Re: anti-spam collateral damage

Jonathan Morton wrote:


> Can you explain how an e-mail inbox is any different, except for the 
> fact that spammers typically have essentially zero costs per mail at 
> present?

there is almost no difference.  Which is to say that any mailbox be it 
physical or electronic, should have a postage requirement for any mail 
delivered to it.

Unlike physical mail however, electronic mail should not have any 
central authority for mediating access.  Central authorities can be 
corrupted through a variety of means.  An example of this is that junk 
mail pays a lower postage rate than personal mail which makes it 
possible for more junk mail to be sent.  The corruption occurred because 
junk mail rates were seen as subsidizing personal mail rates.

by keeping e-mail postage peer to peer, you eliminate the possibility 
for corruption at any level and create a more efficient system for 
postage.  Which is a significant difference between physical and 
electronic mail.

on the same theme, another difference is that one can use dynamic 
pricing for postage based on the history of traffic from a given IP 
address.  This is somewhat like gray listing except of using a side 
effect of TCP connections, we are creating a deliberate effect through 
human and computer mediated content analysis of messages and changes in 
how the SMTP protocol operates.

---eric

-- 
Question: What's the difference between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War?
Answer: George W. Bush had a plan to get out of the Vietnam War.