Fast Company | The Dirty Little Secret About Spam
All of this is why there is increasing consensus that spam can be slowed only by addressing its perverted economics: Make senders pay for their messages, and market discipline will rationalize the industry. Today, a marketer can send 10 million messages for free. If the cost per address were even just one penny, “my guess is that most spam would go away,” says Mark Wegman, a researcher at IBM, who with a colleague has come up with theoretical proposals for a cost-based system.
Interesting article. The dirty little secret is that the companies doing the marketing — from the penis enlargement elixir shills to AT&T — are happy with the status quo. The sounds of outrage don’t drown out the jingle of new revenue . . . .yet.