From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 11:38:54 -0800 (PST) It's broken in the larger sense that Eric mentioned: costs are not incurred by posters. This is not just a problem with remailers, but with the growing numbers of "Make.Money.Fast" and "Allah is Coming!" sorts of posts. Think about it. I've heard this assertion made a large number of times --- that if the poster had to pay for the cost of a posting, that all of our problems would go away (or at least a lot of them would). I'm not convinced they would; perhaps it is time to start exploring this assumption. Digital postage solves the problem that it becomes expensive for someone to flood a mailing list or a newsgroup with 10,000 annoying messages. But all it does is disenfranchise the poor; the rich would still be able to make themselves a nuisance. How do you defend against someone like Detweiler if he has the resources of a Donald Trump, or a Bill Gates? Also, how much do you charge? For example, Detweiler's Blacknet posting only went to some 20-odd newsgroups, and yet it was able to do a lot of damage. If you charge $1 a message, then for a mere $20, he was able to cause a lot of damage and consternation on the net. If you start charging $10 a message or more, legitimate users will be hurt, since they will now have to pay this large amount of money. And in the long run, it still doesn't work, since Detweiler wasn't even being very efficient. For example, he could have sent a GIF image containing kiddy porn or bondage pictures to soc.women; then the sh*t would have really hit the fan. A single message can do quite a lot of damage. Digital postage alone does not solve the accountability problem. - Ted