[Mailman-Users] The economics of spam

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Brad Knowles writes:
 > on 12/23/08 2:14 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull said:
 > 
 > > And the primary maintainer of a piece of software which AFAIK
 > > continues to be a source of backscatter might want to be a little
 > > careful about suggesting that vendors be billed ....
 > 
 > We give the list owners and site administrator the option of choosing 
 > how to configure their lists.  So, the choice of who to send the bill to 
 > would end there.

Sorry, no.  In a fair world that might be true, but in our world (at
least the U.S.) there's the small problem of the legal concept called
"attractive nuisance" and liability for future damages due to systems
installed from past versions, not upgraded or configured appropriately.

So I don't think we even want to joke about financial penalties for
spamming, because in the end it's applications like Mailman and this
list itself that will end up as collateral damage in any such solution.

 > If you wanted to be of service to the community, you could always write 
 > a milter in Python that would go through all the same checks that 
 > Mailman would do and indicate back to the MTA whether or not the message 
 > would be accepted.

First I'd have to find out what those checks are, especially since in
my own case a lot of mail gets discards by humans.

Economics is what I do for a living; giving free advice in the "dismal
science" may be the best contribution I can make.