Phelix <phelix@vallnet.com> writes:
On 17 Dec 1997 02:21:48 -0600, in local.cypherpunks you wrote:
.....
The implementation of the plan is a more or less impossible scheme.
Nyet. It can be phased in over time...people install the software, mailing lists warn their users to exempt them, and the big servers start asking for the hashcash, little servers pick it up.
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Yes, but if you just phase it in over time, what benefit, if any, will users see until hashcash is fully deployed.
No spam in their mail boxes :-)
Until that time, people will still have to accept email without hashcash or risk losing important messages.
You could work around this somewhat by configuring the hashcash filter to put nonces (a random number) in the bounce messages for messages which arrived without hashcash. The instructions could read: Email to this address requires hashcash postage. To generate your hashcash postage get software from here: <URL> Alternatively simply reply to this message putting this number in the subject field: 12347651324 The danger is that the spammer could abuse this by automating the reply to these bounce messages. However spammers typically don't like to include a valid reply address, so this at least makes spammers include an address where they can be replied to.
We need to find some way for users to benefit from hashcash now, not 2 years from now when 90% of sites are using it. The only thing I can think of is having servers place "Hashcash-verified" headers on incoming mail so that users can do positive filtering ("this is valid email") rather than negative filtering ("this is spam").
I don't see people adopting hashcash unless there is some intermediate benefit to doing so.
An easily observable tag in the subject field such as: [SPAM?] meaning no hashcash or [NEW] meaning you had never received messages from this address before could be useful perhaps. Adam -- Now officially an EAR violation... Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`