammers. We don't have to wait for e-mail postage stamps. We don't have to wait for magic bullets. None of these things will come soon enough. The power to stop spam is in your hands. The cost of stopping it is small. The cost of doing nothing is enormous. Now is the to time to act. The tools nerds can use to save the world from spam are at hand, and it's up to you and your compatriots to use them.

[knave]

cheers to that

[Merlyn]

cheers to that

Ditto........

[dra007]

Enough is enough!

[Miss Betsy]

and your fellow nerds responsible for the e-mail servers of the world, have the means necessary to stop unsolicited commercial e-mail.

I object! IMHO, one does not have to be a nerd in order to understand that blocklists are the way to stop spam!

Intelligent, decent people can understand. It is, after all, the proper netiquette which is based on offline etiquette.

Miss Betsy

[Merlyn]

I would think it is more of a moral imperative to stop spammers.

For the spammers reading this, to be moral means you must have a conscience which means the sense or consciousness of the moral goodness or blameworthiness of one's own conduct, intentions, or character together with a feeling of obligation to do right or be good.

So.............

Spammers have:

No morals

No conscience

No Feelings

Cannot understand between right or wrong, good or bad

Spammers are just pondscum which would make it a moral imperative for the rest of scoiety to stop the spread of this dreaded disorder.

Most people who are diagnosed with this type of moral disfunction are usually placed in special care facilities where they are cared for so they do not hurt themselves or others. There is no reason why spammers shouldn't be cared for this way also

[turetzsr]

and your fellow nerds responsible for the e-mail servers of the world, have the means necessary to stop unsolicited commercial e-mail.

I object! IMHO, one does not have to be a nerd in order to understand that blocklists are the way to stop spam!

Intelligent, decent people can understand. It is, after all, the proper netiquette which is based on offline etiquette.

Miss Betsy

...Oh, I'm quite certain we all agree on that. Even the author of the piece I quoted. No where that I see does he say that only the nerds can understand that. He doesn't even say (that I can see, at least) that only the nerds can stop the problem.

[turetzsr]

I would think it is more of a moral imperative to stop spammers.

<snip>

...While you do, the article author says, by stopping (or at least reducing) the delivery of spam:

<snip>

spam makes money for spammers and costs us money.... Doing so will ... reduce the attractiveness of sending spam by slashing the response rate of spam campaigns. With any luck, this will reduce the number of people retrying spam to promote their wares.

<snip>