Oh, absolutely. I am a loyal and dedicated patron of my local specialty store (Bakka Books in Toronto) and there's nothing I like better than an hour browsing the shelves and getting my greasy fingers on the pages but when it comes to items (especially non-fiction) that are hard to get locally then I reach quickly and thankfully for my web browser and amazon.
And for known quantities it's hard to beat their price and service. I can't imagine what life would be like without amazon (and others) if I was living in a rural area in Newfoundland.
James: Who can say how much your varied advertisments in sig lines, and on your pages has tranlated to online sales from people who just refuse to use a click through? I would like to think it all indirectly contributes to sales and it doesn't cost you a thing.
James: Yes. I was thinking of exactly that; An almost unnoticed cost for bandwidth but I do see the problems with it.
My other solution is to have them pay you. Whenever my phone rings and someone other than a gov't employee is on the line wanting me to participate in a survey I ask them how much; How much are they going to pay me for my time and data? They always say zero and I always say "No Thankyou" and hang up. Forums like this could work on the same model. It would require an anonymous transaction (anonymous in the I would never be able to know your true identity). You would send a portion of a penny to me and I would let you post a message. After a given probationary period (x number of non-spam-like messages) you would graduate to a free account. Spammers would have to do the same thing but at least then:
1. They're paying for the privledge
2. Blackballing is easier but still anonymous (something that I still believe is essential to the success of the net).
3. You could increase their fee as the volume steps up.
I agree with the sentiment... all spammers should be smothered at birth.
Unfortunately politicians are the least well equiped to stop spam. Legislating large penalties for spammers will only net the top feeders, and not many of those.
It will be a while but soon enough our bandwidth will be metered and spammers will acquire overhead. To any normal user, the fee should be insignificant but spammers will suffer a death by volume.
Until then we'll have to deal with black and white lists and other barbaric forms of defense to deal with crapflooders and spammers.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 5 |
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