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This discussion relates to Technology Review's article A Better Way to Shoot Down Spam.

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  fiberman
  

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  07/29/2009 01:45 AM

  The odds are in your favor!

  Well, if 90+% of all email is SPAM, just delete all emails and you'll be right 90+% of the time - a helluva lot better than other SPAM filters!
  C'mon, based on my recent experiences, SPAMers are a lot smarter than the people who run the Internet. And those who profit from building ever more Internet bandwidth have no interest in stopping SPAM. If it was stopped, they'd lose a lot of business selling product and services to build more capacity for a couple of years.
  We can stop SPAM in 10 minutes - just charge a penny per email. Make it economically unfeasible - like the US Post Office has with most types of junk mail - and you stop it immediately. And implementing it is simple - charge everyone a few extra bucks a month for the first couple of hundred emails they send so only the big users get billed.
  But it will never happen - as Internet profiteers will never go for it - as I said - they make too much money off the Spammers.
  Maybe we need to compare them to the Big Pharma or the Health Insurance Industry - everybody knows what profiteers they are!!!
  

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  • 
    smithsomian
    

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    07/29/2009 09:35 AM

    Re: The odds are in your favor!

    We can stop SPAM in 10 minutes - just charge a penny per email. Make it economically unfeasible - like the US Post Office has with most types of junk mail - and you stop it immediately. And implementing it is simple - charge everyone a few extra bucks a month for the first couple of hundred emails they send so only the big users get billed.
    
    But it will never happen - as Internet profiteers will never go for it - as I said - they make too much money off the Spammers.
    
    It has nothing to do with profit, and everything to do with implementation.
    
    Using the post office as an example is disingenuous. The post office is a monopoly. You cannot just set up your own post office, issue your own stamps, and expect letters you sent to actually get anywhere. The post office is able to charge people money for sending letters because you simply have no other way to send said letters. Yes, you could always use UPS or Brown or DHL, but these are massive companies that have required billions of dollars to set up. And you still have to pay to use their services. They can charge you because they control EVERYTHING from receipt of your letter from you, to its delivery at its destination. At no stage does it ever leave their control.
    
    E-mail servers are a whole different ball of wax. When I set up an e-mail server, I am (quite literally) setting up my own post office. Using that server, I can send e-mail to anyone else in the world without having to rely on anyone else to actually "carry" that e-mail as an e-mail. In other words, the ISP's which own the fibre optic lines that make up the Internet wouldn't be able to tell my e-mail from a web page without directly inspecting the data packet. To do that with every data packet passing through their system would be cost-prohibitive, mainly because any data over a certain size (usually a fraction of what an e-mail or web page usually is) is broken up into many packets which can take any possible path between source and destination. To track and confirm an e-mail would require re-assembling the entire e-mail from its individual packets -- and packets may have bypassed their network entirely (by using a competitor's), rendering any re-assembly impossible. The Internet is based on a LACK of control... and that is its strength. If a network from, say, AT&T goes down, there is always the network from Sprint which can allow data to be re-routed around the blackout area. That way, no one ISP actually "controls" what goes over its network... it can throttle the data, but it cannot control it in any way which is reliable for everyone on the Internet. This lack of control - this flexibility, actually - is the very keystone of what makes the Internet reliable and resistant to interruption.
    
    Plus, the barrier to entry for e-mail is so low. Setting up your own post office and postal network would require millions - if not billions - of dollars. Setting up a single e-mail server costs me nothing in terms of software (Linux) and may even cost me nothing in terms of hardware (cast-offs from people upgrading).
    
    Then we get to the issue of who would collect your "penny per e-mail". Since I have just created my own postal service (e-mail server), and since the e-mail server connects directly to the recipient server to deliver e-mail, who would step in to demand payment? If the recipient is another "independent" like me, why should we even acknowledge the transaction? Who would be the central arbiter for collecting these funds, where would they go, and what rights would this central arbiter have to force independents like me to pay? Essentially, forcing senders of e-mail to pay would fracture and break up the Internet into the "haves" and the "have-nots".
    
    And finally, there is the issue of inertia. E-mail is now so pervasive, and so broadly spread around the world, that any attempted implementation would be stillborn. Entire countries would refuse to play along (especially those poor countries struggling to improve their lot with the Internet - even a penny per e-mail would be too costly for citizens who might earn only a few hundred dollars per year). Businesses would balk. And individual consumers - especially those who are tech savvy - would be the biggest protesters. They would find ways around the pay system, rendering it impotent. Without 100% compliance from day one (and we are 34 years too late for that), setting up a "pay system" for e-mail would be impossible.

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    • 
      fiberman
      

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      07/29/2009 02:27 PM

      Re: The odds are in your favor!

      Methinks you do complicate too much!
      Is the PO a monopoly? Then why do I send paperwork by UPS or FEDEX more often than USPS? What happens when I send a letter outside the US? What about phone calls? The billing systems are well-developed and essential to international trade.
      C'mon, implementing a counter on email and charging usage over say 1000 or even 5000 per month per user would be much easier than fighting all the @#$%^&*()_ SPAM.
      And the Internet is not FREE - we're paying for all those $%^&*() to fill my inbox with thousands of undeliverable notices because they use my email address as the spoofed source of their SPAM!

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    • 
      pjduncan
      

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      07/29/2009 03:00 PM

      Re: The odds are in your favor!

      I believe some of the people proposing the charging scheme even suggest having the penny flow through to the final recipient.  The way this would probably work is that any ISP or corporation with mail servers would simply refuse to receive mail from entities who have not joined the payment scheme.  If you run an independent mail server and wished to accept email from any servers without payment that would be your option.  If you ran an independent mail server and didn't want to join the payment scheme you would be severely limited in who you could send mail to.
      
      This wouldn't require inspecting packets anywhere along the network since it could be handled by the mail servers.  Obviously, this requires a secure way for mail servers to identify themselves to each other, but that's a fairly simple problem.

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  sorgfelt
  

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  07/29/2009 07:12 AM

  spammers send free

  If you set up a system to charge for emails sent, it will have to be administered by our ISPs.  The legitimate users will have to pay the charges to the ISPs.  However, spammers use bots, open SMTP servers and/or ISPs in Russia that don't care about this issue.  They will still send spam for free.

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  • 
    fiberman
    

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    07/29/2009 02:34 PM

    Re: spammers send free

    ISPs all around the world pay for their connections.

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  • 
    pjduncan
    

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    07/30/2009 08:51 PM

    Re: spammers send free

    ISP and internet mail services (Verizon, Yahoo, Google, etc.) would have SMTP mail servers which would keep track of the traffic from other mail servers.  They would bill those organizations for the incoming traffic.  If an organization is in Russia or elsewhere with an open SMTP server or simply lax policies, they would either loose money by having to pay the recipient organizations or they would not pay and their mail servers would be refused connections in the future.

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  arnetwork
  

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  07/29/2009 07:45 PM

  pay the recipient

  I like the idea of pay the recipient. I simply instruct my isp to not send me any email that hasn't been paid for. People who want to send me email then have to have an account to which they are paying with their isp. Assuming networks have a secure way of identifying themselves then payment is assured.
  
  Only people who wish to pay a penny to email me get through. Those networks that don't charge will find their email options limited to those who don't mind getting spam.
  
  Some companies will pay the penny because they see me as a worthwhile prospect. Let them. They will soon be out of business if their selection criteria are out line with reality. If they are correct in their assumptions I will look at the email. If they are wrong I will ignore it.
  
  Some people will opt for the free email networks because they don't want to pay for their emailing and don't care if they get a lot of spam. Fine.  
  
  Since the networks wouldn't be in business if they didn't already have a secure way of correctly billing each other it seems like it ought to feasible.

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  • 
    Eric D
    

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    08/07/2009 12:43 PM

    Pay *anyone* -- it's easier

    If I an see that the sender has paid anyone something, I'm willing to look at the message, because a spammer can't afford to do that. This makes implementation easier than it would be if the payment had to go to the email recipient, or to the originating ISP:
    
    A sender need only set up an account with any known, trusted payment-certifier, which will sign email messages as being paid-for. A spam filter need only check to see whether a message has been signed. Assume 0.01 cents per message, and a $10.00 payment-account lets you send 100,000 paid-for messages. The payments can go anywhere but a spammer's own pocket -- a designated charity, a dollar-bill bonfire, whatever.
    
    The incentive to pay, and to use an email service that notices payments: For serious email users to be able to exchange messages that don't get thrown away. A few more details are left as an easy exercise for the reader.
    
    Yahoo could do it. Google could do it. Others could do it. There's no need to change infrastructure.
    
    I want this. Do you?

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• 
  Phineas
  

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  07/30/2009 06:15 AM

  Much Much More...

  Set up your penny-per-email and see if the fees escalate.

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