Robert Brown said: >Let's BUY the MTA server and two encryption nodes whose only job is to >ensure that the MTA queue never runs dry, each equipped with 600 GB in >RAID3. Let's see, that would be, hmm, less than $10K if one got gold >plated parts, less than $4K at my local OTC no-name computer store. >Let's amortize all costs over a year. The $10K hardware cost is then a >measley $30/day. And further said: >SPAM is undeniably evil, but the place to add costs is at the ISP level >and the PoP level. Acceptable use agreements with sharp nasty teeth and >anti-spam legislation that hits spammers AND the networks that >tolerate/enable their activities AND the actual vendors that are selling >the products being spammed with big fines have a far better chance of >having a favorable impact on SPAM than any number of arcane and >expensive countermeasures at the level of the mailer itself. >Legislation CAN be effective. The new do-not call list has worked >absolute wonders for me. Note that PHONE spam was never free -- it >costs anywhere from $0.10 to $1 per call. Yet three months ago I would >get hit a half-dozen times per day or more. Caller ID was all but >useless, as few phonespammers used listed numbers or else they used >blocks. The DNC list plus the promise of fines or worse, and I now get >phone-spammed once every few weeks, usually by somebody that apologizes >profusely and babbles about removing my name from their list once I >point out that I'm on the DNC list. After all, they can't sell to me >without telling me who they are, and that's all I need to have them >fined or worse. > rgb Dan says: If I follows Roberts scenerios, he visualizes ways to own things like MTA's, etc and evade the cost per by magnitudes. Generally, as the second fragment of text describes, Robert's suggesting catch-me-if-you-can enforcement is the way to go. If that's a logical mode, IETF can possibly see a mandate to tighten technology to find our true sources of messages, packets, etc. Generally, like MPLS, and 802.11b, the trend is moving slowly the other way. I think instead of detailed calculations, an observation which might seem familiar to economists is closer to the issue. If you expect people paid to enforce things to do it, they will always Jones for more people and resources, and probably no enforcement in the world accounts for capturing more than some ones of percents of undesired activity. Like any community, there will always be a "crisis" or some description requirement more of: everything. Cooperation, legal scope, education, and of course always more money. This constitutes part of the noise level that degrades much of modern life. (Like the incredible competition to have the most interesting possible up and coming new disease, mental problem or crime). On the other hand, we all have a vested interest in watching the eggs in our basket. Allthough I've never seen a note posted to this effect, If I walked in off the street into the office up front in this building and started loading office supplies into a hand cart and roll them out the door; Secretaries, salespeople, the shipping guy, would come piling out of the spaces and stop me. Nobody put that in there job description, or has to. By making some catagories of messaging a chargable cost, and making sure somebody has to pay; (easiest as an anonymous cost up front), now everyone in the cost pipeline has something to gain and lose with enforcement. Its easy to visualize this. the MTA's look at a MIME type field and its a very large prime number. Its forwarded to an agency or heirarchy of agencies. They return a go/no-go message (UDP probably). If the number is already used, the message declines it and the message is aborted from delivery; (or just downgrades to free). If its accepted, the factors are return and the software verifies it by multiplying them. Having the factors on file proves the identity of the agency. Each handoff offers the MTA a new prime. Only the first is chargable. Any MTA can downgrade a message to free, (or upgrade it with a top level seeded prime). This works right down to a home box type MTA, like a POP3 program. Subsideary primes have a mappable relation to the seed ones; (doesn't matter what it is. As long as the relation can be detmined). MTA's which do not cooperate in the scheme incur no cost, and add or lose no value to themselves or anyone else. No message status changes. Some may encounter MTA's elsewhere in the system to modify that, but there is no red flag day at all. It involves trust of only one agency at the top of the heirarchy. You have to trust them to want old fashioned, hard currency, money. I can refer you to a number of personal aquiaintances with that characteristic, (if you do not know people of that ilk). regards, Dan