On Thu, Nov 20, 2008 at 8:24 AM, Bart Schaefer
<schaefer(_at_)brasslantern(_dot_)com>wrote:
On Nov 20, 6:59am, Gerald Klaas wrote:
There has to be an exchange of value between the sender and recipient,
and the value exchanged has to (1) be high enough to dissuade abuse,
(2) be low enough for senders (the ones you "want" to hear from, as
opposed to the spammers) to consider their messages more valuable than
the stamps, and (3) at least pay for the stamp generator plus any
transaction costs of passing around the stamps.
Don't get too worked up over (2). Of course you can recognize Grandma
and give her free stamps. The postage doesn't have to be the same for
everyone -- although with "net neutrality" an ISP who acts as a postage
vendor might be forced to have uniform pricing.
Note that unless the ultimate arbiters of stamps are the end users (a
scaling problem), I don't see what prevents this economy from becoming
a pay-to-spam scheme, which is effectively what bulk snail mail is. In
the physical world bulk postage subsidizes first-class delivery. Here,
it's hard to imagine that "first class" is costly enough to need any
subsidy, so anything beyond the cost of running the stamp generator is
pure profit; which is quite an incentive to sell more stamps, or to
charge the "owner" of the target mailbox to offset the lost income if
the mailbox owner doesn't want the junk.
This is exactly the kind of discussion I think we need, and why I believe
the "stamp exchange framework" discussion needs to be separate from the
"stamp franking and verification" discussion. If there were a standard
method for exchanging stamps, that would encourage innovation and
experimentation in what constitutes the "appropriate value" of a stamp.
Every recipient (or ISP) could choose their own stamp generator. Maybe
it would be one that run for themselves only, or maybe they would redirect
stamp requests to a "stamp vendor". In my view, having a standard framework
would allow a "stamp" economy to emerge. It may be that it starts with
large
ISP's running their own, but I expect that if micropayments turned out
to be the "appropriate value" of stamps, that stamp generating service would
converge onto existing online payment systems that are already well
practiced
in handling small financial transactions.
I agree, such a system would largely reflect the current "pay-to-play" bulk
mail system of the USPS, however, I like the idea of being able to set my
own rates. I can envision that in a leveraged stamp generation service
model
based on micropayments, that individual profiles would exist that set
different stamp "value" based on recipient preference. Personally, I don't
think I'd mind carrying the Pennysaver from the mailbox to the trash can so
much if I knew they paid 5 bucks to get it there.
In my view, I believe that if a framework existed for the exchange of
"stamps"
that we could then move the SPAM arms race from the MTA to the stamp
generator, which would then allow experimentation, innovation and evolution
within a black box. Senders and receivers would know how to engage the
"stamp generator" black box, and then we could continue the discussion
about what goes on inside of it.
Gerald
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