Re: Looking at the U in UBE

On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 09:02:26AM -0500, Bryan Campbell wrote:
> I am subscribed to this list because I believe that the sending party 
> should be responsible for the e-mail they generate.  If the e-mail is 
> sent for the purposes of marketing, then the marketing people (and not 
> the ISP) should foot the bill for the costs of the e-mail transport and 
> delivery.

That, unfortunately, means some sort of payment-with-message system as far
as I can see.

Whilst IM2000 means the sender has the cost of *storing* the message, the
recipient still has to bear:
- the bandwidth cost of receiving the notification (small, although could
  become larger if they are resent for many days)
- the bandwidth cost of retrieving the message body, if they choose to do so
- most importantly, the filtering cost of scanning the notification
  and/or message headers and/or message body to determine whether the
  message is wanted in the first place

"Filtering cost" =>
  - annoyance and time-is-money cost of having to do this manually; or
  - complexity cost of having to install and maintain automatic filters,
    and consequential losses from false positives; or
  - monetary cost of paying someone else to filter your mail for you

> Will customers understand?  Is there a way to accomplish the goal of 
> making marketing people pay for the eye-balls?  You bet.  But, not until 
> something like im2000 is built . . . if for nothing more than a 
> reference design. 

Well, a payment-carried-with-marketing-message infrastructure could be built
on top of IM2000 (or SMTP), but I don't see a concrete proposal yet for how
that would work.

Anyway, who gets the money? The ISP? (Then it's in their interest to deliver
as much marketing as possible). The end-user? Then ISPs have to get involved
in micropayment reimbursement schemes to each of their customers, which
would be a nightmare to administer. A pool of charities? The pool would have
to be acceptable to everyone.

Regards,

Brian.