g'day, "J. Noel Chiappa" wrote: ... > Which is precisely why I say that the solution to spam is to charge for > email. It avoids the whole question of defining what is and is not spam. > > More specifically, change the email protocol so that when email arrives from > an entity which is not on the "email from these entities is free" list, the > email is rejected unless is accompanied by a payment for $X (where X is set > by a knob on the machine). You probably know this already, but for those who don't, Brad Templeton proposed this scheme a while ago, based upon am micropayments model and called it "estamps". See: http://www.templetons.com/brad/spam/estamps.html He's also got a summary page on the topic of spam at: http://www.templetons.com/brad/spam/ He's since repudiated the idea, but it's been taken up and worked on in the context of the hashcash system, which seeks to impose a measureable computation cost on the sender in lieu of processing a micropayment. Although Brad himself has repudiated the idea, I believe that the general approach of automating the accounting and imposition of cost (as is done in Hashcash) shows some promise, but what I actually think we need is an automatic way to extend trust and build trust relationships. Paul Vixie alluded to a "trusted-introducer model similar in concept to pgp but more market-ready" a couple of postings ago, which I actually think is the way to go. So, okay, this discussion needs to move off the ietf general list, but again I agree with Paul. Where is the direction about where we should be heading with this? - peterd -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Peter Deutsch pdeutsch@gydig.com Gydig Software "Bungle..." "That's an 'i', you idiot..." "Oh, right. 'Bingle..." - Red versus Blue... ---------------------------------------------------------------------