> >E-postage is politically incorrect. But e-postage would render spam a > >non-problem. > > How would the permission based bulk email industry be affected by > e-postage? > You know, this mailing list for example.
Dramatically. I'm a little worried this thread might open a can of worms, but... About 18 months ago I almost started a business that faciliated e-postage. I got pretty far down the road to raising venture capital from a major VC fund, but I lost faith in the idea and ultimately abandoned it. Without going into a lot of detail, the system basically used a combination of x-headers and a DNSBL-style mechanism to authenticate senders. Mailing list owners would've been required to register with the service for a small annual fee (similar to domain name registration), then embed the x-headers in all outgoing messages. Also, they would register the IPs of their outbound email serviers. ISPs and other owners of receipient servers (NOT the end users) could also register to use the system to whitelist inbound email. The postage part - confirmed opt-in messages would've been free. Everything else would've been subject to postage of 1/4 penny per message (though that's a marketplace issue - who know what it would've really been)? Recipient servers were required to whitelist confirmed opt-in messages. They could block other messages, but they only would receive payment for messages that they accepted. Revenue would've been split between my company and the server owners (percentages TBD), and a portion of proceeds would've been dedicated to pursuing legal action against spammers. In presenting this idea to big senders, I found that 1) they hated it but 2) they would go along if the recipient population demanded it AND they still had a positive ROI. In other words, a straightforward business decision based on dollars and cents. They could go to confirmed opt-in and save money, but possibly end up with smaller lists. Or they could continue with unconfirmed and pay the piper. Either approach can be modelled and predicted with a spreadsheet. This is in stark contrats to the current model, which basically consists of praying you don't end up on the RBL and only changing your practices if you do. I talked to a few ISPs, but they didn't really "get it." They thought I was asking them to accept money for spam. Far from it - they already accept tens of millions of probably-legitimate-yet-unconfirmed messages every day. I was only suggesting that they recover some of the costs associated with that. The main goal was to establish an economic basis for decisions for both senders AND receivers. After all, AOL would make hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars annually from such a system. In that context, the decision to block a sender would require greater scrutiny. Right now there is no incentive (other than "doing the right thing") for ISPs to fully investigate spam complaints - legitimate or bogus. It's all cost and no benefit. All that said, please don't take this message as an invitation to debate whether I was a Good Guy or an Evil Man or a Naive Fool. As I said previously, I abandoned the idea 18 months ago and only offer this info in response to Phil's question. -Derek _______________________________________________ spamcon-general mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.spamcon.org/mailman/listinfo/spamcon-general#subscribers Subscribe, unsubscribe, etc: Use the URL above or send "help" in body of message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Contact administrator: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
