Gordon: Before Habeas, if you get 419 mail, it's below the interest of both overworked criminal prosecutors and the cost-benefit threshold of a civil suit. If 419ers use SWE marks, the cost-benefit threshold swings way in the favor of prosecution. That might not gurantee they can be found and made to pay up, but it improves the chances.

Me: You think that "overworked criminal prosecuters" are more interested in minor DMCA violations in spam than in international wire fraud?

Gordon: MAPS were/are vigilantes, as much about making a point as practically solving a problem....Habeas is a profit-seeking corporation...

Me: Run by MAPS people

Gordon: That doesn't seem likely, but if it does come to pass, and that's the common user choice about the mail they want to receive, so be it! Why is individual discretion over what mail people receive a problem?

Me: Because the downside of such a system would only become apparent after certain irreversible adoption decisions (like a non-technical person getting a mailer sent to him by his ISP with a Habeas filter in place) -- i.e., if every bulk messenger needs to buy a "stamp" from Habeas, but Habeas is RAND in its distribution, we may get widespread Habeas adoption. But if Habeas is then acquired, or decides to change its behaviour, we will see that these people have the power to bottleneck some substantial fraction of mass communication. A claim in copyright to the haiku will last for 95 years. Moreover, their patent application means that we can't even mint our own stamps.