Radical Idea #1: Anti-Spam Measures
As evidence comes out that the Bagel/Beagle worm is most likely the work of spammers trying to harvest email addresses, see
this story for more on that, it is becoming increasingly apparent that technology will continue to improve that allows these people to skirt the law ad infinitum.
Since most of the spammers will either never be brought to court to face charges for their acts (whether they should or not is another debate) or will be able to afford the fines etc. levied against them, why not target the companies who use them?
Think about it. They would not do this if no one was willing to pay them. Who pays them? The company selling the product or service advertised.
Stay with me here folks.
Let's put into place a system by which companies found to use spammers are first warned and then fined into dust for repeated offenses.
If companies ere threatened with
serious fines or even jail time, it might just dampen their enthusiasm for this mode of advertising.
Now I hear some objections already:
- This plan is just like the "war" on drugs, which isn't working. Why should we support this?
- Companies have a right to advertise as they see fit. Isn't this just an anti-capitalist move which you decry in others?
Now, I agree that the War on Drugs has been a miserable failure. We'll go into that another time. First, let's look at the objection analogizing this to the War on Drugs.
No. 1 –
This analogy fails an important point.
Companies are founded and advertise to make money for their owners and stockholders. They will generally avoid doing things that will cause them to lose that money. Drug users generally overwhelm such compunction (if it exists) when deciding whether or not to use drugs. The few advertisers willing to risk serious jail time and fines are, in some ways, analogous to the junkie on drugs: they are willing to risk their well-being for the quick fix, so to speak.
Moving on . . .
No. 2 – Well, as a free-market believer, I agree. I think the market should take care of this by targeting and refusing to deal with companies who use spammers to market their wares.
But in behind their somewhere is a real desire to see these guys pay. Here’s why: everyday, these guys cost consumers (those free market agents we all know and love) millions of dollars in increased costs related to the internet and our commerce thereon. I think that the fines they pay should be collected and invested back into the infrastructure of the internet to help lower costs for all of us.
By fining companies that use spammers on a regular basis, especially those who use spamming services which collect their email addresses from virii or other illicit means, we will begin to eliminate those companies from the business population. This will lower spam volume which will in turn cause economic benefits to all.
Unfortunately, in my eyes, this argument still doesn’t hold up. I think that the market will eventually correct this on its own and anytime you try to “control” the market for “the benefit of X” (even if X is everyone except spammers and their customers), I believe that you are treading on dangerous ground.
No one can predict the way the market will react to gov’t controls and this would be just one more example of the gov’t stepping in to “save” those who could save themselves.
Besides, you wouldn’t want to put those nice spam-stopper program folks out of business would you? ;-)
