On Tue, May 18, 2004 at 12:17:32AM -0400, Meng Weng Wong wrote:
| forwarded with thanks to Yakov Shafranovich over at ASRG.
|
| | http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/proofwork.pdf
| | http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/talks/040514-ProofWork.pdf
On a related note regarding the sender-pays concept, I was recently
approached by www.vanquish.com. The concept is similar to Yahoo
DomainKeys --- ISP-level cryptographic signatures embedded invisibly
in the message --- but adds an interesting twist: along with the
signature you get a microbond.
Not a micropayment, where each delivery always represents a financial
transaction; more like a microbet, where each delivery is underwritten
by a willingness to pay. Essentially, senders say "I bet you 1 cent
that my message won't waste your time." If the message is legit, the
recipient doesn't collect. Only if it's spam does the recipient make
the sender pay. I think this model accurately reflects real-world
economics.
Their business challenge is twofold: getting their zero-value bond (in
signature only mode) out into the market before Yahoo DomainKeys hits
the bigtime, and finding the industry niche who actually do want to
make use of this concept.
The great thing about sender authentication is that once it's in
place, you can start augmenting the email landscape in all kinds of
interesting ways like this one.