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Re: [Asrg] Re: Answering a lot of questions about e-postage in a few sentences

2004-04-24 11:55:20
At 04:10 PM 4/23/2004, Philip Miller wrote:
Hypothetically, it works in the sense that each step upstream (in connectivity, not mail transmission) is charging those immediately downstream for messages transmitted. This means that even if spammers establish their own ISP, they will be charged by their uplink provider. However, this doesn't rectify the essential flaw that receivers bear the cost burden of email, not senders. Even if this raises the cost to send imposed on the sender, it in no way reduces the cost to the receiver.

Here is the underlying problem with the ePostage proposal:

        In order for this to work, everyone has to implement it.

If we get everyone to implement ANY new proposal that makes it harder (more costly, harder to prove you are a legitimate sender, whatever) to send bulk email, it goes a long way towards solving spam (sent in bulk). We don't need some ePostage scheme to make this work, we need a new protocol that everyone agrees to use, and a system for transitioning between the existing SMTP protocol and the new protocol, and widespread agreement to implement the new protocol. Trying to add ePostage on top of all of this adds an additional layer of complexity for no useful (spam stopping) gain.

Then we can expect to see spammers move towards sending spam "not in bulk" by increasing use of zombie PCs, having millions of zombies sending 1 email an hour.

jc



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