A More than "SERIOUS DILEMMA ON THE NET"
Once upon a time, the net consisted of (pioneer) citizens, largely
interested in creating a better internet...a better life than what mankind
had managed to create offline. "The internet" became almost a living
creature, policing itself, nudging away various behaviors it deemed
harmful to its future.
I've always said the net reflects real life. It's just faster and bigger.
The term "big as life" can be safely replaced with "bigger than life"
...online.
So what happens when you intensify *everything*? Emotions run high.
People fire off 'flames' , including in such emails things they would
never say to anyone in person. A single instance of bad customer service
or a misunderstanding can be broadcast across the net in mere hours. The
rise and fall of an online company can happen much faster than it does
offline.
There's an opportunity to do "more good" if one is so inclined, and an
opportunity for the "bad' to do more bad....faster than ever. As the net
has evolved, what was fast is now more fast, what was bigger is bigger
yet.
And what's bad has become worse :(
The community who originally sought an ideal society on the net found ways
to define and shape civilized behavior such as an instance when
undesirable "net behavior" stuck a place (online) called "Portal". Back
then Netizens were able to essentialy "gang up" on undesirable behavior
and cause change. (You can read about this as it happened in Google's
Usenet archives here.
)
I also remember one day that we all turned our webpages black....and
why...(and won!)
Will this type of 'social conditioning' still work on today's internet?
Could it be that when intensified, evil wins over good?
It was recently suggested that the net unite once again to combat the spam
which is currently stuffing everyone's inboxes, wasting precious
bandwidth, human and system resources and time. (not to mention money...)
The specific suggestion was for "tons and tons" of people to organize to
pressure the largest ISPs to apply spam egress filtering...or else.
(suggest repercussions here)
We're not convinced that either existing or proposed laws will soon find
an end to the problem...and in the end it's still up to *us*.
As much as I wish to *believe* that collectively we could effect a change
(or that the proposed change would even work...) there have been a few
changes to the net community since the early days which I fear may render
such a collective effort ineffective :(
1. Money. Internet access is not high-profit-margin. It's simply too
painful for many big providers to turn down the 5-6 figure *monthly*
income provided by the spammers. I wonder if sometimes this is all that
is really keeping them going. (This is judged by the volume of spam that
*is* coming from the big providers...it outnumbers *real* messages.)
2. New thinking. I've heard providers say on multiple occasions that if
"a user" gives them too much trouble that they'd rather spend money to
find a new "user" than to cater to the ones they already have. Ok, so
maybe that also boils down to: Money. (Yet I've always thought it was
more expensive to get a new customer than to keep an old one.)
3. Power. I've had big providers "mistakenly" block our servers, not
understanding/knowing/detecting the difference between an open relay and a
requested relay (i.e. mail forward!). Assuming there is even a way to
contact them (other than an abuse address which is attached to an
autoresponder...maybe...) it's easy for them to adopt a haughty attitude
as they don't *need* the clients of small providers to reach their
customers. So one day I decided to reverse the process...and found that
my users indeed needed the big guys more than the big guys needed to be
able to reach my users... After all if the customer of someone else
cannot reach the users of a big provider, maybe they will get an account
with the 'big guys' instead. (Money?)
4. Expense. Filtering mechanisms and manpower to properly handle spam
complaints costs Money. We must keep the net moving at all costs...even
if it is spiralling out of control. (It is.)
This past weekend, The New York Times quoted Steve Linford, (perhaps the
world's most noted authority on spam) as saying: "E-mail is the most
incredible communication vehicle invented, and it is on the verge of being
made useless". You can read the entire story here.
Maybe I am just feeling cynical today. By all means, prove me wrong!
Net: Organize!
...Life Imitates Net
9:00:47 PM 
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