At 10:34 AM 11/13/1996, Mullen Patrick wrote:

Sounds like another attempt to raise the cost of using the Net, nothing more.

I am curious which conspiracy you believe I am participating in, other than the Great Cypherpunk Conspiracy, that is. Keep in mind that nobody is forced to participate.

Sure, paying postage (Is $1 really necessary? Why email when snailmail's cheaper??) may reduce general spamming done by local punks, but it does nothing against corporations which already spend millions on snailmail spamming.

Many people would be happy to read spam mail at $1 a piece. Assuming you can scan at a very conservative 3 messages/minute, that's $180/hr. you can make in the privacy of their own home. Not enough for you? Raise the rate. One dollar is a nice schelling point. That's why I chose it for my example. In practice the people involved are welcome to choose any amount in any currency they like.

Also, what happens when your long-lost friend comes across your addy and tries to email you? Surely you don't want to charge postage for an otherwise free service to him/er. Maintaining a list of "accepted sources" would be a hassle not many people would accept.

Absent highly intrusive global net monitoring techniques, that's what they are going to have to do anyway. E-mail is inexpensive. The advertiser can justify the expense even if generates a small number of leads. Expect more spam. The alternative to filtering the mail in some way is to create Internet licenses for every participant which may be revoked for infractions. These licenses would have to be global. Big Brother is Watching. Advertisers do not have a monopoly on spam. Many people - especially women - complain about harrassing mail they receive.

Slight variation is to generate a list of "toll these entities." A smaller list (hopefully :-), and generally easier because then it defaults to no-bill. Or, to accomodate superstars/actors/etc, generate files like rhosts.accept rhosts.deny in UNIX. That way, the user may use either/both types of filtering.

How will you construct your "toll these entities" list yet accept mail from any remailer? Why will spammers not figure out remailers?

Again, the average user wouldn't want to deal with this hassle, everyone's mail software would have to be rewritten, and I basically oppose any ideas that cost me money for something I already get for free... :-)

No, everybody's mail software would not have to be rewritten. That was the idea. For instance, it would be easy for users of Unix systems to use procmail to pre-filter their mail for whatever program they like. Nota bene: the remailer operator is not offering to filter the users mail. "Free" is not always the best choice. I would gladly pay $10/month to receive the cypherpunks list if it meant that messages were delivered immediately when sent. (I believe these delays hamper the discussion.) As it is, I can't complain because I am a recipient of John Gilmore's charity. I would be interested to hear more about your solution to this problem: People spam other people who don't like spam but like to receive anonymous messages. I would prefer to see solutions in keeping with the Cypherpunks spirit; that is, no use of force, no use of law, and no loss of anonymity will be acceptable. Peter Hendrickson ph@netcom.com