Why Spam Cannot Be Stopped

Here are some articles on spam, and why it cannot be stopped.

http://www.tlb.org/whyspamcannotbestopped.html


http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/05/combating_spam.html

What these two articles miss (and I think all other articles on the topic) is the role of intellectual property rights, natural monopoly theory and something a little more pedestrian, hype.

The internet was developed in a closed system based on a false theory of telephony as a natural monopoly, that is to say there could be only one carrier per territory at a time. While this idea reigned, military interests wanted to use real world capabilities to maintain communications during a military attack. The internet was born, but into a world that assumed it was to be a closed system, and designed as such. Therefore, "security" against spam was never anticipated so not built into the original infrastructure.

Recalling Bastiat, we do we not see now (spam elimination) what we would see if the internet was not developed on a false premise under government specifications. Or, stated positively, in a free market the internet would have evolved with no spam. In a free market the first spam received would have stopped everything, as vendors fixed the problem of unwanted incoming messages.

It was only some 20 years ago that the internet opened up, and then it was a mad rush, a boom, to build out the internet and develop uses for the technology. As far as I can tell, the internet has only lowered the cost of communicating and research. It has achieved this through "mass-customization" as Enron CEO Ken Lay perceived long ago. It has provided no other benefit. And given the cost of spam and other negative 'ride-alongs' to the aforementioned benefits, the internet may be a net deficit.

As I survey the several hundred spam I receive a day, one would get the impression that "male enhancement" porn and viagra are hot sellers... this in spite of the fact I have purchased none of the above, anywhere, anytime. I do not doubt there is a huge market of bored, lonely, atrophied and impotent men, that is the natural flipside to the abandonment of women and children in law and culture that has been central to our society for the last forty years.

Nonetheless, I receive thousands of such spam weekly, not becuase it is costless, but because of the endless supply of fools who believe you can get rich on the internet. Spammers recruit spammers to spam in the hopes of making money, few if any ever do, but with the constant assurance that you can get rich on the internet with no risk or cost, there is no end to the fools who try. And no end to the new spammer recruits.

The internet as we know it will end, and we will all welcome it at some point. To solve the problem they created themselves, we will give the government power to fix it. The government controlled media of newspapers and television are dying because the point of those media were to push the government line. If you subscribe to a newspaper, nobody can tell what articles you read or what you think about what you read. On the internet, the powers that be can tell exactly what you read, and what you think by what you blog or email on the topic to your friends. Those who issue the licenses for media will control taxpayers better with info "free" on the net. This is like when the Sandinistas pushed for 100% literacy and censored what could be read. The point of controlling media is to control the populace. the internet offers a better way. As Hillary Clinton said a while back, "we have to rethink the internet.'

One problem with eliminating spam is the cross-claims of intellectual property rights holders would eliminate any chance of any one entity or person from making any money whatsoever on solving the problem. Like in Chiapas or Burkina Faso, and now USA. why work on a problem if the benefits of your labor will simply be stolen from you by the politically connected? In USA, IP holders are politically connected to the government that provides a monopoly, and a system that forces taxpayers to pay for the enforcement of the ersatz "right."

We have to love our freedom to keep it. Economic development follows freedom; freedom to and freedom from. The internet is far from free, it will be rethunk. Perhaps free marketers can save it.

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