Re: Macro payments through domain names?

Rickard:
> [idea on how to make people bind their email address to an
> exchangable "email autorization top level domain" (a 'mad') which
> gets blacklisted as a punishment when spam is sent]

Marc:
> [suggests related micropayment idea by selling/renting of limitied
> use keys for email signing, where recepients reports use of key]

Yes, what you have described is a nice implementation of a more
traditional micropayment system. But the reason I suggested the quite
elaborate 'pay for domain name'-based scheme is that using
micropayments for email have issues that makes it hard for people to
adopt it. Let me explore the two approaches for some "known"
micropayment issues:

* People are very sceptical to pay, even micropayments, for something
that used to be free.
- Micropayments: Suddenly each sent mail starts costing money.
People "think greedy" and chose to stick with the old "free" system.
- Domain names: People can start by taking their organization domain
(eg., example.com) as their first 'mad' and thus continue to use
email for "free" until they are caught spamming (or someone hacks
their identity and spams).

* It is hard to introduce a pay-for service that don't really work
until a lot of people pay for it.
- Micropayments: People think "First when this gets wide acception it
will be worth paying for", which makes adoption hard.
- Domain names: People think "This allows me to lower my 'spamscores'
for 'free' until I spam or get hacked; and if that happens I can
always either revert to the old system or pay."

3. People have to do a financial transaction with an organization
they don't yet know or trust.
- Micropayments: Early adopters will feel uneasy, because there is
always the risk for scams, or the company going out of buissniess,
or an over charge of their credit card, or similar.
- Domain names: Financial transactions are made with your domain name
registrar; i.e., a company you have already decided to trust. And you
do not need to perform any transactions until you for some reason
have been blacklisted.

* Privacy
- Micropayments: Most systems where an organization counts all
your outgoing emails opens up for a lot of sleezy maketing ploys
and privacy problems.
- Domain names: Privacy is only an issue towards independent
blacklists, and negative queries towards those can be made
non-traceable through clever use of hashes.

* Technical problems inherent to legitimate mass mailing.
- Micropayments: To allow for legitimate mass mailing, there must be
exceptions to the simple 'one mail, one token' rule. Such exceptions
rely on per user input, which makes implementation less
straigtforward, thus delaying adoption.
- Domain names: For legitimate mailing there is no cost, and thus no
problem.

I am sure some of the above problems can be solved also within the
micropayment approach by clever design; and I am sure the 'domain
names' idea also has its problems. (Just to give one: it still
remains to find a good non-explotable but fast way of handling
blacklisting of 'mad's). However, I think it is fun to explore the
pro:s and con:s of a new way of doing things, and I am hoping for
people on this list to point out some flaws I have missed.

//Rickard