[extropy-chat] Spam

[Charlie Stross]

On 30 Dec 2003, at 21:58, Spike wrote:
> Charlie, your post was in answer to those spammers
> whose motive is to sell things.  My concern is for
> the growing army of spammers whose primary motive is
> to mess up the internet.  I have been seeing more
> and more clamor from the bricks and mortar retailing
> community about how their sales are suffering from
> tax-free internet competition.  This cacophonous
> tininnabulation is now being joined by the local
> governments issuing dire warnings to the proletariat
> that because of our shameless internet buying habits,
> they will soon be unable to supply sufficient law
> enforcement, fire protection and (most alarmingly)
> road repair.

That's a different problem entirely, although I'll grant you that it's 
a problem.

However, bricks'n'mortar retailing is only an effective political lobby 
in proportion to its ability to buy access to politicians' ears. (I was 
going to add, and insofar as they employ lots of people, but that's not 
much of a concern for most of today's politicians -- especially as 
retail/service jobs are not geographically localized or extensively 
unionized in the way that, say, manufacturing industry jobs are). The 
reason they're screaming about competition is that the competition from 
*real* internet businesses -- say, Amazon -- is now biting into their 
sales. And those internet businesses *also* have the money with which 
to buy access to legislators.

Sales taxes on goods sold over the net are in any case a non-issue. 
Here in the EU, goods sold over the internet *are* liable for VAT, and 
it's damn well collected. This doesn't seem to have stopped internet 
commerce taking off. If anything, the current situation in the USA (of 
ther being no sales tax on goods sold over the net) is a hidden subsidy 
to internet adoption, which is no longer justifiable as the net has 
already become sufficiently close to ubiquitous not to need that kind 
of thing.

Now, if you're saying that conventional retailers are paying spammers 
to mess up the net, I find that rather hard to believe. If so, it's 
almost certainly a serious crime, no?


-- Charlie