Comment by jacquesm
10 years ago
There is nothing altruistic about businesses not paying extortionists. Sure they may come to (some, hopefully limited) harm.
But once you as a business pay an extortionist you have just taken on another partner in your business, who will do none of the work and who will take almost all of your profits. So paying out of pragmatism will actually have the exact opposite effect of what you intend to achieve (to make the problem go away).
A good parasite does not kill the host, merely takes all the resources they can get and it certainly won't stop with one attempt at extortion. And judging from the blog post linked they learned their lesson.
edited for clarity, thanks ghotifish.
you misread jessriedel.
>> The only way spam will go away is if everybody will finally stop responding to spam.
> Right, which is why "never pay extortion fees" doesn't make much more sense for combatting this stuff ... It's unrealistic to think we will convince enough businesses to altruistically not pay extortionists,
jessriedel is not saying it's altruistic to pay, it's altruistic not to pay.
People have offered both self-interested and altruistic arguments for not paying in this thread. Neither are convincing.