The problem with payment schemes like this is that they're hard to rationalize (as Lucky points out here). A direct mail piece (via snail mail) can easily cost the sender more than a dollar when all costs are taken into account. This does not seem to have appreciably slowed down junk mailers IRL. Spam to a large mailing list has a multiplicative effect (although it's also easier to throw out and/or ignore.) Certainly if someone had a real product, it would be worth anywhere from $1 to $25 to post an advertisement to a sizeable mailing list. On the other hand, a blanket charge would serve as a disincentive to people who make valuable contributions, unless it were a completely negligible cost, in which case the advertisers would have no problem coughing up the money. There's a serious imbalance between how annoying spam is and how much we're willing to pay to post (most of us would like to see them charged to the point where they wouldn't do it at all.) Possibly a system of charging for non-list-members? Sort of a closed list with a way for outside posters to contribute if they really wanted to? In general it seems very difficult to balance the various aspects of maintaining a lively discussion, fostering a sense of community, allowing anonymous postings, and keeping the whole thing simple enough to actually implement. The best approach I can think of for dealing with a lot of this crap is to a) ignore outright spam, b) do not feed the energy creatures (the people on the list who thrive on conflict.) and c) instead of responding to noise, contribute to signal. I've been on the verge of responding to certain posters over the last few months, and I've realized before I've hit the "send" key that I'd be giving them just what they want -- attention -- while further degrading the signal to noise ratio. At 11:47 AM 12/31/96 -0800, you wrote:

At 10:25 AM 12/31/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote:

...

The easiest and fastest solution is to set up toad.com to charge a dollar per message. (Proceeds to be spent by John Gilmore as he sees fit.)

We can then leverage off the existing e-cash infrastructure which already provides blinding software for free on all major platforms.

I am not sure that this proposal would work. Some of the spammers on this list are rather dedicated. They might gladly pay a dollar per message.

-- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred Make your mark in the history of mathematics. Use the spare cycles of your PC/PPC/UNIX box to help find a new prime. http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm