Wave of the Future (Spam)

I'm not sure why this continues to be the problem that it is. I agree that SPAM is terribly annoying, but can't comprehend why it can't be dealt with from the INSIDE, i.e. simply rewrite the SMTP/POP protocol rules such that mail only allows a single addressee, and that any server that sees more than one destinee, either in the "to" field or the CC field, it simply pitches it in the bit bucket. Spammers love the current situation, because their own bandwidth isn't even consumed by the wide distribution of some bit of nonsense advertising. If I ever want to send several people the same email, which I've not yet done, after about 10 years of internetting, I'd simply write a script to do that. The fact that the internet community or its governing bodies haven't figured this out is a symptom of the fact that they WANT people to be able to SPAM anonymously. At the risk of offending the purists, I'd say it's up to us to get off the silly notion that we're going to be able to preserve anonymity on the internet in favor of preventing the waste of gazillions of gigabits per second of bandwidth for unpaid advertising. Even the snail-mail SPAM is paid-for. It should be a requirement for an email message to get through even ONE server beyond its point of origin, that the message have the real point of origin in it and that the point of origin be listed in the text of the message as well as in the header. Any message in which the originator is not named and traceable via FINGER, with a validated account, can simply be dropped. It is easy enough to reject unwanted mail, provided you have a list of acceptable sources. THERE HAS GOT TO BE ACCOUNTABILITY on the internet. If your name, and home address were in every message you send, you would probably not send unsolicited email. If someone found you spoofing addresses in order to support spamming with, 2^n messages, they should be awarded 2^n bucks, which you should pay, with your 20 hour-per-day labor at $0.50/hour for however long it takes. Additionally, you should be fined 2^n bucks per bit, for wasting the bandwidth. If you don't want to surrender your anonymity, we'll simply all have to put up with the SPAM. Now, I get a bit of SPAM from time to time, maybe as much as 20% of my mail, but it's pretty easy to recognize and delete. What annoys me is that it takes more bandwidth to reject the stuff than simply to delete it. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sellam Ismail" <foo(a)siconic.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2001 1:16 PM Subject: Re: Wave of the Future (Spam)