Consensual communication (Re: Visible feature: not free to send?)

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 22:50, Graham Klyne wrote:
> If we were to take a view that email should not be free for anyone to send
> to anyone, then I think that would fundamentally constrain the technical
> design of any system that conforms to such a goal.  Is freedom to speak,
> for free, at anyone truly a desirable goal in a global network?

Freedom to speak should definitely be preserved. What we want to introduce is 
"freedom to not listen".

Proposed general principle: mail-ng should enable, facilitate and make 
efficient all message transfer in which the sender AND recipient wish to 
participate. Conversely, it should prohibit or impede all message transfer in 
which the sender OR recipient do not wish to participate. The system should 
facilitate message transfer on terms which are acceptable to both 
participants, or decline to transfer the message at all if no agreement as to 
terms can be reached.

High and lofty ideals, these. We'll be lucky if we can even come close to them 
in actual practice. Even so, you'll note that the idea is compatible with 
both minimal-cost communication (as per email today), and sender-pays 
communication. In cases where the recipient wants to be paid and the sender 
doesn't want to pay, the system should gracefully decline to transport the 
message. The general principle even allows a sender to charge for sending a 
message, should a recipient agree to those terms, which wouldn't be a bad 
model for paid subscriptions.

The broad technical requirement that arises from this, I think, is "a means 
for mail system agents to negotiate message delivery parameters prior to the 
actual delivery of the message", or something along those lines. It would be 
premature to start rambling about details at this time, however.

Regards,
TFBW