Thanks John for your support! I think we should all be careful not to return to the good old days of Telex bilateral agreements!
Cheers...\Stef At 22:06 -0400 5/28/03, John C Klensin wrote: >Since Stef has chimed in here, let me point out one other aspect of payment systems, >one that is more or less the corollary to his observation about bilateral agreements. > It is an interesting and useful property of the Internet email environment that we >have SMTP servers all over the place, some of them operated at rather large scale and >others operated at fairly small scale. In general, anyone can send mail to anyone >else. > >But, as soon as one institutes either charging schemes or collections of bilateral >agreements, there are huge incentives to created "hub systems" or "carriers" -- >entities whose business it is to make agreements with lots of local providers/servers >(whom they will come to call "customers") and bilateral agreements with each other. >Without that, everyone who wants to run a mail server has to either establish >bilateral agreements with everyone else, or a regulatory regime becomes necessary to >make the sequential settlement arrangements work. Economies of scale, if only in >agreement-making, imply few enough, and large enough, carriers for governments to >start taking interest on a "competition" or "anti-trust" or "consumer protection" >basis. Sorry to be pessimistic about this, but I think it quickly takes us where we >don't want to go. > >Quoting Stef, "be careful what you wish for..." > > john > > > >--On Wednesday, 28 May, 2003 13:04 -0700 Einar Stefferud <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>Hello Dave Morris --- >> >>It would be helpful if you would explain how this payment >>system of yours might actually work in real life. >> >>Perhaps like TELEX worked before it died, with settlements >>between the first posing ISP to the last receiving ISP, with >>"settlement" payments spread across all ISPs in between. >> >>Of course this leads to bilateral agreements among al the >>thousands of ISPs, and collective agreements among the mass >>of global ISPs. >> >>Now, consider the cost of such arrangements, to cover the >>frictional costs of just being in business, plus the required >>profit margins that accrue to any such massive payment >>shuffling. >> >>Everyone here advocating payments do not seem to understand >>the overhead costs of collecting and distributing the money. >> >>Be careful of what you wish for! -- You just might get it! >> >>Cheers...\Stef
