On Thu, 5 Jan 1995, Russell Nelson wrote:
From: db@Tadpole.COM (Doug Barnes) Heh. An anonymous remailer paid for by credit card... there'd have to be an additional level of indirection for it to work, which would make the methods for tracking those who don't pay quite problematic.
Why wouldn't it work? I plan on doing this, and I'll be selling lots of things besides a remailer, including lots of email traffic. So there won't be any effective way to find out who paid for access to my remailer.
Another thought: why couldn't you sell a book of "stamps" -- Magic Money tokens -- and get paid for them using First Virtual? This would get around two problems: the lack of anonymity using First Virtual, and the fairly high 29-cent-per-transaction fee. You could sell a book of twenty remailer stamps for a dollar, or something. I'd buy. And it wouldn't make it too easy for people to use remailers without paying. FV will still take an account away from someone who denies legitimate charges too many times. I guess there is the problem of Chaum's patents (and RSA's). Is there anyplace where neither set of patents is valid, or where they'd be practically unenforceable? Joe