[Mimedefang] OS wars... [was Viruses: Bounce or Discard?]

[Jeffrey Goldberg]

On Wed, 1 Oct 2003, Joe Stevens wrote:

> 1.  The amount of SPAM from out OWN users is minimal.  We would benifit
> if every other ISP in the world adopted this system, but not if we did
> it by ourselves. [...]

> So it just becomes the basic collective action problem. [...]

I agree.  And as such, hoping that ISPs would do this is a pipe dream.
Though I will quote from a paper I'm a co-author of (quoting the
economist, Jack Hirshleifer):

  Despite the individual cost of cooperating and the obvious
  individual benefits of free riding ``the analytically
  uncomfortable (though humanly gratifying) fact''
  \cite[p.~55]{Hirshleifer85} is that more people choose to cooperate than
  existing theories can convincingly psychologically explain.

Much of my wife's research is on trying to understand this.

I was intrigued by David's ISP based idea, but I agree that it won't work
for exactly the reasons you say.  I had been trying to come up with
structures that would change the incentives for ISPs, but I can't come up
with anything plausible or which would stand up to the slightest bit of
scrutiny.  Still, I liked David's initial idea, so I was activily engaging
in this discussion to see both the strengths and weaknesses of it.

I have long been an advocate of making end users responsible.  The only
I see that that can happen is for enabling legislation which either has
the government fine such users or makes it easy and worthwhile to sue such
users.

-j

-- 
Jeffrey Goldberg                            http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/
 Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice
 Hate spam?  Boycott MCI! http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/anti-spam/mci/