Re: e-postage stamps, was Welcome to the new(ish) ASRG list

The premise of charging to send mail is still counter to reality. People are used to the idea of email being free except for the obvious part of Internet access.

Botnets will send email for free no matter who you send the bill to.
End users will fight tooth and nail to keep email 'free'.

Sent from Samsung mobileBarry Shein <[email protected]> wrote:
On March 17, 2013 at 19:40 [email protected] (John Levine) wrote:
> > > Um, because we talk to them, and have a pretty good idea how much a 
> > > micropayment system that has to handle billions of transactions a day 
> > > would cost?
> >
> >So 5 or so years ago you would've valued their opinion on whether they
> >would ever advertise on a social network?
> 
> Huh?
> 
> Running a transaction system that has to handle billions of
> transactions a day is a notably unsolved problem, and not for lack of
> trying.  The synchronization required to deter double spending of
> coins or stamps or whatever you want to call them is inherently very
> difficult.

Which basically pits the best as the enemy of the good.

But it's a valid point.

Which is why I suggested a verification system analogous to SPF for
example.

> On the other hand, if we're allowed to wave our hands and assert that
> it exists, please assert me a rainbow pony at the same time.

Asking a question and then answering it doesn't seem constructive.

> > As to billions of transactions what about the DNS system? Can't
> > possibly work?
> 
> Please don't tell me that it's news to you that the DNS is read-only.

Verification of a stamp wouldn't have to be much different from a DNS
query. "Is the following n-tuple (perhaps source plus stamp) valid?",
or likely valid would be far better than what we have now.

A server would know, for example, that every stamp coming out of an
AT&T IP block has to have certain cryptographic characteristics, and
the same coming out of some other block would be invalid. Etc.

Hey, that's engineering and it doesn't have to be mathematically
perfect to achieve its goal.

But most importantly it could potentially create an economy to go
after counterfeiters, or block them more effectively.

One thing I've said for many years is that what anti-spam activity
lacks is much any economy, beyond appliances and similar which is good
but not that universal.

As an analogy, you COULD set up your own root server and sell your own
domains, do alternative DNS. But beyond some point ICANN would come
down on you like white on rice, as they have in the past.

Why? Because unlike anti-spam ICANN (et al) has a billion dollar
industry and maybe $150M/year in revenue directly to them to protect.

That should be the real goal IMHO, how do we create or encourage an
effective economics to combat spam?

> > For example given a cryptographic stamp and an ISP's motivation the
> > ISP could verify each outgoing stamp used by a customer before letting
> > it out since in theory they're the ones who issued those stamps, much
> > like they might issue IP addresses and block any originating from w/in
> > their network which isn't part of their re-delegation blocks.
> 
> You're describing rate limiting outgoing mail from a network's own
> hosts.  It's not a bad idea, lots of ISPs do it, and it doesn't
> require stamps.

No because the RECIPIENT also wants to see that stamp once it passes
the ISP.

The ISP checking would only be optional, smaller concerns such as
companies wouldn't be obliged to check anything, only the recipient
really has an interest in checking beyond scaling considerations some
big ISPs and similar might have.

I might for example choose to accept some valid stamps and not others,
again depending on the n-tuple.

But the point is mail would have to have a valid stamp to get thru
sites which choose to participate (one wouldn't have to) which beyond
some pre-allocated limit (TBD) would have to be bought.

Since spammers have to send out literally billions of spam emails per
day to be economically effective it potentially turns that equation in
favor of the honest user without, potentially, over-burdening even a
site which legitimately sends millions of email msgs.

I'd guess wildly and for discussion's sake that a price like
$100/million would be acceptable as a cost of doing business to, e.g.,
Amazon, particularly if they saw some value to them, but unworkable
for spammers.

I think our estimate of top spammers is on the order of a billion msgs
sent per day per each? That would be $1,000/day, I don't think they
have that kind of economics.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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