* Noah Meyerhans [2002-01-16 17:04:10 -0500]: > > | If you prefer to pay in arrears, simply post your advertisement > > | to the list, and the list operator will bill you USD 1999. > > > > I am not the list operator and cannot send out bills on his behalf... sorry. > > Well, I'm sure the list operator would be happy to let you speak on his > behalf regarding this issue. This has come up many times in the past, > and usually the listmaster ends up saying that they're too busy to track > down the spammers. If you're willing to put some time in, maybe > something will come of it...
As long as the current policy is in place, only the list operator is entitled to bill that fee. (She may of course outsource the billing and subsequent collection efforts, but the decision rests with her.) This is the only way to keep track of who has paid and who hasn't. Given the tendency for spammers to hide behind open relays or ISPs' privacy policies, not to mention forge sender addresses, I don't see any choice but to bill the owner of the IP address that has delivered the advertisement to Debian's list server. This is likely to be resisted by the ISPs involved, and would naturally lead to some form of blacklisting of debtor ISPs "until bills are paid". No ORBZ, just the Debian list operator's private "deadbeats" list. One must indeed wonder whether the current policy is workable. Revoking it would at least give us subscribers greater freedom to complain to the spammers' ISPs, something we can't really do at the moment. As for tagging: pre-paid advertisements should definitely be tagged, if only to keep us subscribers from complaining to ISPs etc.
