Re: Inexpensive anti-spamware/anti-verminware tactic

JCB> In particular, a "pull" paradigm is not, from a resource point
JCB> of view, all that much different from using Greylisting, Defer
JCB> Hostility, or simply not having enough SMTP server resources to
JCB> reliably and quickly accept all incoming email, with today's
JCB> SMTP infrastructure.

JdeBP> You have a very restricted definition of "from a resource
JdeBP> point of view".  You are taking it to mean only network
JdeBP> service availability (because that's the only respect in
JdeBP> which what you describe is actually similar to a "pull
JdeBP> delivery" system). But there's far more to a resource point
JdeBP> of view than that.

JCB> I don't see how I'm doing that.

All of the measures/situations that you mention deal only with the
resource of network service.

JCB> An SMTP server that defers questionable materials N times
JCB> forces the SMTP client to *store* that message for a longer
JCB> period of time, for example.

... yet still, in the end, results in multiple messages stored by
recipients in contrast to one message stored by a sender.  As I
said in the remainder of that paragraph that you interrupted
halfway through:

	JdeBP> For example:  Storage is a resource, too, and a
	JdeBP> "pull delivery" system has significant effects on
	JdeBP> the distribution of storage costs, causing them
	JdeBP> to be _very_ different to the case of
	JdeBP> SMTP-plus-those-bodges.

JCB> IM2000 [...] is a wonderfully (theoretically, anyway ;-)
JCB> new, clean system,  [...]

I have my doubts that IM2000 is wholly new.

JCB> But these bodges [to SMTP] have a big advantage over IM2000:
JCB> they can be (and some are) implemented today, piecemeal, and
JCB> they pretty much automatically interoperate with the vast
JCB> majority of *today's* email, and the SMTP clients that send
JCB> it, that the users of those bodges (via their choice of ISP)
JCB> *choose* to receive.

No they haven't.

<URL:http://homepages.tesco.net./~J.deBoynePollard/Proposals/IM2000/shims.html>

JCB> As to the issue of storage, which you properly raise: looking
JCB> at the big picture, I'm less enamoured with that as a *critical*
JCB> resource.  After all, storage costs have been falling.  [...]

Not the Moore's Law Fallacy again!  (-:

If storage costs are unimportant, why does my ISP impose a quota
on my mailbox ?  (Answer:  Because storage costs _are_ important,
of course, which is in turn because UBM senders obey a variant of
Parkinson's Law.)

JCB> If that's true, the amount of storage needed by spammers to
JCB> reach their target audience costs *less* over time.  [...]

Why do you keep on thinking of things solely in terms of the costs
to senders ?  You haven't mentioned the costs to recipients once.

JCB> (The target audience also has an increasing amount of $$ to
JCB> spend, as a whole, since it increases.  Therefore UCE becomes,
JCB> on the whole, more profitable to send, though it has its own
JCB> competitive pressures.)

A minor increase in the profitability of advertising via unsolicited
bulk mail (which is somewhat dubious, given that you've relied on
Moore's Law as a premise) is irrelevant, given that the important
thing is what occurs at the recipients' ends in terms of storage
costs.

JCB> So, if IM2000's main distinguishing quality is that it puts
JCB> more of the burden of storing messages onto senders than does
JCB> SMTP, the problem it has is that it might have been a great
JCB> anti-UBM protocol in 1995, an adequate one in 2000, but, maybe
JCB> by 2005, 2010, sometime in the near future, it might have become
JCB> hardly distinguishable from SMTP in terms of making a useful
JCB> distinction in costs to send bulk email to an intended audience.

Aaaargh!  You're doing it _yet again_.  Stop being stuck on the
costs to senders.  Think of the recipients at least _once_ in
512 lines.  Please!

And, once again:

<URL:http://homepages.tesco.net./~J.deBoynePollard/Proposals/IM2000/design.html#SendingIsCheap>