Trying to use my limited time efficiently, I'm going to consolidate my
comments on this topic. There were a number of thoughtful responses from
several people, but I'm not sure how to deal with them most efficiently...
I'd actually prefer to minimize the personal responses to focus on the
underlying issues...
One important aspect is that a good implementation of pre-paid email will be
a purely opt-in system. If lots of people choose to use it, so much the
better, because essentially they'll wind up bartering their email charges
amongst themselves. However, the fundamental difference is that the real
costs of email can and should be removed from the infrastructure and made
visible.
I think a few scenarios might clarify how a different economic model could
be used. There are various possibilities, but I'm still focusing on the
pre-paid email model because I think the implications can be most easily
understood.
Scenario one: Someone has had a forwardable public email address detected by
the spammer. Doesn't matter if it was hijacked by the Gibe virus or
harvested from a newsgroup or stolen from a mailing list. Once it has gotten
onto the spammers CDs, it will forever after be a target for their newest
spamming strategies. However, by forwarding the email address into a postage
pre-paid email system, all spam is gone. Poof. Any future email from that
address will be from someone who was willing to pay the postage. Simple. I
like simple. Many people like simple.
Scenario two: You write unpaid email to someone whose email address has been
harvested. You receive a bounce message. It apologizes for the spam-induced
nuisance, and asks you to try a different email address or buy postage, and
it gives you the URL to buy the postage. If all of your backup email
addresses also bounce, you'll just have to pay for the delivery and hope the
recipient will provide a new unspammed email address.
Scenario three: You are a spammer. Your unpaid email to ALL users of such
systems goes nowhere. As long as the postage encryption system remains
secure, there is no escape. Pay up or give up. Period. Even a spammer can
understand that. And they will hate it.
Now I'll address a few of the comments:
Keith Moore wrote:
On Wed, 5 Mar 2003 09:14:20 +0900
"Shannon Jacobs" <shanen(_at_)yamato(_dot_)ibm(_dot_)com> wrote:
I'm surprised to see so little focus so far on the underlying cause
of the problem. The economic model of email is fundamentally broken
Nope, that's not the cause of the problem. That's trying to impose a
model that works in a world of tangible property, onto the world of
interpersonal communication. Imposition of this model hasn't worked
well in the case of intellectual property laws, and it won't
necessarily work well for communications either. You can argue that
recipients' time is a scarce resource that should be subjected to
market forces, but this relies on several false assumptions - in
particular, that there is an ordering relation for the value of
communication, and that the value of such communications is fungible
with money.
This is confusing value received with cost of service, though I certainly
agree that there are real problems with IP laws. Actually, both parties
SHOULD benefit from email communications, and the benefit should be
approximately equal. In a kinder and gentler Internet world, that theory
should justify hiding the costs. However, this is NOT the case with spam,
where the spammers want to receive ALL the benefit and deliberately try to
accept NONE of the costs.
The last part is just plain wrong. Different messages do have different
values, including different economic values. Legitimate businesses also want
to advertise, and they want to spend their advertising money effectively.
The value of spam is absolutely negative. It simply wastes my precious
time--OUR precious time multiplied by the millions and millions.
Brad Templeton wrote:
I was one of the first people to propose e-stamps for internet
mail. I have since renounced the idea.
Fully detailed reasons are at:
http://www.templetons.com/brad/spume/estamps.html
But in short:
a) You can't get there from here, since you can't reject mail
that is unstamped until lots of people use stamps and nobody
will want to use stamps unless people are demanding them.
Incorrect. Certain people could choose to reject unstamped email with
absolutely no effect on the rest of the email system. And there are
certainly people that you would pay to contact--you do that every time you
pick up the phone and make a long distance call.
b) CPU coins are better than money but still face problem (a)
I agree CPU coins are bad, but mostly because they irrationally and
unjustifiably penalize people with slow computers.
c) Putting an artificial cost on something that was designed to
be cheap is a lousy answer.
There IS a cost to email, and that has nothing to do with designing it as
efficiently as possible. Nothing "artificial" about it. It uses resources,
and someone has to pay for those resources. Adding artificial costs is a
marketing question, but if the market is free (in a third sense of the word)
and open, then people will freely (a fourth sense) choose the email provider
who offers the best email services at the lowest cost.
Actually, I think a properly designed email system would cost me nothing for
the email I wanted to receive, even though that is the email I derive most
real benefit from, and should PAY me for receiving any other email. I prefer
that payment in cash on the barrelhead, and this is actually possible with a
pre-paid email system. I'm not the only person who likes being paid for my
time.
d) It has free speech implications. (in both senses of the word.)
Are you confusing free speech with free beer? The free beer is easy to deal
with. You have no right to free beer (or email), and anyone who is giving
you "free" beer has a reason to do so. The only significant question is
whether you know the reason. Right now most ISPs provide "free like beer"
email to attract customers, so at least their reasons are clear, but there
are many other flavors of free email that are not so tasty. For example,
Hotmail's flavor is downright pernicious.
Free speech is a much more interesting topic, but I can't say too much about
it within the scope of email. The important aspect here is that the spammers
are abusing their freedom by FORCING millions of people to listen to their
unending and repetitive "send money now" messages.
e) Mailing lists are a problem.
Not directly related to spam, but solvable. Actually they pose a greater
problem for EVERY system that tries to filter email selectively. On the
other hand, I prefer NNTP servers for public discussions.
f) Major virus problem if you use real money
Eh? I'll have to read your Web site for the details, because it makes no
sense on the face of it. If you believe that encryption works reliably, then
the vender of the postage can encrypt the e-postage and no spammer can
counterfeit it. Solved problem. (Well, not perfectly solved, because when
the stamp is used you have to cancel it, but that's a timing-related
question. An email system that actually pays for itself can also afford to
do extra spooling if it needs more processing time. In fact, there would
probably be a net savings since the suddenly obvious spam would now need
absolutely no spooling.)
On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 09:14:20AM +0900, Shannon Jacobs wrote:
I'm surprised to see so little focus so far on the underlying cause
of the problem. The economic model of email is fundamentally broken,
and that CREATES the spam problem. "We have met the enemy, and they
is us."
That e-mail is very efficient is a feature, not a bug. I would be
loathe to give it up. The "internet cost contract" -- namely I pay
for my end of the wire and you pay for your -- is what made the
internet great, let's not tear it down if we can avoid it.
Now I agree that the super-cheapness of bulk mail (some say that
the problem is that spam transfers cost from sender to recipient, but
the truth is it's super cheap for both of them, and spammers would
still spam if they had to pay the real cost of the whole
transmission.)
is at the root cause of spam. But it's a feature. We want it for
our regular mailing lists.
I'm certainly not arguing against efficiency, but the current system is
obviously NOT working efficiently except for the spammers. Given open and
fair competition among email service providers, the most efficient ones will
be the same ones that earn the highest profits and attract the most
customers.
Mark Delany wrote:
<My comment snipped>
Well... A lot less spam maybe. Many companies willing pay a US
postage stamp to send, eg, credit card offers. I get a couple a week.
If these same companies can select their target email addresses, I
can't see why they wouldn't
be tempted to pay the postage-paid email fee (aka marketing cost) to
spam me.
Sure, postage-paid email will destroy the business model of many
spammers, but not all spammers. Whether the reduced level is
tolerable is a different question.
So what's wrong with that? These are LEGITIMATE businesses selling real
products to real customers. A well-designed pre-paid email system should
actually allow you to say what kind of email you will receive, and how much
money want them to pay for your time. It should be up to the businesses to
decide if your time is worth it to them--but that should be done without
actually revealing anything about you directly to them. Certainly not your
email address, unless YOU decide you want to talk more with them.
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