One of the ideas that seems to have reached some level of “escape velocity” out of O’Reillys “FooCamp” this weekend is the email transaction cost approach to stopping spam.
Don Park (who proposed his own “Trsted Email Network” solution a few days ago) points to Tim Bray’s description of the idea.
I’ve heard this tiny-cost-per-message proposal before, and while I appreciate its advantages, it raises some concerns for me.
There would need to be a way, at the minimum, to provide no-charge email within an organization (so I wouldn’t be charged for mail sent from my RIT account to students with RIT accounts notifying them of exam grades, for example).
I’m also worried about the “digital divide” impact—what does this do to people who don’t have credit cards, for example? Do they stop being able to send and recieve email? Will there be email vending machines, or prepaid email cards?
The idea works really well for the technological elite, those of us for whom a few extra dollars a month for email would be a trivial expense, and for whom adding a level of complexity would have minimal impact. I’m not sure if it holds up when you get outside of the inner circle of privilege and skill. Will my grandmother pay an additional cost for email? Probably not. She’ll stop using it. Will most parents give their kids extra allowance for sending email? Only if they’re pretty technologically sophisticated, I suspect.
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I share Liz's concerns regarding the 'tiny cost per message' email proposal, though perhaps from
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Hi Liz.
I posted my answer in the form of an update to my post. If it doesn't show up in your trackback, the URL is:
http://www.docuverse.com/blog/donpark/2003/10/13.html#a971
Instead of a flat charge across email, which seems rather disadvantagous to people without the method to pay. What had been talked about before, and I think has more merit, is a charge after a certain AMOUNT of messages. The average user won't send more than what - 20-30 emails a week? By average I mean your mom and pop, same with most teenagers. In the case that they do...then maybe start charging. Or even revise the limit.
I agree with your idea of no charge within a domain, or atleast a network but that could be abused too. Forged headers are quite easy to make...you'd have to make it stronger than that.
The point is to trash unsigned mail. You can readily sign your mail to students. The SMTP relay is a way to bridge the signing divide.
Just as a note, I sometimes send 20-30 emails a DAY to just one person.
And who's going to be charging, anyways? How's it going to combat spam? Who gets the money?
Ted, there's a link to Tim Bray's more detailed description, which I think answers your questions, in the post.
I came with another, hopefully cheaper and faster, solution. It's so simple, I doubt I am the first to suggest it.
http://www.docuverse.com/blog/donpark/2003/10/14.html#a976
Do end-users need to pay these charges? How about something analogous to interconnect costs which mobile networks use for settling SMS revenue?
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