Christopher Caldwell on the spam problem

Financial Times article. Interesting piece. He doesn’t think much of Larry Lessig’s ‘bounty hunter’ idea, but focusses on the key issue — which is how to stop spamming being a cost-free activity.

Aside: given that the FT has moved away from keeping its archive of web-pieces free, I’m not sure how long the link will continue to work.

Spam stats

I spent a week on holiday recently away from broadband access and with only one or two opportunities to dial up every day. That’s when I really began to be alarmed by the amount of spam I was receiving — one doesn’t notice it so much on broadband because it’s relatively quick to dispose of. But with a slow and irregular connection it really begins to bite. So it’s interesting to see how other people perceive it. Here is an interesting finding from Jonathan Peterson who started seriously analysing his spam count recently. Of the 1,595 emails he received in the first logged month, 1,047 were spam. Yikes!