++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ WERBLIST Kevin Werbach's periodic email newsletter November 20, 2002 YOU ARE WELCOME TO RE-SEND THIS MESSAGE TO ANY NUMBER OF COLLEAGUES. Please cc: werblist@werbach.com. To subscribe or unsubscribe directly, visit http://two.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/werblist/. Please send your comments to kevin@werbach.com. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ I'm busy these days with final preparations for Supernova, which is coming up in less than three weeks. It's going to be a fantastic event -- see http://www.pulver.com/supernova/ for details. This month, a piece I wrote for Slate.com about how spam will change email, and an essay on why both sides of the broadband content debate are wrong. Plus interesting links I've recently come across. Werblist is an evolving experiment. I welcome your feedback at kevin@werbach.com. -k- Kevin Werbach ---------------------------------------------------------------------- In this Issue: - How Spam May Kill Email - Supernova Update - The Broadband Myth - Links of the Month ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DEATH BY SPAM The e-mail you know and love is about to vanish (Originally published November 18, 2002 in Slate) One-third of the 30 billion e-mails sent worldwide each day are spam. That's 10 billion daily pitches for herbal Viagra, Nigerian scams, and genital-enlarging creams piling up in our inboxes. Neither legislation nor litigation against spammers has stemmed the tide, and they're not going to have much of an effect in the future, either. It's time to give up: Despite the best efforts of legislators, lawyers, and computer programmers, spam has won. Spam is killing e-mail. Or at least it's about to destroy the e-mail we're used to: the tool that lets a stranger respond to something you posted on your Web site or that lets a potential client contact you after reading an article you wrote. E-mail is pervasive because it's simple to use, remarkably flexible, and it reaches everyone. The trouble is that e-mail is too good at that third task. Because e-mail inboxes are open to anyone, longtime Internet users now receive hundreds of spams per day, making e-mail virtually unusable without countermeasures. The most common countermeasure, server-side filtering, has serious limitations. No automated system can identify spam as well as a human can. Internet service providers certainly try: They block known spammer addresses and use algorithms to identify spam based on an e- mail's contents, subject line, or other headers. AOL and MSN both trumpet spam filtering systems like this in their latest software, and Yahoo! and Microsoft's Hotmail offer junk-mail filters for their Web- based e-mail services. But the filters are running out of gas. The spammers keep multiplying, and they keep finding clever ways to fool the systems designed to stop them. Promising newcomers such as CloudMark, which taps the collective power of e-mail recipients to identify spam, may improve things for a while. But there will always be a trade-off between catching all the spam and ensuring that every piece of legitimate e-mail gets through. So, sophisticated Internet users are turning to a new approach. Instead of trying to block spam while allowing everything else, these users employ software that blocks everything except messages from already known, accepted senders. These systems, called "whitelists," change e-mail from an open system to a closed one. Whitelist applications available today include MailFrontier, ChoiceMail from DigiPortal, Vanquish, and the freeware Tagged Message Delivery Agent. There's also a whitelist option built into Hotmail, known as the "exclusive" setting. Though it's hidden in the preferences menu (click "Options," then "Junk Mail Filter"), more than 10 percent of Hotmail users reportedly invoke it. Before long, expect all e-mail applications to offer this function. Whitelists typically allow e-mail from everyone in a user's existing address book. Other, unknown senders receive an automated reply, asking them to take further action, such as explain who they are. Or senders may be asked to identify a partially obscured image of a word. A person can make out the word, but automated spammer software can't. Whitelists are rare today, but they will become more common. The relentless growth of spam guarantees it. A filter that catches 80 percent of spam sounds great, and it is great if you get 10 spams a day. But when you get 500 a day, that same filter leaves you sorting through 100 opportunities to Make Money Fast!!!!! Like it or not, the only way to kill spam is for an element of e-mail to die as well. There's always been something charming and casual about e-mail. The informality comes through in the style people use to write messages, but also in where they send them. You've probably sent an e-mail to someone you'd never call on the phone, approach in person, or even write a letter to. Losing this aspect of e-mail is a shame, but it's inevitable. E-mail will become more like instant messaging, with its defined "buddy lists." E-mail's openness is doomed when faced with massive traffic and a few bad actors. The next time you try to reach out and touch someone electronically, you may need to know who that person is. Otherwise, you might be reaching out to no one. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- *SUPERNOVA 2002*: December 9-10 in Palo Alto, CA Time is running out to register for Supernova! http://www.pulver.com/supernova/ We've added legendary Lotus founder Mitch Kapor to a speaker roster that already included Google's Sergey Brin, P2P thinker Clay Shirky, Microsoft's Dan'l Lewin, visionary Howard Rheingold, IBM's Rod Smith, and telecom provocateur David Isenberg. Supernova will be the first public presentation of Chandler, Kapor's audacious plan to turn productivity software upside down. Supernova is the only place you'll learn how WiFi, collaborative software, Weblogs, broadband media, and Web services may undermine your business... or create powerful growth opportunities. Some of the smartest and most successful people in tech are coming for a blast of fresh thinking and useful insights. Can you afford to miss it? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The Broadband Content Myth The idea that solving the digital copyright mess is crucial to broadband adoption has become conventional wisdom. I first saw this argument in a column by law professor Lawrence Lessig in the Industry Standard. He used it to point the finger of blame at the content owners. Yet the content owners use the same argument! They blame the greedy technology industry for balking at the digital rights management technologies that will usher in movies on demand. Both sides are mistaken. Digital entertainment will be a big part of the broadband market, but we should be skeptical any time someone tells us they can foresee a "killer app". Video on demand is actually a hoary example of an app that didn't kill, despite lavish funding and high expectations. It was the centerpiece of the hyped video dialtone networks of the 1990s, remember? You probably don't. That's the point. Real killer apps tend to surprise people. No one in the early 1990s thought that interoperable email would be the driver of the Internet boom. And who would have predicted that the most successful of the countless Internet startups was the one that made it easy for people to swap Pez dispensers? eBay looks obvious only in hindsight. Broadband isn't an application; it's a platform. No magic bullet will suddently convince everyone to adopt it. That's also the fallacy of legislation such as the Tauzin-Dingell bill that pretends one legal change, whether deregulating the incumbent phone companies or regulating them more, will transform the market overnight. Sure, we can do things that will speed up or slow down broadband. The difference matters to investors and to companies. It's dangerous, though, to set up a straw-man broadband nirvana and fight an all-or- nothing battle about it. There will indeed be killer apps on broadband platforms. However, I suspect multiplayer gaming, personal videoblogging, voice telephony and on-demand do-it-yourself and personal-improvement videos will rank far above downloadable movies on the list. Don't get me wrong. By insisting on extreme restrictions on content, the copyright holders, especially in the movie industry, have done a disservice to their customers and to the economy. There's a middle ground that addresses realistic concerns about piracy, while not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I personally think the content owners' intransigence is the primary reason we haven't gotten there. Yet both sides are guilty of ratcheting up the doomsday rhetoric instead of negotiating. And that's why the "killer app" question matters. If you think your opponents are the only thing standing in the way of immediate ubiquitous broadband, you're going to fight tooth-and-nail for your point of view. If you have a healthy humility about your ability to foresee killer apps, you'll do what the founding Internet technologists did. They built a network on the principle of end-to- end, meaning that the network didn't pre-suppose the applications. Now, more than ever, we should adhere to that approach. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- LINKS OF THE MONTH Amazing Map of Manhattan WiFi Access Points (Marcos Lara) http://werbach.com/blog/images/PIPsurvey.gif FCC Spectrum Policy Task Force Report http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-228542A1.pdf Introducing the Microcontent Client (Anil Dash) http://tinyurl.com/2v5s Letter to FCC Chairman Michael Powell Promoting Network Neutrality http://www.mediaaccess.org/programs/broadband/CBUIfinalletter.pdf ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Please forward this email to others, and copy werblist@werbach.com; we will provide them with a subscription. To join or leave the list, visit http://two.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/werblist/ or send "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" to werblist-request@werbach.com. Send your comments and feedback to kevin@werbach.com. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ (c) 2002 Kevin Werbach. All Rights Reserved