Spam: The Net's Nemesis?
By John Francis

Since the late 1930s SPAM (acronym for Spicy Ham) has been the brand name of a tinned American meat product.

Guest Column

How that word (with a new meaning!) came to be added some fifty years later to the vocabulary of the Internet is not quite clear. One popular account revolves around a Monty Python skit in which a bunch of irate coffee bar customers, unhappy that every item on the menu had spam on it, express their displeasure by rowdily singing (until asked to shut up) "Spam, Spam, Spam".

Hydra Headed Monster
Over the years the volume of spam on the Net has so largely increased that it is no longer a mere annoyance. It appears of late to have become a major threat to the Net's very existence. That was a reason why the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) had convened earlier this year in Geneva a thematic meeting on countering spam.

In the view of one report to that meeting, spam in its prevailing state (and within its definition as unsolicited commercial email) could be compared to a hydra headed monster. Accounting for some 65% of overall email traffic it was causing the global economy a loss of about US$ 25 billion a year. With the scale (and scope) of spam growing at an alarming rate, urgent action to eliminate the scourge seemed imperative. Given however that spammers had apparently become quite skilful at countering anti-spam measures, it seemed equally clear that the eradication of the menace would call for major efforts at both national and international levels.

Clearly, the best way to counter spam would have been to withdraw from spammers the lure of huge profits that could be made from free emails. A simple solution to the problem would thus have been to impose (on senders) a minimal charge for every email sent. Other solutions could have included those calling for charges on unwelcome bulk emails only. Surprisingly, such economic solutions did not seem to be of much interest to the meeting, which chose to limit its attention to solutions of a legislative, regulatory, or technical nature.

Legislative solutions the meeting considered were basically for the enactment (or amendment) of national laws, which while providing for severe punishment (stiff jail terms and hefty fines) would be also easy to enforce. Regulatory solutions were mainly for self-regulation by the industry, and technical solutions by and large for the use of spam rejection filters.

It was evident that the effectiveness of these latter solutions would however be severely impaired by the absence of sender authentication in the current suite of Internet Protocols (IPs). Furthermore, without such authentication the implementation of any economic solution requiring some payment by the sender was precluded.

The omission of authentication (as provided from the very beginning in the 1860s for the telegram service) seemed rather odd, given that its multimedia versatility notwithstanding, the IP email service was in effect just a datagram service. Such omission appeared all the more curious when another email service (available for some time in the 1980s and 90s over a Message Handling System conforming to ITU standards) had indeed been provided with an authentication capability.

Trade Trumps Telecoms
Perhaps, the currently observed security shortcomings of the Internet are but an unintended consequence of the telecommunication policy environment of the 1980s in which the initial development of the Internet -- as a national public data network - had come to pass in the US.

The year 1982 had been historic for telecommunications. It marked the watershed of US District Court Judge Harold Green's MFJ (Modified Final Judgement) on the divestiture of AT&T. That judgement led to the break up of the Bell system and the introduction of competition into most of the Bell network -- except for the local service, which continued as a natural monopoly. This exception however was also to come to an end with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which opened up the local service as well to competition.

Since the early days of telegraphy and telephony and up to the 1980s, nearly all over the world PTOs (Public Telecommunication Operators) had been state monopolies run by Government Departments. The US was one of the few countries where private companies, like AT&T, were the PTOs. AT&T's divestiture however set in motion in Western Europe as well as in Japan a trend for services other than the local being opened up for competition. As a first step, a number of PTOs in these regions began to be privatized.

Soon Liberalisation, Privatisation, Competition and Deregulation came to be marketed as preferred policy options for reform. There was also pressure on PTOs to reduce their prices for long-distance and international services.

Concurrently, there was mounting demand from the developed world to havetelecommunications considered as a product for trade. That ultimately led totelecommunication services being included in the Uruguay round of negotiations of the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). Following the completion of that round in 1994 at Marrakesh, certain aspects of telecommunications such as market access and pricing were also brought within the purview of GATT agreements. In 1995, the GATT became the WTO (World Trade Organization).

From the quiet backwaters of a public utility, telecommunications thus entered the stormy seas of the market -- for trade as a service.

During the 1980s the idealism with which the international agenda was imbued following World War II (as well as the resulting special attention given to normative and human rights aspects) had begun to wane. The nineties saw the ascendance and consolidation of the liberalization agenda. There was a significant shift of regulatory structures to market-dominated models with emphasis on trade and commercial considerations.

The rise of the trade paradigm in telecommunications had its impact on the role of the ITU as well. The greater the extent to which market mechanisms began to be resorted to in the settlement of telecommunication questions, the less became the ITU's field of competence.

The Internet could not escape the legacy of its origins - initially constructed as it had been in the eighties mainly by academicians (not traditional network operators). Their goal had been to establish an open, free and decentralized network (subject to a minimum of rules and regulations), whose development and growth would be for market forces to shape. It must have made good sense for those building the network then to keep its complexities and costs (as well as charges for use) to the lowest levels possible.

Smoke and Mirrors
The foregoing considerations might well have accounted for the position taken by the US at the ITU's 1988 WATTC (World Administrative Telegraph and Telephone Conference) that new telecommunication services be subject (if at all) only to the least degree of regulation. By formally declaring that (in its view) standards were for voluntary acceptance, not mandatory adherence, the US further reinforced that position.

While the Conference outcome was sufficiently ambiguous for all countries to deem acceptable, WATTC demonstrated two things: First, the US's vision of regulatory reform did not appear to be shared by all governments; second, the multilateral approach seemed as laborious as ever.

In later years the US appeared to show a preference for telecommunication issues being given consideration when possible in the liberal trade forum of the WTO rather than the technical and apparently not so liberal forum of the ITU. In some cases however such consideration (predominantly from a trade perspective) seemed to raise questions of equity.

One case of such a nature concerns the principle of cost oriented pricing and the related prohibition of cross-subsidization. The so-called rate re-balancing for voice telephony (which actually meant the withdrawal of subsidies the local service had long enjoyed from the long distance services) led to substantial increases in local service rates. A comparable exercise has yet to be even initiated however for the e-mail service, which continues to be exceptionally cheap; if not free (of any direct charge) -- thanks to the generous subsidies it receives from other services (e.g., advertising).

Another case concerns the question of revenue sharing (between PTOs) in respect of international telecommunication services. Here the US succeeded in having the accounting system for services modified to its advantage (at the expense of developing countries who had to suffer a reduction in the larger revenue shares they had traditionally enjoyed). Nonetheless, it has apparently declined so far to consider any sharing on its part of the cost burden of the Internet's international backbone routes.

Yet another case concerns international Internet governance. Although the e-mail service is obviously a telecommunication service, the US does not seem to favour the idea of ITU being given the mandate to deal with (in collaboration with the other entities concerned) questions relating to the international aspects of this service. But the rationale for such a view might very well be the same as that which led to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) -- rather than the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) -- being given responsibility for dealing with the spam problem.

Course Correction?
In a report to the US Congress (in June this year, on a National Do Not Email Registry required for a possible anti-spamming scheme) the FTC had concluded as follows. ". the development of a practical and effective means of authentication is a necessary tool to fight spam. Therefore the Commission encourages the private market to develop an authentication standard. Authentication is not only required to make a Registry effective, but may even substantially address the underlying problem that prompted Congress to consider the establishment of a Registry."

Earlier on in that report the FTC indicated that if no single market-based standard emerged within a reasonable period of time the Commission might consider taking steps to "mandate the use of a particular private-market developed authentication standard".

In that connection, it had also stated that a decision to proceed on those lines would not be made lightly, aware as it was of "the risks inherent in regulating technology and in changing the largely hands-off role of the government vis-à-vis the Internet."

The foregoing comments and conclusions of the FTC appear to indicate a notable change on the part of the US in so far as its policy on standards is concerned. It would now seem that in special cases at least the US would be prepared to accept the logic of some standards being made mandatory.

International Cooperation
Not only in establishing standards but also in framing rules and regulations, as well as in promoting development (in regard to telecommunications of all kinds) the nearly 140-year history of the ITU has been one of successful international cooperation.

That is perhaps the main reason why the ITU was chosen to play a lead role in the preparations for and conduct of the UN's World Information Summit on the Information Society. The first of the two phases of this Summit was held in Geneva (from 10 to 12 December 2003), with the second scheduled to take place in Tunis (from 16 to 18 November 2005).

The Summit's first phase agreed on a Declaration of Principles and a Plan of Action. These have been (and will be) further discussed and refined (in a number of committees, panels, groups and meetings - one of which for example was the thematic meeting on combating spam earlier referred to) for further consideration by the second phase of the Summit.

Although much has been achieved to date, much remains to be done towards ensuring the Summit's success: in meeting its basic objective of enabling all peoples of the world realize the full potential of the Information Age.

One area calling for further action relates to the diverse targets set for the modernization and growth of information and communication facilities in developing countries. Here, the necessary assessment of the order of investment needed to achieve those targets as well as the possible ways and means of generating the required funds is apparently still to be made.

Other points calling for attention would seem to include the following.

The focus of the work so far appears to have been more on Information Technology (the means) than on the Information Society (the ends). As a result, the means seem to have overshadowed the ends. This perhaps explains the apparently greater attention given to meeting the less crucial demands of the information haves (e.g., for increasingly sophisticated terminals) rather than the basic needs of the information have-nots.

A more fundamental problem with the work up to now however is that besides having paid more attention to technology than to information, less consideration seems to have been given to the needs of society than to information. In the process, the work done appears to have failed as yet to inspire or project a vision of what the Information Society should ultimately accomplish.

A New World Society
In this connection, it might be worth recalling that years ago Erich Fromm, the well-known social philosopher -- in his book "The Sane Society" -- had sought to describe the kind of society that would best respond to man's true nature and needs. Of the many insights and suggestions he had to offer, the following -- as paraphrased from the closing chapter of his book -- merit particular attention.

So absorbed had man been in the task of building the industrial machine, that he himself had become a part of the machine (rather than remaining its master). He experienced himself as a commodity, as an investment, his aim being to sell himself as profitably as possible on the market. His value as a person lay in his saleability, not in his human qualities of love, reason, or artistic measure. Happiness became identical with consumption: of newer and better commodities.

It was obvious that man's efforts required to be redirected towards creating a sane society, a society whose members would develop their reason to a point of objectivity that would enable them to see themselves, and others and nature, in their true reality, undistorted by infantile omniscience or paranoid hate.

Man needed to be restored to his supreme place in society, never being a means, never a thing to be used by others or by himself. Man's use by man had to end, and the economy become the servant of man's development.

Man could protect himself from the consequences of his own madness only by creating a society that conformed to the true needs of man, needs rooted in the very depths of his being -- a society in which man related to man lovingly in bonds of brotherhood and solidarity, rather than ties of blood and soil.

The writer is a former Senior Counsellor of the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva.

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