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
