[Asrg] Email Postage (was Re: FeedBack loops)

[Barry Shein]

On November 15, 2008 at 23:41 asrg at johnlevine.com (John Levine) wrote:
 > >May I point out that it's been at least a decade that people have been
 > >shooting down anti-spam proposals because "that would take a decade to
 > >get adopted!"?
 > 
 > Actually, the problem with e-postage has nothing to do with standards

Well, I was really making a general statement, my momentary interest
may be charging bulk emailers somehow but if we can learn this much
from the discussion I think that's of value.

 > and everything to do with the fact that nobody has any idea how to
 > implement it in a way where the revenue would come within a couple of
 > orders of magnitude of paying the infrastructure costs.

Yeah, which maybe is why this is the anti-spam RESEARCH group and not
the anti-spam CODING group.

But the objections haven't been so much about how to implement,
they've been objections to the very concept, vastly over-stated
"proofs" that it's impossible, etc.

 > If you're going to say "don't do it that way", remember to tell us
 > what way we should do it.  The hand waving is getting a little old.

Something's getting a little old. Maybe it's heated meta-discussions
rather than "ok, that's an interesting idea, making spammers pay for
what they use somehow would no doubt slow them down a lot, let's try
to work it out a little and see where it goes".

Or maybe we should just admit that the purpose of this group is to try
to figure out how to control a limited resource (i.e., people's
ability to deal with their email) that does not involve any sort of
resource charges whatsoever as a given.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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