Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

spam me. really.

Slate’s Jonathan Rauch has a modest proposal about this whole spam e-mail mess that I can solidly get behind: If the spammers want access to my e-mail inbox, they should pay for the privilege. (“Make Money Fast!!!!” - 08/11/03)

The answer, I think, is this: I should have property rights to my e-mail inbox, and I should be able to charge you for admission.

The spam problem is a new instance of a very old and familiar dilemma, which economists call the tragedy of the commons. When any resource is both valuable and freely available, people will tend to overuse it…

In the case of e-mail, the valuable resource at issue is my attention, and the problem is that access to it is essentially free. People who really want to talk to me need to make no more effort than people who merely want to waste my time. The result is a run on my attention. My inbox becomes less like a mailbox and more like a Dumpster, through which I must sift to find items of interest…

But isn’t the great benefit of e-mail that it’s free? Not exactly: Spam filters, missed messages, clogged mailboxes, and server overload, to say nothing of odious come-ons, are existing costs for using e-mail, and fast-rising ones. The whole problem is that e-mail is expensive, and the wrong people are paying for it.

The solution is to make spammers pay their targets, instead of forcing the targets to pay for spam. Everyone could charge a different entrance fee for access to his or her inbox. If I like hearing about cheap Viagra, I could charge nothing or almost nothing. The higher my price per e-mail, the less spam I would receive�and a larger portion of the spam that I did get would be targeted, rather than random, so it might actually be interesting. If I set a very high price, I would receive no spam at all. By experimenting, I could find a price that suited me, and I could always adjust it to suit my needs. (Try that with the post office.) Friends and listservs and other “whitelisted” designees, of course, wouldn’t have to pay me at all.

Incidentally, you know all those “increase your size” and “buy Viagara cheap” spams that find their way into your virtual trash bins? The ones that no intelligent person would answer? Well, if people didn’t respond to the spams, the spammers wouldn’t be sending them. And, according to a recent story in Wired, a truly sad number of people actually do respond. (“Swollen Orders Show Spam’s Allure” - 08/06/03)

A security flaw at a website operated by the purveyors of penis-enlargement pills has provided the world with a depressing answer to the question: Who in their right mind would buy something from a spammer?

An order log left exposed at one of Amazing Internet Products’ websites revealed that, over a four-week period, some 6,000 people responded to e-mail ads and placed orders for the company’s Pinacle herbal supplement. Most customers ordered two bottles of the pills at a price of $50 per bottle.

Do the math and you begin to understand why spammers are willing to put up with the wrath of spam recipients, Internet service providers and federal regulators.