[Asrg] The fundamental misconception about paying for mail

[David Nicol]

On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 4:56 AM, Alessandro Vesely <vesely at tana.it> wrote:
> mathew wrote:
>>
>> [...] There's no technical reason why I should not be able to
>> simply whitelist traffic from this list to be delivered for free.
>
> Is that because a list subscriber (you, I presume) happens to be the
> postmaster at the receiving site? If not, do you mean all users have both
> the permissions _and_ the patience to whitelist lists that they subscribe
> to?
>
> I'm asking because I see no means for automated registration of opt-ins. Am
> I missing something?

The Advenge system as operating in 2003 sent the recipient a notice
when a message passed the whitelist due to a text search hit against
one of their "magic phrases."  This notice contained a URL to
whitelist the sender and a URL to whitelist the source IP for use with
mailing lists, the assumption being that good mailing list traffic
comes from a small set of IP addresses that only produce good mailing
list traffic.

Also, there are a set of business models at the other end of
sender-pays from nominal charges for bulk, which are high charges for
in-demand people.  For instance, a sender-pays e-mail system capable
of charging a reading fee at a publishing house overwhelmed by
over-the-transom submissions makes sense, as well as celebrity charity
projects.  So much money to e-mail your favorite celebrity, and the
funds go to buy baby formula for the poor people of Roxbury.