[geeks] Patents vs. spam

[Joost van de Griek]

On 2003-11-20 06:25, wa2egp at att.net wrote:

>> "SiliconValley.com's Dan Gillmor speculates that AT&T might have nobler
>> motives. By patenting techniques for bypassing spam filters, AT&T can sue
>> spammers for using such techniques; but he rejects this idea on the grounds
>> that spammers are hardly going to throw in the towel because of a little
>> legal difficulty."
>
> Now I find that amusing since I've been fighting a company that plants a
> trojan horse in a computer which will call a porn website for $5/minute
> without your knowledge or connects your machine to a number in Africa.  With
> the latter, the long distanc carrier gets a piece of the action and AT&T seems
> to be getting the biggest piece of the action among all of the carriers from
> what I've read.  (Sigh)  Things never seem to change....

True, but those things make money for them; spam probably costs them money,
since they're one of the parties that are burdened with trafficking all that
unsolicited junkmail around the internet.

It may seem a noble motive, but it probably just comes down to the bottom
line, as per usual.

,xtG
.tsooJ
-- 
If a mute swears, does his mother wash his hands with soap?
-- 
Joost van de Griek
<http://www.jvdg.net/>