On November 13, 2008 at 19:34 schaefer(_at_)brasslantern(_dot_)com (Bart
Schaefer) wrote:
On Nov 13, 5:17pm, Barry Shein wrote:
}
} Perhaps as an exercise we should take a month, stop all spam-related
} topics, and discuss how the global postal system or telephone system
} should work.
I would be interested to have you expand upon your analogy to the
postal and telephone systems. In particular, both of these came
into existence as monopolies,
Phone service was offered to the general public around 1878. AT&T
started to become considered a monopoly in 1907, 30 years later. The
monopoly was broken up effective 1/1/1984.
Anyhow, it's not really relevant to the original question which was
whether or not so-called "micropayment" systems are possible. Clearly
they are possible, as exemplified by phone systems (both landline and
wireless), SMS billing, postal systems, what have you.
And, further, that's not even what was being proposed. Saying that
commercial bulk e-mailers should pay does not imply micropayments at
all.
It's just the favorite red herring to toss out: That would require
micropayments, micropayments are impossible, THEREFORE any system
which attempts to cause bulk emailers to pay is impossible, THEREFORE
STFU. QED. (preferably all said in one breath.)
But as I pointed out in a previous message even postal systems (rather
archaic entities) don't actually require bulk senders to lick each
stamp.
(Well, postal systems did tend to be created by governments as
monopolies of a sort. For example, their existence didn't preclude all
sorts of other courier services from Wells Fargo (founded 1852) to
Fedex (in the US), so it was usually a monopoly on a very narrowly
defined set of services.)
and it has only been a relatively
recent development (as compared to the long history of the postal
and telephone services) that there is a competitive economy in
either market.
(I've lost what "it" is in this sentence)
In both cases there was a high initial barrier to entry, and for the
postal system the need to transport tangible objects remains one.
What mechanism do you propose that would either establish similar
barriers for Internet transactions, or bring a similar economy into
existence even though such barriers do not exist? Who becomes the
regional monopoly with the power to set prices and refuse service
to those who don't pay?
No one has proposed a monopoly, so this is a straw man.
There used to be such a barrier to joining the Internet. One had to
have at least one willing peer, and one had to pay for the dedicated
data connection to one's peers, and the peers had to agree on the
traffic they'd carry.
It would be useful if you were more specific about what years or era
you're talking about.
Since I was there and active back when, the ARPAnet days...a peer
needn't be willing, only able. It wasn't even their equipment so this
doesn't make a lot of sense.
To get a connection DARPA allocated a port on an IMP to you. Which
port would even become your primary IP address.
For example at BU when I hooked them up we were 10.4.0.44 which meant
port 4 on imp 44 (10.* was the ARPAnet, the zero was silent) which was
in the 9th floor machine room at 545 Tech Square (MIT LCS), the box
was white and about a 5U and hooked to a BBN IMP.
DARPA paid for it all. With some very narrow and later exceptions
(e.g., CSNET/X.25) you couldn't buy anything, you either were approved
for a "free" (to the organization) connection, or you didn't get one
at all.
That was what changed when Gore et al moved it all to NSF creating the
NSFnet. At that point you could buy your way in if you were a
recognized bona-fide research and/or educational institution by NSF's
rules. And along with "buy" came a big budget to pay for hookups for
poor cousins (e.g., small private colleges etc.) since the roughly
$100K per hookup cost could be daunting to some of them.
Then, ca 1989, all hell broke loose.
Seems to me that was the period during which
a different decision could have been made, to make the entire system
closed to those who didn't pay the "postage" for the data that they
emitted, whatever that data might be. Is it really not too late?
If not, is it really a net benefit to go back? (Yes, pun intended.)
I think you're making this overly global.
Certainly one could establish a new monopoly, and some people might
even pay to use it because of its exclusivity. (I seem to recall some
startups attempting exactly that in the last few years, but I don't
know what happened to them.) Is there a passenger railway system
anywhere in the world that survives without government subsidy? Is it
in a region where people have private cars and access to cheap fuel
and good roads and parking?
Such a system for charging bulk emailers could be made quite simple,
the devil is of course in the detail.
You create a header.
In that header is a cryptographically secure string which is the
postage which was purchased from a recognized issuance party. Think,
as an analogy, SSL certificates.
A site could choose to accept or reject such "stamped" email.
Monies collected for such postage could be divided up, I won't belabor
this detail.
Some rules exist to acquire such postage for non-commercial sites,
end-users, etc., probably amounting to about free.
Anyhow, obviously the entire idea would comprise many pages of details
but I hope that outlines an overview of a plausible system which
doesn't require micropayments, monopolies, or all the other straw man
nonsense which gets thrown at the stage like rotten tomatoes when the
idea comes up.
--
-Barry Shein
The World | bzs(_at_)TheWorld(_dot_)com |
http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 800-THE-WRLD | Login: Nationwide
Software Tool & Die | Public Access Internet | SINCE 1989 *oo*
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