Barry Shein wrote:
My reactions to e-postage paper:
http://www.taugh.com
...
Sheesh!
Seriously, it's been ten years, a lot of really smart people have come
up with absolutely nothing, technically, that even works a tiny little
bit.
It's time to go for an e-postage system that simply reflects the
resources being used.
My single concern with e-postage is that in the real world bulk mailers
do not break into post offices and dump their mail in, nor do they bribe
people to go to the post office and put mail in for them. Because the
Internet serves as a pervasive communications medium, it is very easy to
steal or assume someone else's identity - much easier than any phone or
real world postal system. Of course stolen phone and credit cards have
always been an issue, but there are laws in place and sufficient
disincentive exists to discourage it. That is not true in the digital
world - stealing accounts is very easy because everyone is connected and
many people don't know how to secure their computers.
I am refering to the issue of hijacked computers. With an e-postage
system nothing stops a spammer from stealing Aunt Mary's computer via a
virus and sending out spam with her e-postage account. Who is going to
pay in that case? The usual response to that example is that her
e-postage account will run out. This is basically the same as rate
limiting and can be done today without resorting to e-postage. But rate
limiting is not always possible such as when an ISP rents out the
underlying connectivity from a third party. There was also a suggestion
in one of the subgroups to write up a BCP describing how to do rate
limiting.
In any case, while I am not a big fan of e-postage, there are people
including some group members (David Nicol, etc.) who are working on
e-postage systems. If there is a sufficient interest in the industry and
the community at large, and workable systems exist that require
interoperability, the IETF can step in and set standards for that.
Otherwise, I do not see what the ASRG or the IETF can do for or against
e-postage - it is simply not within the scope of standards at this point.
Yakov
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