Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
Status: RO Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2003 22:04:16 -0800 To: Jamie Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Steve Schear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] At 11:01 PM 3/21/2003 -0500, Jamie Lawrence wrote: On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, Steve Schear wrote: Steve, I've been watching your views on ASRG, and honestly, I have to say Sender Pays is top on my list for Bad Ideas for reforming email. We all want to get rid of spam. I think most folks on this list are in favor of using market dynamics to influence behaviour. I think adding an artificial fee to sending email is stupid. It is creating false scarcity to fix a broken system. Further, it will end up becoming a new profit center for ISPs - send an email, pay 5 (or whatever) cents. I I know this is being thought about, but what about ad-hoc lists like CP? Who will pay for AOL delivery for that? Who pays for ASRG? I didn't like Steve's answer so here's mine. ;-) this is one of the first questions almost everybody asks "what about mailing lists". One of the fundamental axioms of any sender pays systems must be "strangers pay, friends fly free". A mailing list is your friend and therefore they fly for free. how they become friends is a matter of controversy for some folks but I prefer simple introductions. One of the systems proposed in camram is to switch from proof of work stamps to signed messages once you have been properly introduced. This some write-ups on this on the camram site but it's kind of obscure because the idea wasn't well thought out when I wrote it. The paper at http://harvee.org/camram/ is somewhat more illustrative but it's not fully documented yet. That is yet another way folks on the cypherpunks lists can help. Work out a system by which message has an embedded public key and the key is considered "good" after some introduction process involving two parties e-mailing each other. Then figure out how to deal with new key introductions if the original key has been lost to accident or deliberate action. It's a hoot. ;-) it is safe to assume that these keys will not have any passphrases because this is a cryptosystem totally invisible to end-users. Argue with me on the no passphrases requirement directly if you wish. Sender pays is stupid. Don't support false scarcity. I guess you have unlimited time and consider your time worthless. Its not the transport costs sender-pays is trying to price its our time. Sender-pays is trying to enable email recipients to establish a price for their eyeballs and attention. Advertisers do all the time. as a security measure, center pays is stupid. But spam is an economic problem. Steve's right in that they are trying to buy your eyeball time so we might as well increase the cost as much as we can. Sender pays will do this. ---eric
Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
On Sun, Mar 23, 2003 at 07:31:34PM -0600, J.A. Terranson wrote: > The providing of a token allowing computationally-free passage to verified > subscribers is trivial to implement. Agreed. My point, perhaps awkwardly-worded, is that it's important from the perspective of mailing list operators to reduce the number of steps required when signing up for a real, verified mailing list. Expert users will always be able to tell their client that it's a legit mailing list and tweak procmail or whatever to let the messages through. But less savvy users may forget to whitelist it even after responding to a subscription verification. Something that lets it be done automatically would be helpful. It doesn't matter to me at what level that takes place. -Declan
Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
At 08:24 AM 3/23/2003 -0500, Jamie Lawrence wrote: On Sat, 22 Mar 2003, Steve Schear wrote: > >Finding a way to collect payments for using the real scarce resource, > >which is the recipient's time, at prices set by the recipient, > >has some chance of succeeding. There are of course many ways to fail, > >but it's at least not doomed from the start. > > I concur. The question was never asked of me and I never said I supported > having required ISP involvement in the pricing and settlement of > send-pays. I think this should be end-user driven, perhaps supported by > distributed servers akin to PGP key servers where senders can learn about > their intended recipient's keys and cost to accept email. This cost can be > in GHz-seconds for PoW or in some monetary unit once real values are > practical. This is different. If sender-pays somehow ends up being "mutt/eudora/outlook asks me to set a payment threshold, and then the pennys roll in", that does defeat most of my problems. It still won't work for a spam fix, but, well, there you go. I think such an approach will immediately and almost completely eliminate the low value proposition spam, which now predominates our in-boxes, from those using it. (Of course, it will also eliminate some of the non-spam initial contact attempts.) Higher value pitches, legit and otherwise, where the uptake from recipients is likely to be significant from a traditional marketing perspective (i.e. about 1%) will still be there because it still makes economic sense to send the missives. steve
Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
On Sat, 22 Mar 2003, Steve Schear wrote: > The idea if for stamps to be created at the client end. For most people > that is not the SMTP server. Even for Web-based email, I envision the > client being "encouraged" by the ISP to do the computation work on their > own HW, perhaps via a Java applet. Great. So now all sorts of server-running applications that communicate with the other machines or the users by mail (eg, certain custom database systems that inform a set of customers about record changes) will have another set of problems to maintain. Java applets rule out the console browsers, and all infrastructures that have Java disabled for security reason. Another unneeded technological dependence. > Using a PoW stamp regime low speed processors will either by enable to > initiate contact with an unknown addresser or arrange for a third-party > (maybe their ISP/cellular provider) to create the introduction stamp for them. ...and create YET ANOTHER dependence of questionable reliability. "Sorry, boss, I was unable to send that topmost-important message to your new customer because our cellular provider's stamping server was down again." > >And you most likely lose the ability to send mails using raw telnet. > True. Which takes away a handy method to improvise, to solve simple things simple way. Why all the "solutions" HAVE to create new, flakey dependencies? Things that look good on paper too often turn into a technological nightmare when you attempt to actually deploy them, and this method is a hot candidate for a disaster. (Well... even pigs can fly, when you kick them hard enough, but you don't have good control over where they land, and it isn't advisable to be under their trajectory.) Why things can't be SIMPLE?!?
Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
At 04:24 AM 3/23/2003 +0100, Thomas Shaddack wrote: On Sat, 22 Mar 2003, J.A. Terranson wrote: > To date, my personal pet has been payment in computationally intensive > solutions to questions posed by the recipient. This forced expenditure of > effort, even if minor, removes the spammer's incentive for sending of > email: the nature of the beast requires that the spam run be high volume and > fast in order to pay off - slow down the run with computationally difficult > questions, and the spammer will make no money. There is a problem here. There are different machines connected to the Net, their CPU power often differing in orders of magnitude. Either you will completely bog down the 486s still used as low-volume SMTP servers, or you will use a 486-friendly formula that will get barely noticed by a P4 machine, or you will have some CPU speed negotiating protocol, which will rely on the other side not lying about who they are. The idea if for stamps to be created at the client end. For most people that is not the SMTP server. Even for Web-based email, I envision the client being "encouraged" by the ISP to do the computation work on their own HW, perhaps via a Java applet. We have to consider the very-low-end systems, eg. Nokia Communicators or various PDAs, which can send mail too. Either we rule them out, or we open a loophole, or we will implement a complicated classification system for the devices that will end up as awfully hairy and still half-working after unsuccessful attempts to iron out all its kinks and holes. Using a PoW stamp regime low speed processors will either by enable to initiate contact with an unknown addresser or arrange for a third-party (maybe their ISP/cellular provider) to create the introduction stamp for them. And you most likely lose the ability to send mails using raw telnet. True. Besides, can't you achieve something vaguely similar with simple tarpitting?
Re: CDR: Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
-- > > The intention is sender pays, recipient is paid, reflecting > > the real scarcity of readers time. Mailing lists would be > > sent out without postage, but with cryptographic signature, > > and subscribers would have to OK it. Letters to the list > > would be accompanied by payment, which would be something > > considerably less than a cent, which would yield a profit > > to the mailing list operators. On 22 Mar 2003 at 13:24, Thomas Shaddack wrote: > However, it penalizes everyone without an infrastructure for > electronic payment. Would need infrastructure for micropayments. At present NO ONE has any infrastructure for small electronic payments. Also the payments would have to be anonymous, or somehow grouped, or there would be massive loss of privacy. The obvious solution is chaumian micro cash. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG XbRtjiSCRH0VGobxmd0F5OSaviUp1XcQlfNA8RuC 43wJasFibfm7tEkw64d/V2etWo46wdb0klDarUL9Q
Re: CDR: Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
At 07:10 PM 3/22/2003 -0800, Tim May wrote: On Saturday, March 22, 2003, at 03:49 PM, Steve Schear wrote: Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 14:18:10 -0500 From: Jamie Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Steve Schear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: CDR: Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal Mail-Followup-To: Steve Schear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Organization: clue inc X-URL: http://www.clueinc.net/ User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.3i On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, Steve Schear wrote: > I guess you have unlimited time and consider your time worthless. Its not That doesn't follow at all. I consider my limited time very valuble. I simply believe creating an artificial scarcity at the infrastructure level a bad way to address spam. 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. The ISP or some regulatory agency setting the price for my eyeballs isn't my idea of a "market force". As I understand your proposal, Steve, you propose some authority setting some price to send something. Tim, I guessed you missed my thread response to Bill... "The question was never asked of me and I never said I supported having required ISP involvement in the pricing and settlement of send-pays. I think this should be end-user driven, perhaps supported by distributed servers akin to PGP key servers where senders can learn about their intended recipient's keys and cost to accept email. This cost can be in GHz-seconds for PoW or in some monetary unit once real values are practical." steve
Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
On Sat, 22 Mar 2003, J.A. Terranson wrote: > To date, my personal pet has been payment in computationally intensive > solutions to questions posed by the recipient. This forced expenditure of > effort, even if minor, removes the spammer's incentive for sending of > email: the nature of the beast requires that the spam run be high volume and > fast in order to pay off - slow down the run with computationally difficult > questions, and the spammer will make no money. There is a problem here. There are different machines connected to the Net, their CPU power often differing in orders of magnitude. Either you will completely bog down the 486s still used as low-volume SMTP servers, or you will use a 486-friendly formula that will get barely noticed by a P4 machine, or you will have some CPU speed negotiating protocol, which will rely on the other side not lying about who they are. We have to consider the very-low-end systems, eg. Nokia Communicators or various PDAs, which can send mail too. Either we rule them out, or we open a loophole, or we will implement a complicated classification system for the devices that will end up as awfully hairy and still half-working after unsuccessful attempts to iron out all its kinks and holes. And you most likely lose the ability to send mails using raw telnet. Besides, can't you achieve something vaguely similar with simple tarpitting?
Re: CDR: Re: CDR: Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
On Saturday, March 22, 2003, at 03:49 PM, Steve Schear wrote: Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 14:18:10 -0500 From: Jamie Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Steve Schear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: CDR: Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal Mail-Followup-To: Steve Schear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Organization: clue inc X-URL: http://www.clueinc.net/ User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.3i On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, Steve Schear wrote: > I guess you have unlimited time and consider your time worthless. Its not That doesn't follow at all. I consider my limited time very valuble. I simply believe creating an artificial scarcity at the infrastructure level a bad way to address spam. 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. I agree with Jamie's point, in that nearly _anytime_ some authority decides on pricing, this generated artificial scarcities. Examples abound: government places "luxury tax" on yachts or "gas guzzler taxes" on vehicles. The result is that artificial scarcities are created, and loopholes (such as grandfathered yachts or vehicles, or already-owned yachts or vehicles, become more valuable). Government taxes one channel of communication, and thus makes other channels more profitable. "Nailing jelly to a tree." Aka "the law of unintended consequences." The general name is "market distortions." Nearly all efforts to set prices produce market distortions and require the threat of force to enforce. (An example is the oft-cited postage stamp: the U.S.P.S. needs to have laws banning competition in letter delivery, else they'll be run out of business.) As I understand your proposal, Steve, you propose some authority setting some price to send something. Hey, if Alice wants to send something over my network, who are you or the government to tell me she must pay me, or I must pay the next link in the chain, etc.? 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. If Alice wishes to post a sign saying "Pay me 25 cents or I won't see your message," this is her right, and her responsibility to figure out how to deploy technologically and sell to enough of her correspondents. Not a job for ISPs to do, except that they are also "Alices" and could presumably issue the same demand. In other words, there are many stages in the network, from ISPs to phone lines to fiber optics to customers, and so on, and none of them have any special status, only the ability to make contracts. So if a network hop, e.g., "Tim's Hundred Kilometers," wishes to charge for traffic on the line he owns, so be it. Ditto for "Steve's ISP." Ditto for "Alices Eyeballs." To be sure, an accounting mess. But no different from the fact that a head of lettuce goes from farmer to truck to refrigerated rail car to truck to distribution point to supermarket to buyer with dozens or even several dozens of money transfers along the way. (Prices propagate in various ways, just as they did in neolithic times, just as they did along the Silk Road, just as they did a century ago.) It is not the job of any agency of men with guns to set prices at some particular point in this process. The fact that we don't yet know what, if any, market solution for unwanted e-mail will be is not grounds for jumping in with a market-distorting, statist solution. --Tim May
Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
At 01:22 PM 3/22/2003 -0800, Bill Stewart wrote: At 02:18 PM 03/22/2003 -0500, Jamie Lawrence wrote: On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, Steve Schear wrote: > I guess you have unlimited time and consider your time worthless. Its not That doesn't follow at all. I consider my limited time very valuble. I simply believe creating an artificial scarcity at the infrastructure level a bad way to address spam. Barry Shein disagrees with me, but you're correct, as far as you go. Trying to declare an artificial scarcity somewhere in the system, which almost all of the "sender pays sender's ISP" and some of the "sender pays recipient's ISP" systems do is doomed to failure, either because of evasion or bad social effects or whatever. Finding a way to collect payments for using the real scarce resource, which is the recipient's time, at prices set by the recipient, has some chance of succeeding. There are of course many ways to fail, but it's at least not doomed from the start. I concur. The question was never asked of me and I never said I supported having required ISP involvement in the pricing and settlement of send-pays. I think this should be end-user driven, perhaps supported by distributed servers akin to PGP key servers where senders can learn about their intended recipient's keys and cost to accept email. This cost can be in GHz-seconds for PoW or in some monetary unit once real values are practical. steve
Fwd: Re: CDR: Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2003 14:18:10 -0500 From: Jamie Lawrence <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Steve Schear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: CDR: Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal Mail-Followup-To: Steve Schear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Organization: clue inc X-URL: http://www.clueinc.net/ User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.3i On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, Steve Schear wrote: > I guess you have unlimited time and consider your time worthless. Its not That doesn't follow at all. I consider my limited time very valuble. I simply believe creating an artificial scarcity at the infrastructure level a bad way to address spam. 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. > the transport costs sender-pays is trying to price its our > time. Sender-pays is trying to enable email recipients to establish a > price for their eyeballs and attention. Advertisers do all the time. Cash exchange for mail transport will simply create a new profit center for ISPs. 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. 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. Presupposing micropayments for a new net.service has been a nonstarter for years, and I fully expect it to continue to be so. 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. 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
Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
At 02:18 PM 03/22/2003 -0500, Jamie Lawrence wrote: On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, Steve Schear wrote: > I guess you have unlimited time and consider your time worthless. Its not That doesn't follow at all. I consider my limited time very valuble. I simply believe creating an artificial scarcity at the infrastructure level a bad way to address spam. Barry Shein disagrees with me, but you're correct, as far as you go. Trying to declare an artificial scarcity somewhere in the system, which almost all of the "sender pays sender's ISP" and some of the "sender pays recipient's ISP" systems do is doomed to failure, either because of evasion or bad social effects or whatever. Finding a way to collect payments for using the real scarce resource, which is the recipient's time, at prices set by the recipient, has some chance of succeeding. There are of course many ways to fail, but it's at least not doomed from the start. I'm mentioning Barry because he's done some recent and well-publicized speeches about the spam problem and sender-pays. While part of his problem may be that he's a liberal Democrat with the corresponding economic clues, he's also run an ISP business for a decade longer than most of the competition, so he's looking at it from an ISP perspective trying to find ISP-level solutions to _his_ problems, which are inbound bandwidth and storage and marginal cost, combined with the costs of managing user complaints about spam, and he's got a pre-internet-boom cynical perspective on dumb ASP models. But while Barry's an old ISP guy, I'm a old phone company guy. ISP-oriented systems, especially sender-pays-sender's-ISP systems, end up reinventing the settlements processes phone companies have used, and believe me, you don't want to go there again. They're bad enough when there's a monopoly that owns all the parts, or that owns the middle, but they're much worse in a competitive many-player system when people are trying to tweak them for social purposes rather than doing cost-driven economics, and they fail really badly at adapting to rapidly-changing technical environments and cost structures. If they start off knowing this, they can pick somewhat different failures than the ones the US phone system has, but that's still one of those "Knowing Murphy's Law doesn't help either" kinds of consolation. Doomed. Bill Stewart
Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
On Sat, 22 Mar 2003, Thomas Shaddack wrote: > > The intention is sender pays, recipient is paid, reflecting the > > real scarcity of readers time. Mailing lists would be sent > > out without postage, but with cryptographic signature, and > > subscribers would have to OK it. Letters to the list would be > > accompanied by payment, which would be something considerably > > less than a cent, which would yield a profit to the mailing > > list operators. > > However, it penalizes everyone without an infrastructure for electronic > payment. > > I don't own a creditcard suitable for Internet money transfers. I don't > need it (and the USD/CZK exchange rate makes everything quite expensive), > so for security reasons the option is disabled. Until recently, I hadn't a > creditcard at all. What would I be supposed to do in order to send mail, > then? What about public terminals, libraries? > > What about anonymous mails? Wouldn't it add either a high burden to the > remailer operators, or nullify the remailer purpose, adding a shining > payment trail right to the sender? > > What about improvised ad-hoc systems? When I have nothing other, I am able > to send a mail with just a telnet client. Would it be possible with the > new system too? > > It is another complication. Now not only the email infrastructure will > rely on the Net itself, on the DNS and on the SMTP servers, but > payment-transfer systems will be added to the equation, greatly affecting > reliability. > > The idea smells bad. Agreed, provided we are talking about "payment" in the traditional sense (as this thread has been so far). However, there are other forms of payment besides money. As you correctly observed, not everyone has the ability to make payment in money over the net, however, everyone who is capable of connecting has the ability to pay in cpu cycles. A robust system would allow for payment in any number of mediums, allowing for universal participation. To date, my personal pet has been payment in computationally intensive solutions to questions posed by the recipient. This forced expenditure of effort, even if minor, removes the spammer's incentive for sending of email: the nature of the beast requires that the spam run be high volume and fast in order to pay off - slow down the run with computationally difficult questions, and the spammer will make no money. This system is one that has exponential impact on high-volume mailers, and almost zero impact on the person sending out a few dozen emails a day (to their friends, cpunx, etc.). It does not substantially penalize the legitimate user, while at the same time crippling the mass mailer. I have not understood why this system has never been taken seriously in the anti-spam "community", while at the same time we have unscalable and unimplementable micropayment systems being seriously studied. Could it be that the real concern driving the antispammers is the aquisition of money, rather than the aquisition of email without spam? -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDR: Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, James A. Donald wrote: > The intention is sender pays, recipient is paid, reflecting the > real scarcity of readers time. Mailing lists would be sent Which in the real world will never happen. Sender-pays, if deployed, will end up being something like MS's Penny Black, where a third party collects a tax to "allow" sending mail. Those of us who don't care for such things will continue running MTAs that ignore the sillyness, and drop "456 - send more postage" messages on the floor. > out without postage, but with cryptographic signature, and > subscribers would have to OK it. Letters to the list would be > accompanied by payment, which would be something considerably > less than a cent, which would yield a profit to the mailing > list operators. Using our pre-existing, wildly popular micropayment infrastructure, no doubt? Signing messages and skipping the cash redistribution solves the problem without presupposing nonexistent clearing mechanisms. (Demanding message signing creates a different class of problems, of course.) -j -- Jamie Lawrence[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CDR: Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, Steve Schear wrote: > I guess you have unlimited time and consider your time worthless. Its not That doesn't follow at all. I consider my limited time very valuble. I simply believe creating an artificial scarcity at the infrastructure level a bad way to address spam. > the transport costs sender-pays is trying to price its our > time. Sender-pays is trying to enable email recipients to establish a > price for their eyeballs and attention. Advertisers do all the time. Cash exchange for mail transport will simply create a new profit center for ISPs. 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. Presupposing micropayments for a new net.service has been a nonstarter for years, and I fully expect it to continue to be so. -j -- Jamie Lawrence[EMAIL PROTECTED] Strangers have the best candy.
Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
At 01:24 PM 3/22/2003 +0100, Thomas Shaddack wrote: > The intention is sender pays, recipient is paid, reflecting the > real scarcity of readers time. Mailing lists would be sent > out without postage, but with cryptographic signature, and > subscribers would have to OK it. Letters to the list would be > accompanied by payment, which would be something considerably > less than a cent, which would yield a profit to the mailing > list operators. However, it penalizes everyone without an infrastructure for electronic payment. Well, clearly no spender-pays using real value will arrive before a suitable infrastructure is relatively widely available. As for being penalized, it seems those most put upon are those early adopters who will never receive an important email from someone who could or would find a way to buy or create a stamp. Its like moving out to a location with poor postal service. Both you and those who wish to contact you are disadvantaged. That's why I think PoW stamp systems will predominate at forst. I don't own a creditcard suitable for Internet money transfers. I don't need it (and the USD/CZK exchange rate makes everything quite expensive), so for security reasons the option is disabled. Until recently, I hadn't a creditcard at all. What would I be supposed to do in order to send mail, then? What about public terminals, libraries? What about anonymous mails? Wouldn't it add either a high burden to the remailer operators, or nullify the remailer purpose, adding a shining payment trail right to the sender? Unless something like ALTA/DMT, Yodel or Lucrative were used. What about improvised ad-hoc systems? When I have nothing other, I am able to send a mail with just a telnet client. Would it be possible with the new system too? I don't think so, not without either an ecash/estamp purse or a PoW app. It is another complication. Now not only the email infrastructure will rely on the Net itself, on the DNS and on the SMTP servers, but payment-transfer systems will be added to the equation, greatly affecting reliability. This only affects first-time correspondence. After a successful first te-t-te a white list function should allow subsequent email passage without stamps. steve
Re: CDR: Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
-- On 21 Mar 2003 at 23:01, Jamie Lawrence wrote: > We all want to get rid of spam. I think most folks on this > list are in favor of using market dynamics to influence > behaviour. I think adding an artificial fee to sending email > is stupid. It is creating false scarcity to fix a broken > system. Further, it will end up becoming a new profit center > for ISPs - send an email, pay 5 (or whatever) cents. I I know > this is being thought about, but what about ad-hoc lists like > CP? Who will pay for AOL delivery for that? Who pays for > ASRG? > > Sender pays is stupid. Don't support false scarcity. The intention is sender pays, recipient is paid, reflecting the real scarcity of readers time. Mailing lists would be sent out without postage, but with cryptographic signature, and subscribers would have to OK it. Letters to the list would be accompanied by payment, which would be something considerably less than a cent, which would yield a profit to the mailing list operators. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Y6FMx3kifAEols9uNP5y5vg8sKYvXPMDutZc4nWU 4vxTg06gsQlG1PONar3AxatOVjnthx9NfjJGIDu6C
Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
At 11:01 PM 3/21/2003 -0500, Jamie Lawrence wrote: On Fri, 21 Mar 2003, Steve Schear wrote: Steve, I've been watching your views on ASRG, and honestly, I have to say Sender Pays is top on my list for Bad Ideas for reforming email. We all want to get rid of spam. I think most folks on this list are in favor of using market dynamics to influence behaviour. I think adding an artificial fee to sending email is stupid. It is creating false scarcity to fix a broken system. Further, it will end up becoming a new profit center for ISPs - send an email, pay 5 (or whatever) cents. I I know this is being thought about, but what about ad-hoc lists like CP? Who will pay for AOL delivery for that? Who pays for ASRG? Sender pays is stupid. Don't support false scarcity. I guess you have unlimited time and consider your time worthless. Its not the transport costs sender-pays is trying to price its our time. Sender-pays is trying to enable email recipients to establish a price for their eyeballs and attention. Advertisers do all the time. steve
Re: Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal
Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal By Tony Kontzer, InformationWeek, InternetWeek Mar 20, 2003 (8:45 PM) URL: http://www.internetweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=7900141 Companies and consumers alike have been looking to two primary aids in the battle to stem the flood of spam. On the practical side, they're turning to a seemingly endless parade of filters and other software products designed to slow the tide of unwanted E-mail by doing things such as checking messages against known spam, using textual clues to glean whether a message is spam, or blocking the IP addresses of known spammers. On the more hopeful side, they're pressuring legislators for federal laws banning spam. IBM researchers say both approaches miss the target--that the software approach amounts to a constant game of trying to stay one step ahead of spammers, while legislation, if and when it comes, won't be able to address spam coming from outside U.S. borders. As a result, they've come up with another approach: Make spammers pay to send messages. It sounds absurdly simple, and Scott Fahlman, a research staff member at IBM's Watson Research Center, says it is. Fahlman is trying to build momentum behind a concept he's calling the "charity stamp" approach, which would force anyone sending unsolicited messages to pay to reach recipients participating in the program unless they had an authenticated code. Of course none of this is news to many readers on this list. A number of people in the crypto/cypherpunk community (e.g, Adam Back, Eric S. Johansson and Ben Laurie) have worked for some time to develop the mathematics and code to launch proof-of-concept e-stamp systems based on either Proof-of-Work algorithims or real value. Recently Microsoft also unveiled a similar project PennyBlack http://research.microsoft.com/research/sv/PennyBlack/ steve
