It is a pleasure to see someone bringing common sense about human behavior to the discussion, but I dread seeing another proposal like this, which entails a new technical mechanism which the victims have to pay to establish. Society has dealt with problems comparable to spam for at least five thousand years, and the mechanisms for dealing with antisocial behavior are quite simple to understand and implement. There is no need for additional complex technical mechanisms (though anything enhancing traceability is desirable). Just apply to the internet the mechanisms which are used everywhere else in society to deal (successfully) with comparable problems. See <http://www.camblab.com/misc/univ_std.txt> based on <http://www.camblab.com/nugget/spam_03.pdf> Jeffrey Race On Fri, 13 Feb 2004 13:46:05 -0500, Dan Kolis wrote: >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).