Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
My view - as controversial as ever - is that the problem is unfixable, and mail will eventually fade away. That which will take its place is p2p / IM / chat / SMS based. Which are easier to spam and less secure than smtp. SMTP is p2p by definition, though you can use servers if you want. SMS *IS* email , just a different kind of email - and a less secure, more expensive kind, in which the infrastructure is more in the hands of the large companies that run it and less accessible to users installing their own protections. In that world, it is still reasonable to build ones own IM system for the needs of ones own community, and not to have to worry about standards. Which means one can build in the defences that are needed, when they are needed. as we can for smtp Chat is already higher volume (I read somewhere) in raw quantity of messages sent than email. I suspect you don't get much traffic. The beauty of a non-real-time store-and-forward system like smtp (or SMS, or oldstyle conferencing systems with off-line readers) is precisely that it can be automated. I don't have to see mail I don't want. A fate for email is that as spam grows to take over more of the share of the shrinking pie, but consumes more of the bandwidth A higher proportion of the snail-mail I get is junk than the email. In fact almost all of it is ( most of what isn't is bills :-( - usually already paid by the bank) I throw more than half of my incoming paper mail in the bin unopened, and about half of what is left is just put in a cupboard in case I get into some dispute tithe the bank or the electric company or whoever. A higher proportion of the landline phone calls I get are junk. At least 4 out of 5 calls, maybe 9 out of 10. Email is doing quite well. the ISPs will start to charge people for email, and not for IM. Why should they charge more for qa service which is not only cheaper for them to run, but has more competition and is harder to subvert? A serious proportion of the rootkits and so on that have been plaguing us for the last few years involves chat instant messaging so on. I'd block it at the boundary firewall. People who use it should just learn how to use mail. They'd get through more. Chat is for functional illiterates. Learn to read at adult speed and you'll prefer mail. Why should they put up with being limited to someone else's typing speed?
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
On 2005-03-03T11:52:59+, ken wrote: Chat is already higher volume (I read somewhere) in raw quantity of messages sent than email. I suspect you don't get much traffic. The beauty of a non-real-time store-and-forward system like smtp (or SMS, or oldstyle conferencing systems with off-line readers) is precisely that it can be automated. I don't have to see mail I don't want. You don't have to see IMs you don't want, either. You can refuse them from people not on your buddy list. A fate for email is that as spam grows to take over more of the share of the shrinking pie, but consumes more of the bandwidth A higher proportion of the snail-mail I get is junk than the email. A higher proportion of the landline phone calls I get are junk. At least 4 out of 5 calls, maybe 9 out of 10. Email is doing quite well. With 3 or 4 RBL blacklists, greylisting, and making sure senders don't ehlo with my ip address, I don't even have to use dspam or Spamassassin I get so little spam. A serious proportion of the rootkits and so on that have been plaguing us for the last few years involves chat instant messaging so on. I'd block it at the boundary firewall. People who use it should just learn how to use mail. They'd get through more. Chat is for functional illiterates. Learn to read at adult speed and you'll prefer mail. Why should they put up with being limited to someone else's typing speed? I don't think email will disappear either, but IM is good for 2-way conversations. Helping someone debug a problem via email gets tedious very quickly. Strangely enough, a good number of people I've talked to over the phone have had their IQ drop by about 100 points when I start using a phonetic alphabet to spell things. I usually end up having to repeat the phonetic spelling several times; it's really strange. IM eliminates that whole problem. Unless communicating in a standard, often-spoken language, phones lose their utility. There's a place for both IM and email. I agree, though, that IM may suffer from a poor S/N ratio. -- Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter. --Hemingway, Esquire, April 1936
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
My view - as controversial as ever - is that the problem is unfixable, and mail will eventually fade away. That which will take its place is p2p / IM / chat / SMS based. Which are easier to spam and less secure than smtp. SMTP is p2p by definition, though you can use servers if you want. SMS *IS* email , just a different kind of email - and a less secure, more expensive kind, in which the infrastructure is more in the hands of the large companies that run it and less accessible to users installing their own protections. In that world, it is still reasonable to build ones own IM system for the needs of ones own community, and not to have to worry about standards. Which means one can build in the defences that are needed, when they are needed. as we can for smtp Chat is already higher volume (I read somewhere) in raw quantity of messages sent than email. I suspect you don't get much traffic. The beauty of a non-real-time store-and-forward system like smtp (or SMS, or oldstyle conferencing systems with off-line readers) is precisely that it can be automated. I don't have to see mail I don't want. A fate for email is that as spam grows to take over more of the share of the shrinking pie, but consumes more of the bandwidth A higher proportion of the snail-mail I get is junk than the email. In fact almost all of it is ( most of what isn't is bills :-( - usually already paid by the bank) I throw more than half of my incoming paper mail in the bin unopened, and about half of what is left is just put in a cupboard in case I get into some dispute tithe the bank or the electric company or whoever. A higher proportion of the landline phone calls I get are junk. At least 4 out of 5 calls, maybe 9 out of 10. Email is doing quite well. the ISPs will start to charge people for email, and not for IM. Why should they charge more for qa service which is not only cheaper for them to run, but has more competition and is harder to subvert? A serious proportion of the rootkits and so on that have been plaguing us for the last few years involves chat instant messaging so on. I'd block it at the boundary firewall. People who use it should just learn how to use mail. They'd get through more. Chat is for functional illiterates. Learn to read at adult speed and you'll prefer mail. Why should they put up with being limited to someone else's typing speed?
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
On 2005-03-03T11:52:59+, ken wrote: Chat is already higher volume (I read somewhere) in raw quantity of messages sent than email. I suspect you don't get much traffic. The beauty of a non-real-time store-and-forward system like smtp (or SMS, or oldstyle conferencing systems with off-line readers) is precisely that it can be automated. I don't have to see mail I don't want. You don't have to see IMs you don't want, either. You can refuse them from people not on your buddy list. A fate for email is that as spam grows to take over more of the share of the shrinking pie, but consumes more of the bandwidth A higher proportion of the snail-mail I get is junk than the email. A higher proportion of the landline phone calls I get are junk. At least 4 out of 5 calls, maybe 9 out of 10. Email is doing quite well. With 3 or 4 RBL blacklists, greylisting, and making sure senders don't ehlo with my ip address, I don't even have to use dspam or Spamassassin I get so little spam. A serious proportion of the rootkits and so on that have been plaguing us for the last few years involves chat instant messaging so on. I'd block it at the boundary firewall. People who use it should just learn how to use mail. They'd get through more. Chat is for functional illiterates. Learn to read at adult speed and you'll prefer mail. Why should they put up with being limited to someone else's typing speed? I don't think email will disappear either, but IM is good for 2-way conversations. Helping someone debug a problem via email gets tedious very quickly. Strangely enough, a good number of people I've talked to over the phone have had their IQ drop by about 100 points when I start using a phonetic alphabet to spell things. I usually end up having to repeat the phonetic spelling several times; it's really strange. IM eliminates that whole problem. Unless communicating in a standard, often-spoken language, phones lose their utility. There's a place for both IM and email. I agree, though, that IM may suffer from a poor S/N ratio. -- Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter. --Hemingway, Esquire, April 1936
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
On Wed, Feb 16, 2005 at 03:29:21PM +, Ian G wrote: Peter Gutmann wrote: Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services. And the spammers will be using everyone else's PC's to send out their spam, so the spam problem will still be as bad as ever but now Joe Sixpack will be paying to send it. Hmmm, and maybe *that* will finally motivate software companies, end users, ISPs, etc etc, to fix up software, systems, and usage habits to prevent this. My view - as controversial as ever - is that the problem is unfixable, and mail will eventually fade away. That which will take its place is p2p / IM / chat / SMS based. In that world, it is still reasonable to build ones own IM system for the needs of ones own community, and not to have to worry about standards. Which means one can build in the defences that are needed, when they are needed. Better start on those defenses now then- there is already significant amounts of IM and SMS spam. I would be suprised if the people designing IM and SMS systems have learned much from the failures of SMTP et al. Eric
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
Thus spake Peter Gutmann ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [16/02/05 01:04]: : Hmmm, and maybe *that* will finally motivate software companies, end users, : ISPs, etc etc, to fix up software, systems, and usage habits to prevent this. Doubt it'll motivate the ISPs. They'll be the ones making the 15c/msg. If they clean it up, that's lost income.
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
At 8:12 PM -0500 2/16/05, Barry Shein wrote: And how do you fund all this, make it attain an economic life of its own? I can send you a business plan, if you like. Post-Clinton-Bubble talent's still cheap, I bet... ;-) Still estivating, here, in Roslindale, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
Wrong. We already solved this problem on Cypherpunks a while back. A spammer will have to pay to send you spam, trusted emails do not. You'll have a settable Spam-barrier which determines how much a spammer has to pay in order to lob spam over your barrier (you can set it to 'infinite' of course). A new, non-spam mailer can request that their payment be returned upon receipt, but they'll have to include the payment unless you were expecting them. This way, the only 3rd parties are those that validate the micropayments. -TD From: Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:29:05 -0500 Oh no, the idiotic penny black idea rides again. Like the movie War Games when a young Matthew Broderick saves the world by causing the WOPR computer to be distracted into playing itself tic-tac-toe rather than launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike. It was a MOVIE, made in 1983 nonetheless, get over it. More seriously, what attracts people to this penny black idea is that they realize that the only thing which will stop spammers is to interject some sort of economic constraint. The obvious constraint would be something like stamps since that's a usage fee. But the proposer (and his/her/its audience) always hates the idea of paying postage for their own email, no, no, there must be a solution which performs that economic miracle of only charging for the behavior I don't like! An economic Maxwell's demon! So, just like the terminal seeking laetrile shots or healing waters, they turn to not even half-baked ideas such as penny black. Don't charge you, don't charge me, charge that fellow behind the tree! Oh well. Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services. I know, we'll work around it. Of course by then they'll have a multi-billion dollar messaging business to make sure your attempts to by-step it are outlawed and punished. Consider what's going on with the music-sharing world, as another multi-billion dollar business people thought they could just defy with anonymous peer-to-peer services... The point: I think the time is long past due to grow up on this issue and accept that some sort of limited, reasonable-usage-free, postage system is necessary to prevent collapse into monopoly. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool Die| [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202| Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo*
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
Well, basically it's pretty simple. Someone will eventually recognize that the idea has a lot of economic potential and they'll go to Sand Hill and get some venture funds. 6 months later you'll be able to sign up for Spam Mail. Eventually the idea will spread and Spammers, who are already squeezed via Men With Guns, will start running out of options and so will be willing to pay, for instance, 1 cent per email. After that, of course, the price will likely go up, except for crummier demographics that are willing to read email for 1 cent/spam. Actually, this points to why Spam is Spam...Spam is Spam because it has zero correlation to what you want. Look at Vogue, etc...it's a $10 magazine consisting mostly of advertisements, but they're the advertisements women want. Pay-to-Spam will work precisely because it will force Spammers to become actual marketers, delivering the right messages to the right demographics..in that context the Price to send spam is a precise measure of Spammers lack-of-marketing savvy and/or information. Hell, if they're good enough at it they'll probably get women to pay THEM to spam 'em. -TD From: Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 20:12:59 -0500 And how do you fund all this, make it attain an economic life of its own? That's the big problem with all micropayment schemes. They sound good until you try to work the business plan, then they prove themselves impossible because it costs 2c to handle each penny. And more if issues such as collections and enforcement (e.g., against frauds) is taken into account. This is why, for example, we have a postal system which manages postage, rather than some scheme whereby every paper mail recipient charges every paper mail sender etc etc etc. On February 16, 2005 at 12:38 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tyler Durden) wrote: Wrong. We already solved this problem on Cypherpunks a while back. A spammer will have to pay to send you spam, trusted emails do not. You'll have a settable Spam-barrier which determines how much a spammer has to pay in order to lob spam over your barrier (you can set it to 'infinite' of course). A new, non-spam mailer can request that their payment be returned upon receipt, but they'll have to include the payment unless you were expecting them. This way, the only 3rd parties are those that validate the micropayments. -TD From: Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:29:05 -0500 Oh no, the idiotic penny black idea rides again. Like the movie War Games when a young Matthew Broderick saves the world by causing the WOPR computer to be distracted into playing itself tic-tac-toe rather than launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike. It was a MOVIE, made in 1983 nonetheless, get over it. More seriously, what attracts people to this penny black idea is that they realize that the only thing which will stop spammers is to interject some sort of economic constraint. The obvious constraint would be something like stamps since that's a usage fee. But the proposer (and his/her/its audience) always hates the idea of paying postage for their own email, no, no, there must be a solution which performs that economic miracle of only charging for the behavior I don't like! An economic Maxwell's demon! So, just like the terminal seeking laetrile shots or healing waters, they turn to not even half-baked ideas such as penny black. Don't charge you, don't charge me, charge that fellow behind the tree! Oh well. Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services. I know, we'll work around it. Of course by then they'll have a multi-billion dollar messaging business to make sure your attempts to by-step it are outlawed and punished. Consider what's going on with the music-sharing world, as another multi-billion dollar business people thought they could just defy with anonymous peer-to-peer services... The point: I think the time is long past due to grow up on this issue and accept that some sort of limited, reasonable-usage-free, postage system is necessary to prevent collapse into monopoly. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool Die| [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202| Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo* -- -Barry Shein Software Tool Die| [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
Bingo, that's the whole point, spam doesn't get fixed until there's a robust economics available to fix it. So long as it's treated merely an annoyance or security flaw there won't be enough economic backpressure. On February 16, 2005 at 18:38 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Peter Gutmann) wrote: Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services. And the spammers will be using everyone else's PC's to send out their spam, so the spam problem will still be as bad as ever but now Joe Sixpack will be paying to send it. Hmmm, and maybe *that* will finally motivate software companies, end users, ISPs, etc etc, to fix up software, systems, and usage habits to prevent this. Peter. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool Die| [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202| Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo*
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
Peter Gutmann wrote: Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services. And the spammers will be using everyone else's PC's to send out their spam, so the spam problem will still be as bad as ever but now Joe Sixpack will be paying to send it. Hmmm, and maybe *that* will finally motivate software companies, end users, ISPs, etc etc, to fix up software, systems, and usage habits to prevent this. My view - as controversial as ever - is that the problem is unfixable, and mail will eventually fade away. That which will take its place is p2p / IM / chat / SMS based. In that world, it is still reasonable to build ones own IM system for the needs of ones own community, and not to have to worry about standards. Which means one can build in the defences that are needed, when they are needed. Chat is already higher volume (I read somewhere) in raw quantity of messages sent than email. A fate for email is that as spam grows to take over more of the share of the shrinking pie, but consumes more of the bandwidth, the ISPs will start to charge people for email, and not for IM. Those left paying for it are going to discover it is cheaper to ditch it and let the spammers fight over the shreds. That's just one plausible future, tho. iang -- News and views on what matters in finance+crypto: http://financialcryptography.com/
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
Thus spake Peter Gutmann ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) [16/02/05 01:04]: : Hmmm, and maybe *that* will finally motivate software companies, end users, : ISPs, etc etc, to fix up software, systems, and usage habits to prevent this. Doubt it'll motivate the ISPs. They'll be the ones making the 15c/msg. If they clean it up, that's lost income.
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
On Wed, Feb 16, 2005 at 03:29:21PM +, Ian G wrote: Peter Gutmann wrote: Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services. And the spammers will be using everyone else's PC's to send out their spam, so the spam problem will still be as bad as ever but now Joe Sixpack will be paying to send it. Hmmm, and maybe *that* will finally motivate software companies, end users, ISPs, etc etc, to fix up software, systems, and usage habits to prevent this. My view - as controversial as ever - is that the problem is unfixable, and mail will eventually fade away. That which will take its place is p2p / IM / chat / SMS based. In that world, it is still reasonable to build ones own IM system for the needs of ones own community, and not to have to worry about standards. Which means one can build in the defences that are needed, when they are needed. Better start on those defenses now then- there is already significant amounts of IM and SMS spam. I would be suprised if the people designing IM and SMS systems have learned much from the failures of SMTP et al. Eric
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
Wrong. We already solved this problem on Cypherpunks a while back. A spammer will have to pay to send you spam, trusted emails do not. You'll have a settable Spam-barrier which determines how much a spammer has to pay in order to lob spam over your barrier (you can set it to 'infinite' of course). A new, non-spam mailer can request that their payment be returned upon receipt, but they'll have to include the payment unless you were expecting them. This way, the only 3rd parties are those that validate the micropayments. -TD From: Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:29:05 -0500 Oh no, the idiotic penny black idea rides again. Like the movie War Games when a young Matthew Broderick saves the world by causing the WOPR computer to be distracted into playing itself tic-tac-toe rather than launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike. It was a MOVIE, made in 1983 nonetheless, get over it. More seriously, what attracts people to this penny black idea is that they realize that the only thing which will stop spammers is to interject some sort of economic constraint. The obvious constraint would be something like stamps since that's a usage fee. But the proposer (and his/her/its audience) always hates the idea of paying postage for their own email, no, no, there must be a solution which performs that economic miracle of only charging for the behavior I don't like! An economic Maxwell's demon! So, just like the terminal seeking laetrile shots or healing waters, they turn to not even half-baked ideas such as penny black. Don't charge you, don't charge me, charge that fellow behind the tree! Oh well. Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services. I know, we'll work around it. Of course by then they'll have a multi-billion dollar messaging business to make sure your attempts to by-step it are outlawed and punished. Consider what's going on with the music-sharing world, as another multi-billion dollar business people thought they could just defy with anonymous peer-to-peer services... The point: I think the time is long past due to grow up on this issue and accept that some sort of limited, reasonable-usage-free, postage system is necessary to prevent collapse into monopoly. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool Die| [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202| Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo*
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
Bingo, that's the whole point, spam doesn't get fixed until there's a robust economics available to fix it. So long as it's treated merely an annoyance or security flaw there won't be enough economic backpressure. On February 16, 2005 at 18:38 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Peter Gutmann) wrote: Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services. And the spammers will be using everyone else's PC's to send out their spam, so the spam problem will still be as bad as ever but now Joe Sixpack will be paying to send it. Hmmm, and maybe *that* will finally motivate software companies, end users, ISPs, etc etc, to fix up software, systems, and usage habits to prevent this. Peter. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool Die| [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202| Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo*
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
And how do you fund all this, make it attain an economic life of its own? That's the big problem with all micropayment schemes. They sound good until you try to work the business plan, then they prove themselves impossible because it costs 2c to handle each penny. And more if issues such as collections and enforcement (e.g., against frauds) is taken into account. This is why, for example, we have a postal system which manages postage, rather than some scheme whereby every paper mail recipient charges every paper mail sender etc etc etc. On February 16, 2005 at 12:38 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tyler Durden) wrote: Wrong. We already solved this problem on Cypherpunks a while back. A spammer will have to pay to send you spam, trusted emails do not. You'll have a settable Spam-barrier which determines how much a spammer has to pay in order to lob spam over your barrier (you can set it to 'infinite' of course). A new, non-spam mailer can request that their payment be returned upon receipt, but they'll have to include the payment unless you were expecting them. This way, the only 3rd parties are those that validate the micropayments. -TD From: Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:29:05 -0500 Oh no, the idiotic penny black idea rides again. Like the movie War Games when a young Matthew Broderick saves the world by causing the WOPR computer to be distracted into playing itself tic-tac-toe rather than launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike. It was a MOVIE, made in 1983 nonetheless, get over it. More seriously, what attracts people to this penny black idea is that they realize that the only thing which will stop spammers is to interject some sort of economic constraint. The obvious constraint would be something like stamps since that's a usage fee. But the proposer (and his/her/its audience) always hates the idea of paying postage for their own email, no, no, there must be a solution which performs that economic miracle of only charging for the behavior I don't like! An economic Maxwell's demon! So, just like the terminal seeking laetrile shots or healing waters, they turn to not even half-baked ideas such as penny black. Don't charge you, don't charge me, charge that fellow behind the tree! Oh well. Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services. I know, we'll work around it. Of course by then they'll have a multi-billion dollar messaging business to make sure your attempts to by-step it are outlawed and punished. Consider what's going on with the music-sharing world, as another multi-billion dollar business people thought they could just defy with anonymous peer-to-peer services... The point: I think the time is long past due to grow up on this issue and accept that some sort of limited, reasonable-usage-free, postage system is necessary to prevent collapse into monopoly. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool Die| [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202| Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo* -- -Barry Shein Software Tool Die| [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202| Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo*
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
At 8:12 PM -0500 2/16/05, Barry Shein wrote: And how do you fund all this, make it attain an economic life of its own? I can send you a business plan, if you like. Post-Clinton-Bubble talent's still cheap, I bet... ;-) Still estivating, here, in Roslindale, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
Well, basically it's pretty simple. Someone will eventually recognize that the idea has a lot of economic potential and they'll go to Sand Hill and get some venture funds. 6 months later you'll be able to sign up for Spam Mail. Eventually the idea will spread and Spammers, who are already squeezed via Men With Guns, will start running out of options and so will be willing to pay, for instance, 1 cent per email. After that, of course, the price will likely go up, except for crummier demographics that are willing to read email for 1 cent/spam. Actually, this points to why Spam is Spam...Spam is Spam because it has zero correlation to what you want. Look at Vogue, etc...it's a $10 magazine consisting mostly of advertisements, but they're the advertisements women want. Pay-to-Spam will work precisely because it will force Spammers to become actual marketers, delivering the right messages to the right demographics..in that context the Price to send spam is a precise measure of Spammers lack-of-marketing savvy and/or information. Hell, if they're good enough at it they'll probably get women to pay THEM to spam 'em. -TD From: Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 20:12:59 -0500 And how do you fund all this, make it attain an economic life of its own? That's the big problem with all micropayment schemes. They sound good until you try to work the business plan, then they prove themselves impossible because it costs 2c to handle each penny. And more if issues such as collections and enforcement (e.g., against frauds) is taken into account. This is why, for example, we have a postal system which manages postage, rather than some scheme whereby every paper mail recipient charges every paper mail sender etc etc etc. On February 16, 2005 at 12:38 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Tyler Durden) wrote: Wrong. We already solved this problem on Cypherpunks a while back. A spammer will have to pay to send you spam, trusted emails do not. You'll have a settable Spam-barrier which determines how much a spammer has to pay in order to lob spam over your barrier (you can set it to 'infinite' of course). A new, non-spam mailer can request that their payment be returned upon receipt, but they'll have to include the payment unless you were expecting them. This way, the only 3rd parties are those that validate the micropayments. -TD From: Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: R.A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: cryptography@metzdowd.com, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 17:29:05 -0500 Oh no, the idiotic penny black idea rides again. Like the movie War Games when a young Matthew Broderick saves the world by causing the WOPR computer to be distracted into playing itself tic-tac-toe rather than launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike. It was a MOVIE, made in 1983 nonetheless, get over it. More seriously, what attracts people to this penny black idea is that they realize that the only thing which will stop spammers is to interject some sort of economic constraint. The obvious constraint would be something like stamps since that's a usage fee. But the proposer (and his/her/its audience) always hates the idea of paying postage for their own email, no, no, there must be a solution which performs that economic miracle of only charging for the behavior I don't like! An economic Maxwell's demon! So, just like the terminal seeking laetrile shots or healing waters, they turn to not even half-baked ideas such as penny black. Don't charge you, don't charge me, charge that fellow behind the tree! Oh well. Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services. I know, we'll work around it. Of course by then they'll have a multi-billion dollar messaging business to make sure your attempts to by-step it are outlawed and punished. Consider what's going on with the music-sharing world, as another multi-billion dollar business people thought they could just defy with anonymous peer-to-peer services... The point: I think the time is long past due to grow up on this issue and accept that some sort of limited, reasonable-usage-free, postage system is necessary to prevent collapse into monopoly. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool Die| [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202| Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo* -- -Barry Shein Software Tool Die| [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
Oh no, the idiotic penny black idea rides again. Like the movie War Games when a young Matthew Broderick saves the world by causing the WOPR computer to be distracted into playing itself tic-tac-toe rather than launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike. It was a MOVIE, made in 1983 nonetheless, get over it. More seriously, what attracts people to this penny black idea is that they realize that the only thing which will stop spammers is to interject some sort of economic constraint. The obvious constraint would be something like stamps since that's a usage fee. But the proposer (and his/her/its audience) always hates the idea of paying postage for their own email, no, no, there must be a solution which performs that economic miracle of only charging for the behavior I don't like! An economic Maxwell's demon! So, just like the terminal seeking laetrile shots or healing waters, they turn to not even half-baked ideas such as penny black. Don't charge you, don't charge me, charge that fellow behind the tree! Oh well. Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services. I know, we'll work around it. Of course by then they'll have a multi-billion dollar messaging business to make sure your attempts to by-step it are outlawed and punished. Consider what's going on with the music-sharing world, as another multi-billion dollar business people thought they could just defy with anonymous peer-to-peer services... The point: I think the time is long past due to grow up on this issue and accept that some sort of limited, reasonable-usage-free, postage system is necessary to prevent collapse into monopoly. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool Die| [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202| Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo*
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services. And the spammers will be using everyone else's PC's to send out their spam, so the spam problem will still be as bad as ever but now Joe Sixpack will be paying to send it. Hmmm, and maybe *that* will finally motivate software companies, end users, ISPs, etc etc, to fix up software, systems, and usage habits to prevent this. Peter.
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
Oh no, the idiotic penny black idea rides again. Like the movie War Games when a young Matthew Broderick saves the world by causing the WOPR computer to be distracted into playing itself tic-tac-toe rather than launching a pre-emptive nuclear strike. It was a MOVIE, made in 1983 nonetheless, get over it. More seriously, what attracts people to this penny black idea is that they realize that the only thing which will stop spammers is to interject some sort of economic constraint. The obvious constraint would be something like stamps since that's a usage fee. But the proposer (and his/her/its audience) always hates the idea of paying postage for their own email, no, no, there must be a solution which performs that economic miracle of only charging for the behavior I don't like! An economic Maxwell's demon! So, just like the terminal seeking laetrile shots or healing waters, they turn to not even half-baked ideas such as penny black. Don't charge you, don't charge me, charge that fellow behind the tree! Oh well. Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services. I know, we'll work around it. Of course by then they'll have a multi-billion dollar messaging business to make sure your attempts to by-step it are outlawed and punished. Consider what's going on with the music-sharing world, as another multi-billion dollar business people thought they could just defy with anonymous peer-to-peer services... The point: I think the time is long past due to grow up on this issue and accept that some sort of limited, reasonable-usage-free, postage system is necessary to prevent collapse into monopoly. -- -Barry Shein Software Tool Die| [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202| Login: 617-739-WRLD The World | Public Access Internet | Since 1989 *oo*
Re: How to Stop Junk E-Mail: Charge for the Stamp
Barry Shein [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Eventually email will just collapse (as it's doing) and the RBOCs et al will inherit it and we'll all be paying 15c per message like their SMS services. And the spammers will be using everyone else's PC's to send out their spam, so the spam problem will still be as bad as ever but now Joe Sixpack will be paying to send it. Hmmm, and maybe *that* will finally motivate software companies, end users, ISPs, etc etc, to fix up software, systems, and usage habits to prevent this. Peter.
