>I believe the problem will only be fixed when public outcry demands a fix.
A GartnerGroup survey showed that 2/3rds of their respondents would support
a law making spamming a crime! 36% of the respondents would switch their
ISP to reduce the amount of spam they receive. Only 22% of the respondents
of a survey by www.chooseyourmail.com felt that their ISPs were doing
enough about spam.
Not quite a public outcry yet, but it looks like it is starting to reach
critical mass.
>Using blacklists only delays or dampens that outcry.
Interesting point.
>I believe that I,as a hoster could get sued by one of my customers for
>restraint of trade or damages..if for example, i used orbs/maps and as a
>result, my hosting customer never got a large order.
Again, that's why you need to either have a contract with your customer,
and/or you need to be able to disable the scanning for certain
customers. I have never heard anyone suggest that an ISP could get sued if
they have a proper contract and can disable the scanning for customers that
choose to have it disabled.
>Does the phone company filter the phone calls you get? I believe that is a
>good analogy.
But imagine if there were no laws that telemarketers had to call at certain
hours, put your name on their "do not call" list, etc. And, with the
phone, you can use Caller-ID which virtually guarantees the identity of the
caller.
If every spammer had to have a "X-Spam: This is unsolicited E-mail" header
added to all their stuff, and had to face severe penalties if they did not,
the analogy to phones would be a very good one. But, as you mentioned, the
public outcry is needed before that will happen.
>Adiditonally, I tend to think blacklists do not really address the problem,
>or fix the root cause.
ORBS actually helps fix the root cause. If all open relays were closed,
there would be a *lot* fewer spammers. Of course, if ORBS adds names to
the databases on a whim, that's a different story.
>I think the this spam solution can best be addressed by legisltation and it
>will have to be federal legistlation as spam crosses state boundries.
That will help a lot, *if* done properly (congressmen tend to think that
"opt out" spam is a valid idea -- that is, you have to always send back an
E-mail to the spammer to get them to stop spamming you).
That could reduce spam tremendously. Some spammers will go to other more
spam-friendly countries, but that will be easier to deal with.
-Scott
Declude: Anti-spam and Anti-virus solutions for IMail. http://www.declude.com
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