RE: [Asrg] Thoughts so far

At 10:43 PM -0800 3/18/03, Steve Schear wrote:
> > In addition, a sender-pays system would be actively fought by every 
> > major online publication, every major software company, and every 
> > free web mail service.  And if you priced it cheaply enough that 
> > they wouldn't complain, it would be so cheap as to have no impact 
> > on spam.
> Well, until the elements for a sender-pays system are available none 
> of us will know the impact.  As to being fought by commercial 
> interests, I'm not
What rational company would spend lots of time and money deploying a 
critical new piece of infrastructure that effects how the communicate 
with the entire world without having some idea of the impact?
> sure that will matter to me and many others. Because our vision of 
> sender-pays can be entirely end-user controlled it is our decision 
> if we cut ourselves off from the herd in order to ensure our peace 
> of mind.
It's the "herd" that needs a solution.  A solution which involves 
restricting non-spam communications to a small group of the technical 
elite is technically interesting, but not terribly relevant.
> If you take a look at http://www.camram.org you'll see that it 
> includes features for a "jail" to hold possible spam.  The client 
> can inspect the email and decide to let it in even if the postage 
> isn't attached and add it to their white list (e.g., vendor email in 
> response to a subscription).  Additionally,
Now put a value on a spam jail which contains 90% of your email.  And 
consider what happens if it becomes common enough that the spammers 
take notice and start forging addresses from commonly whitelisted 
senders.
If you are an individual user, communicating primarily with a small 
group of known senders, such a system will probably settle down and 
be useful.
If you are someone who is technically active online, or running a 
business that requires timely contact with random people in the 
outside world, such a system will be more painful than the spam.
Spam solutions which violate basic economic principals (e.g. "Most 
people will not spend money in order to hurt themselves") are not 
going to be successful.
At the early adopter stage, sender-pays is indistinguishable from 
simple whitelisting.  Except that it costs the sender more money.
If you think I'm missing something here, then please let me know. But 
please keep in mind that I'm not arguing that the system isn't 
technically feasible, or even desirable.  I'm simply arguing that a 
system that hurts early adopters more than it helps them is not 
likely to be adopted.
--
Kee Hinckley
http://www.puremessaging.com/        Junk-Free Email Filtering
http://commons.somewhere.com/buzz/   Writings on Technology and Society

I'm not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept
responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate
everyone else's.
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