A quite possibly interesting question

One to which we don’t know the answer:

Britain's biggest banks are demanding that Facebook, Google and telecom giants pay hundreds of millions of pounds to help reimburse victims taken in by scammers on social media. Barclays, TSB, Lloyds and Santander have warned that technology companies are not shouldering their share of the burden from the wave of online fraud gripping Britain.

They are backing a so-called "polluter pays" principle in which tech companies would be required to contribute to a compensation war chest for victims.

If a scam takes place through the Royal Mail does the Royal Mail contribute to the compensation? Or BT over telephones?

If a scam propagates through advertisements in the newspaper - this certainly has happened, whether it does now is another matter - then does the newspaper which carried the ad contribute to the compensation?

We rather assume that a newspaper doesn’t, we also rather assume that if such liability were being talked about then newspapers would be less likely to report approvingly on the idea.

We are, of course, aware that such scams do happen. One of us advised against one of them a decade back, before it had even launched. Then some years later gave evidence in a number of trials which jailed those who had run the scam. Financial, fiscal and investment scams abound.

We’d not, even, be averse to the idea that those who aid in propagating such a scam be liable for the compensation. However, that rule of law thing - any such system must be all who aid in propagating, not just one particular technological form of it. Nor, as we suspect is the case here, just those with deep pockets.

Which leads to that interesting question. Do other propagators face such costs, if not, will this new idea impose them upon all or just the disfavored few?