ietf-asrg
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[Asrg] Re: E-postage

2004-04-20 20:02:23

On April 19, 2004 at 23:24 research(_at_)solidmatrix(_dot_)com (Yakov 
Shafranovich) wrote:
With the current state of affairs I simply do not see how any kind of 
e-postage system would take off at all within a reasonable span of time 
even once all of the technical issues have been addressed. The same goes

Isn't this the canned, applies to anything, response?

It's been nearly ten years and no one has come up with anything,
perhaps it's time to put the "that would take too long to be accepted"
on the back burner and discuss other aspects?
 
for any proposal calling for a major infrastructure overhaul - there 
simply isn't enough monetary or non-monetary incentive for network 
operators, software providers and governments to make a major change of 
that scale. It may very well be that the system may collapse due to that 
(which I personally do not think will happen).

It (e-postage) doesn't require much any infrastructure overhaul.

Maybe some ways of imagining it being implemented do, but maybe the
goal should be to say well, if we do it that way it'd require a major
infrastructure haul, can we do it some other way.

In brief how about:

   A) Each ISP creates stamps according to some accepted method,
   probably some cryptographic approach. Think SSL certificates or
   some similar precedent.

   B) They attach a stamp to mail according to some policy such
   as e-mail originating from their customers.

   C) Stamps can be allocated according to any policy they choose, at
   least at first. For example, give each customer 1,000 stamps per
   month and charge for excess, whatever, that's a marketing decision.

   D) However, other ISPs can choose to transit or not email with
   particular stamps.

   E) Unstamped mail could be accepted for a while and then ISPs can
   choose to reject it.

Ok, maybe it needs work. But it's hardly off-the-wall, and it doesn't
require major infrastructure nor would take years and years. If a few
major players said this is the way we're going, here's some software
to do this, and we'd be off and running.

I don't propose that as a worked-out solution, only as an example that
one can approach the problem more positively, and to point out that
ready-made, all-purpose blow-offs like "it would take too long" really
don't improve the quality of discussion, except perhaps when posed as
questions rather than assertions.


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