Engineering at Dordt College

I get about 30 “unsolicited” and unwanted “spam” e-mails per day. It used to be the case that my e-mail filter efficiently redirected them all into the trash. Not so any more. As of a month or two ago about a half-dozen per day started slipping past my spam filter and landing in my e-mail box. I’ve been wondering what is going on here.

As of about October 2006, e-mail volume on the internet has started growing dramatically (subscription required to view the link). The purveyors of spam are also constantly inventing new ways to spell v1@gr@, and they create ever more delicious word salad, and they use many other techniques to render our spam filters impotent. The cat-and-mouse game between the vendors of spam filters and spammers just keeps escalating.

The basic problem is a failure of policy makers to recognize the power of sin in our world. As long as the cost of sending millions, even billions of copies of unsolicited e-mail is practically free, this practice will remain profitable. Even if 99.9999% of all recipients of an e-mail recognize it as spam, the few people that respond to the spam make the practice profitable. Those who insist on keeping the cost of sending unlimited numbers of bits free simply cannot recognize that some people will sin by writing spam and others will err by believing the claims of spam. The only fix is to start charging for bits. Instead of a monthly fee for an unlimited connection to the web, there ought to be some micro payment required to send bits onto the internet. If an e-mail message cost even 1/1000 of a cent to send (or 1000 e-mails for a penny!) most of these spammers would go bust. I hate to say it, but this calls for government regulation, even taxation. It’s inevitable.

Without proper regulation, business will be corrupted.