RE: [Asrg] Thoughts so far

At 08:06 PM 3/19/2003 -0500, you wrote:
> At 2:35 PM -0800 3/19/03, Steve Schear wrote:
> > Past that I really don't care if they can or cannot contact me. I can 
> > live with that.  A bit of balkenization might be desirable, even 
> > necessary, to coerce a change.
> You're right.  Balkanization may be necessary to coerce change.  If people 
> discover that they cannot communicate with their friends, the businesses 
> that they buy things from, and the periodicals that they read, they most 
> certainly will switch systems.  I'm glad we both agree on that.  Now 
> please apply that logic to your initial deployment.  Let's say you manage 
> to persuade 5% of the population (I'm being generous) to use your system 
> at first release.  Which do you think will be coerced to change? The 5% 
> that adopted your system initially, or the 95% that didn't?
Depends on whether the 95% continue be deluged with spam and the 5% claim 
they no longer do.

> > > At 2:13 PM -0500 3/19/03, Paul Judge wrote:
> > > > 2.      must not affect delivery(latency, integrity, cost, reliability) of
> > > > wanted messages to a point that would effect the normal use of email
> > > > 3.      must be easy to use
> > > > 4.      must be easy to deploy, incrementally
> > > >         a.      must provide incentives to deploy for those doing the
> > > > deployment
> > > > 5.      must not depend on universal deployment to be effective
> > > > 7.      must have minimal administration and implementation overhead
> > > > 8.      must have minimal computational and bandwidth overhead
> > > ...it has serious problems with those requirements.
> > I don't accept number 8 as being necessary.
> Okay.  How do you respond to 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7?
The sender-pays system, when implemented via PoW, is asymmetric to the 
extent that only the recipient, if that, needs to install special SW.  The 
postage generation by the sender can be initiated via an applet DL from a 
linked web site communicated by the recipient in what you are calling the 
challenge/response.

> > I don't think postage requires a universal acceptance off the bat. If it 
> > works for me, that's all I care.  Progress occurs when a small, but
> Please explain how it works for you when nobody else is using it.
You've jumped from a small number to zero, just as you're jumping to no 
solution without universality.

> > influential group, adopt some new technology or behavior which is 
> > beneficial to them.  As other's notice the advantages they too will see 
> > if it can work
> Yes. That is true.  Please explain what the advantages are when only a 
> small group is using it.
That group is, hopefully protected from a majority of spam.


> > for them.  I like Freenet and other P2P systems.  I don't care if they 
> > are not universal.
> Absolutely.  So long as they have a critical mass, they are useful. How 
> are you going to get a critical mass?
Critical mass, from my view, is when most of my would-be-correspondents use 
it.  I care not otherwise.

> > > At the early adopter stage you aren't forcing unknown senders to spend 
> > > more time and money--you're forcing the users of the system to spend 
> > > time and money.  The unknown senders aren't using the system. And you 
> > > can't block them because they constitute the majority of your correspondents.
> > No they do not.  I'll white list all my current correspond ants all 
> > others are, ifso facto, unknown senders.  My .sigs will inform 
> > respondents on lists how to contact me in the same way people sometimes 
> > use intentional ill-formed email addresses to thwart harvesting.
> So, you agree that in the early stages your system is a combination of 
> whitelisting and challenge/response.
I never said otherwise.  Have you read the papers at http:www.camram.org?


> Now take a user looking for an anti-spam system.  He can install two systems.
> 1. A whitelisting and challenge/response system.
That's camram with a web applet for generating postage.

> 2. A whitelisting and challenge/response system that makes his 
> correspondents install special software and makes it more difficult and 
> expensive for him to send email.
I guess this system, who's ever it is may be at a disadvantage.


> Why will he install #2?
Depends on perceived effectiveness and other, perhaps intangible factors.



> > > Again, you've skipped to the "everyone has it" stage.  Take that person 
> > > currently facing the pain of having to change their address. You say to 
> > > them, "Here, instead of changing your address.  Install this system.  It 
> > > will take longer to send your email (or cost you money to send), and it 
> > > won't stop any spam right now.
> > It will stop spam and all unknown senders immediately.
> Sure.  If you're willing to manually whitelist all your correspondants 
> and/or use a challenge/response system.  But that has nothing to do with 
> the feature that you are pushing--sender-pays.
Of course it does.  Please read the papers at http:www.camram.org before 
responding, if you do.

> > > Stop telling me how it's going to stop spam when everyone is using 
> > > it.  I believe you!  Tell me how you're going to convince people to use 
> > > it in the first place.
> > For those who cannot or will not accept this aspect its not for them 
> > until it approaches more universal acceptance.
> Okay, now I think we may be approaching understanding.  All you need to 
> realize is that the number of people who will decide "its not for them" is 
> greater than the number who won't.  Therefore, you'll never approach 
> universal acceptance.  Therefore it's a dead-end.
The requirement of universal acceptance is probably a dead end.


> And at this point I give up on my end of this discussion.  If you aren't 
> persuaded now, I suggest you go start a software company selling end user 
> software (find a good area to tackle--something where Microsoft is giving 
> away their product for free, for instance--and sell something that doesn't 
> interoperate with other software in the area) and we can pick up this 
> discussion in ten years or so when you've had some experience trying to 
> sell software to end-users who already have a solution that sucks, but 
> basically works.
All the work I'm referring to is open source, like Freenet, and Linux.  I'm 
not trying to sell SW to anyone.  I'm looking for a viable solution for 
me.  One that raises the bar just enough that spammers and people who 
aren't really willing to spend just a bit more time then they do now to 
contact me initially are culled out.

> But thank's for the discussion.  You have changed my opinion of 
> sender-pays. I've gone from thinking that it's an interesting concept to 
> thinking it's a complete waste of time.
And all without reading the detailed material.  Amazing!

steve

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