Right on the money. We all get 4th Class adverts in our
postal boxes but
few seem to complain even though we are forced to spend a few
valuable
seconds of our time each day dealing with it. How is this markedly
different, financially, from email spam? Following along the
apparent line
of reasoning of the above decision no commercial entity would
be able to
contact me w/o prior authorization, and we know this will
never become the
law of the land. Because many spammers may not be repeat
offenders to the
same party, opt-out systems won't work. Opt-in might but
who's laws will
prevail in enforcing them.
Actually I tried complainng about 4th class mail. I put a huge notice on
my letterbox that said "3rd class and 4th class mail not accepted". The
mailman ignored it, of course. I now pile up all the junk mail I get on
top of the letterbox, marking it "wrong address" or "not accepted", and
the mailman makes a point of circling "The resident" to prove that it
has in fact been correctly addressed.
I'm dead center in the sender-pays camp, Proof-of_work initially and
anonymous bearer stamps later. Its the same tried and true
system that
limits the spam in my postal box to a small amount, almost all from
credible parties. It doesn't require major changes to the email
infrastructure, though clients would need to be enhanced
(web-based email
could add this almost immediately, plug-ins may suffice for
some, like
Eudora), nor new legislation. Initial users may find they
become less
"reachable" to casual contacts, but that should only last a
short while if
sender-pays becomes popular.
Actually, sender-pays could be implemented at the ISP level. ISPs would
automatically pay for stamps on outgoing mail, and bill it back to the
sender.
Sender-pays also doesn't even have to use stamps. It can be implemented
as a financial arrangement between two mail servers (relays or
otherwise). Mailservers run by entities that trust each other could even
reconcile any handlign fees at the end of the month or even year.
I think it would be important for every receiving server to be able to
set its own charges. These could even be listed in an extended MX
record.
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