Some people were discussing the 10%, 50% and 90% implementation stages,
and the motivation to convert over to any new system.
Id like to propose that any system that requires changes at the client
end will be much harder to push through than a system that requires
changes at the server end. Changing 100K servers is easier and cheaper
than changing 100M clients.
If ISPs charged each other for receiving email, then net producers of
email (and spammers) would end up paying where they pay nothing now. If
a user at an ISP produced a disproportionate amount of email, the ISP
would have an interest in pushing the cost onto the user, just as users
of excessive bandwidth tend to be charged for it by ISPs.
At the 10% stage, a charging system could act as a filter in which
unpaid emails would be flagged as possible spam. Alternatively, mail
from non-paying sources could be delivered at a lower priority and/or
put through rigorous spam screening with a high false-positive rate.
Paid email always get through.
As you moved towards the 90% stage, you could begin to reject unpaid
email at the server level.
At the mail server level, the only thing that is required is some
mechanism by which ISPs can decide - do I have a relationship with the
sending/relaying server such that I can charge for each email I receive.
I imagine that a number of clearinghouses could be set up to facilitate
such transactions.
Im sure this idea has been propsed before, but it seems to me to be the
only effective way to ensure that spam is not sent, as opposed to
filtered out at some point after it has been sent.
There are a number of issues with this system, such as how to handle
mailing lists. I imagine that some mechanism by which users could inform
their servers of exemptions or rebates would come into play.
I like to compare this system with the telephone system. Imagine if
telemarketing calls became so endemic that people stopped using the
phone system. One way to prevent that would be to switch over to having
personal 1-900 numbers.
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