Variola wrote...
> Making sure we have robust remailing services in one shape or >another and at the same time have some kind of at least indirect >acceptance from legislators and also a low degree of spam flowing >through are essential goals.
Any legislator seeking to control how people use a communications medium needs killing.
Well, although the sentiment is appreciated, I'm not sure it's well applied in this case.
What this guy seems to be saying is that it's better to 'solve' the SPAM problem now rather than waiting for legislators to use Spam as a reason to try to shut down the remailers (and this seems distinctly possible particularly if George W makes it to his 3rd term!). I don't think the guy is looking for state-ish 'OK', but pointing out that things get a lot more difficult if/when remailers or their use is outlawed. Like back in the day when I used to toke on a regular basis...I sure was going to keep scoring nicklebags and whatnot, but my count would probably have been better at my potstore if it were legal. (And yes, a potstore...there's tons of them in NYC with plexiglass walls and a few canned food props lying around. You stand in line and order your nickel/dime bag just like buying tokens.)
The hascash idea is OK, and obviously will work (as of now...the dividing line between human and machine is clearly not static, and smarter spam operations will start doing some segmentation analysis and then find it worthwhile to pay up). But the kind of person that may have legitimate need of a remailer may not understand and/or trust what would probably be necessary to use hashcash. And OK "that's their tough luck", but then I always feel there's safety in numbers.
-TD
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