Spammers Would Be Made To Pay Under IBM Research Proposal

By Tony Kontzer, InformationWeek, InternetWeek Mar 20, 2003 (8:45 PM) URL: http://www.internetweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=7900141

Companies and consumers alike have been looking to two primary aids in the battle to stem the flood of spam. On the practical side, they're turning to a seemingly endless parade of filters and other software products designed to slow the tide of unwanted E-mail by doing things such as checking messages against known spam, using textual clues to glean whether a message is spam, or blocking the IP addresses of known spammers. On the more hopeful side, they're pressuring legislators for federal laws banning spam.

IBM researchers say both approaches miss the target--that the software approach amounts to a constant game of trying to stay one step ahead of spammers, while legislation, if and when it comes, won't be able to address spam coming from outside U.S. borders. As a result, they've come up with another approach: Make spammers pay to send messages. It sounds absurdly simple, and Scott Fahlman, a research staff member at IBM's Watson Research Center, says it is. Fahlman is trying to build momentum behind a concept he's calling the "charity stamp" approach, which would force anyone sending unsolicited messages to pay to reach recipients participating in the program unless they had an authenticated code.

Of course none of this is news to many readers on this list. A number of people in the crypto/cypherpunk community (e.g, Adam Back, Eric S. Johansson and Ben Laurie) have worked for some time to develop the mathematics and code to launch proof-of-concept e-stamp systems based on either Proof-of-Work algorithims or real value. Recently Microsoft also unveiled a similar project PennyBlack http://research.microsoft.com/research/sv/PennyBlack/

steve --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo@wasabisystems.com