Barry Shein wrote:
On April 19, 2004 at 23:24 research(_at_)solidmatrix(_dot_)com (Yakov
Shafranovich) wrote:
> 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.
Let me ask a different question - can you elaborate as to the specific
reasons why e-postage will help with spam. Perhaps we can achieve those
same reasons with other means as well.
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.
There would be an issue of distributed trust. Your ISP has to establish
trust with each ISP that issues stamps. A more viable solution would be
using a few centralized authorities to issue certificates that can allow
ISPs to issue stamps. But then you run into the question of what happens
if a spammer operates an ISP. Today's CAs do not revoke certificates for
policy reasons but that can probably be changed.
E) Unstamped mail could be accepted for a while and then ISPs can
choose to reject it.
There is really no way to restrict unstamped email unless it goes to the
ISPs mail servers. I just want to point out this distinction - people
would still be free to run their own email servers over whatever system
they would like such as FreeNet.
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.
What I am really interested in discussing is why this would help. The
issues of how e-postage would work can be left to be worked out but the
interesting thing is how will e-postage help with spam?
Yakov
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Yakov Shafranovich / asrg <at> shaftek.org
SolidMatrix Technologies, Inc. / research <at> solidmatrix.com
"And this too shall come to pass"
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