[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: Re[2]: [dvd-discuss] EFF opposes blacklisting spammers



Ok...If I could demand micropayment from spammers then I'm accepting all 
the spam I can get, and writing program to replace me reading and deleting 
it. Of course the real question is how much spam do you need to pay for 
your DSL line? 

;-)




Tom <tom@lemuria.org>
Sent by: owner-dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
10/19/01 03:49 AM
Please respond to dvd-discuss

 
        To:     dvd-discuss@eon.law.harvard.edu
        cc: 
        Subject:        Re: Re[2]: [dvd-discuss] EFF opposes blacklisting spammers


On Fri, Oct 19, 2001 at 03:13:41AM -0700, Jeme A Brelin wrote:
> Spam is a painful reality... like bad manners or crude language.
> 
> We can teach against it, but some people are just going to do whatever
> they please and we must respect their right to do so.

I disagree on that. nobody has a right to spam me.

now the APPROACH to fight spam may be problematic, and aggressive
blacklisting is not the way.


personally, I believe micropayment is the way. imagine you could
exchange small currency tokens ("cybercash") on the SMTP layer, and
that you could configure your mailserver to demand payment or not,
depending on a number of criteria. for example, you would demand no
payment from friends, mailing lists you subscribed to, etc. in
addition, you can refund made payments with a special kind of reply
mail or you can use your collected tokens to pay for your own mails
(that might work quite well, since in most extended mail exchanges,
both sides send roughly the same number of mails, so it cancels each
other out without you needing to anyone you want to talk to into the
"free delivery" list).

on the sender side, you could specify how much you are willing to pay
to have this mail delivered. the default cost would be, say, 1 cent.
that is so little that it won't stop regular people from talking to
strangers (e.g. sending a patch to the maintainer of some free
software), but it'll destroy the millions-of-mails business model of
the spammers.


of course, if this is the only problem it solves, then it's a total
overkill solution. :)

however, once the basic principle is in place, it can be easily
extended, say to HTTP ==> pay-per-view webpages. not that I believe ppv
will ever fly on the web.