On Sat, 22 Mar 2003, Steve Schear wrote: > What part of the infrastructure is being made scarce? You and I aren't > part of the infrastructure. The selection of a value for our time is just > another market force at work. Unless MTAs can reject mail for lack of postage, this approach will not fix a large majority of the problems of spam. Unless clearing is built into the protocol, sender pays is a non-starter. > But its not cash for email transport. The transport cost is > unaffected. Its cash for our eyeballs. I find this a distinction WITH a > difference. Perhaps you do not.
OK, I see you have a different view from many of the ASRG types. I still don't believe the approach will work, but I'll stop attributing to you views of others. Sorry. > >This is no different than the various > >request-permission-to-transmit proposals, aside from adding cost > >to the mix. Doing so will cut down on normal person to person discourse > >before it fixes spam. > > Yes, some Balkination may occur at the outset, but this is something that > is recipient controlled not something mandated by ISPsm etc. What I was attempting to point out is that adding wealth transfer is not adding any value over request-to-transmit. > The IETF anti-spam discussion seems to have broken down into a different > "religious" camps, with many asserting that nothing that can't immediately > be rolled out on a universal basis or isn't fully functional until > universally accepted should even proposed. I disagree. Yeah, I agree in general. The list is a waste. I personally think the only way there is going to be movement is for Venema or (more likely) DJB to add an optional new protocol that incrementally moves us towards a Bright, Shiny Future. (As an aside that I haven't bothered to voice on ASRG because I think it is pointless, I'd like to see signed headers. MTAs can choose to validate the path. This does nothing directly to stop spam, does nothing to harm anonymous communications, is backwards-compatible, and reinforces black-holes. Building reputations as a mail server has value. AOL won't do it, but Joe-Random-Small-Business will, so incremental uptake can work. I tend to agree with you that the right approach is to _add_ something to mail to assert it is worthwhile to view. Email, like mugging, can be an opportunistic behavior.) > Sender pays can be rolled out using PoW stamps almost immediately. Yes, > some early adopters may find themselves "cut off" from senders who either > can't or won't make the effort to create and attach computation > stamps. For this reason sender-pays should be serious considered by most > businesses until widely adopted. But for individuals inundated with spam > it could be a quick and effective solution. Of course, the question they > will ask when the spam stops is how many others aren't sending email cause > they think I'm fringe. :) > > steve Unless and until Outlook supports wealth transfer for mail this will never happen. Unless and until MS profits from "fixing" the problem, Outlook will never support the notion. (and if MS does support it, mutt and evolution won't, because that's M$ hegemony. &etc.) Sender-pays won't fly. Put another way, you could deny unstamped mail from me if you wanted, with a bounce asking me to enter a credit card at the web page of your choice. Why are you not doing so? Procmail and a CGI would allow this. I'll even write the code for you, if you'll promise to use it on all of your mail. Let me know what language you prefer. -j, who maybe gets a little excited about email because I've writing email software for too long. -- Jamie Lawrence [EMAIL PROTECTED] Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa