Re: [Asrg] My take on e-postage

> > People, please point out what's wrong with the above, specific
> > high-level design, not with "e-postage" in the abstract.
> Have you read the taugh whitepaper?  Some of the points it raises apply
> to your sketched design.
No - do you have a link?

> In particular, the social resistance to pay-by-unit systems applies,
> and the micropayment infrastructure impossibility applies (and even
> more so, because you're positing one micropayment infrastructure per
> stamp vendor, so you get less economy of scale).
I agree on the social resistance, which is why I proposed the 
proof-of-work stamps (which involve a non-monetary expenditure) to go 
alongside it.  I'm afraid the micropayment argument doesn't hold water, 
because you can always pay for blocks of, say, a thousand stamps at a 
time, and exactly how hard is it to keep track of one counter per 
paying customer?
Incidentally, if you can prove your identity, the recipient can add you 
to a whitelist that says "I don't need a paid stamp from this sender".
> Furthermore, the money paid for stamps goes to the wrong place, ie, not
> to the recipients.  (Stamp vendors could in principle pay recipients
> who get mail with their stamps.  This involves creation of _another_
> micropayment infrastructure per stamp vendor.)
Good point.  There's a way around this, though - how about the 
recipient's stamp vendor collects a portion of the stamp's value from 
the sender's stamp vendor, and credits it to the recipient's account?  
If accounting is kept at both ends, then actual money would only change 
hands relatively infrequently - in blocks, just like the sender pays 
for the original stamps.  But, this does require some kind of business 
relationship - perhaps via an intermediary to help it scale - between 
the two vendors.
This ignores mailing lists and the like, however.  These are an 
interesting problem, because the sender wants his single mail to be 
seen by all members of the list, which could be thousands of recipients 
- that's a lot of stamps.  For this reason, mailing lists are already 
prime targets of spammers, especially since it's presently quite easy 
to forge entry.
Probably the strongest solution is for the listserv to use the 
proof-of-identity, perhaps combined with a proof-of-work or a paid 
stamp, from the sender - and for the list subscribers to use 
proof-of-identity of the listserv, with a whitelist entry to prevent 
the listserv from having to attach (paid *or* worked) stamps.  But this 
requires upgrading the list software.
Another solution is to use a proof-of-work stamp, made for the 
sender-to-list connection, with a particularly high validity threshold. 
 The recipient can then check that via a whitelist entry on the "To" 
address, without involving the listserv itself.
> > In a recipient-driven scheme, senders still have to be able to buy
> > stamps, but they will be able to choose their stamp vendor, rather
> > than being limited to their ISP.
> Except that they have to choose a vendor acceptable to the recipient.
> Keeping track of which recipients demand stamps from which vendors will
> be another cost which you don't seem to have mentioned.  If there are a
> large number of stamp vendors it rapidly becomes almsot intractable.
If there are a relatively large number of stamp vendors, then they will 
be differentiated into (roughly) two classes - trustworthy and 
untrustworthy - depending on whether they give out free or subsidised 
accounts to spammers or not.  (Fair enough, some other factors will 
probably come into play as well.)  A relatively large number of vendors 
also helps to open competition.
Recipients can whitelist the trustworthy ones and blacklist the others 
- which is a much easier problem than the present practice of 
blacklisting individual senders.  Senders then only have the task of 
finding a trustworthy stamp vendor, which shouldn't be difficult, and 
they can move away from it if their mails stop getting through.  This 
is made even easier if there are a number of public lists to consult.
Just for the record, I don't believe e-postage is The Solution, in any 
form.  Whether it can sensibly become even part of the solution is open 
to debate.  I'm just trying to get the debate back on track.  :)
--------------------------------------------------------------
from:     Jonathan "Chromatix" Morton
mail:     chromi(_at_)chromatix(_dot_)demon(_dot_)co(_dot_)uk
website:  http://www.chromatix.uklinux.net/
tagline:  The key to knowledge is not to rely on people to teach you it.


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