7 ms·

Your post advocates a ( ) technical ( ) legislative (x) market-based ( ) vigilante approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't wo

Your post advocates a ( ) technical ( ) legislative (x) market-based ( ) vigilante approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.) ( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected (x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it ( ) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it ( ) The police will not put up with it ( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers (x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once (x) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists ( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business Specifically, your plan fails to account for ( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it (x) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email ( ) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses ( ) Asshats ( ) Jurisdictional problems (x) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email ( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches ( ) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers ( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering ( ) Outlook and the following philosophical objections may also apply: (x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck ( ) Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks ( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually (x) Sending email should be free ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I don't want the government reading my email ( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough Furthermore, this is what I think about you: (x) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. ( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

slig 14y ago
Except it's not about fighting spam, it's about fighting legitimate email.
unohoo 14y ago
you missed the gist of the idea -- its not a replacement for email, but reducing the inbound flow of messages/email for famous people.
ams6110 14y ago
I don't see why you need a central controlling authority. You could implement this on your own MX. Senders initially get a bounce explaining the deal. They can then sign up, select what they are willing to pay per message, and they go onto the whitelist. When subsequent emails arrive, sender is charged (might need to require digital signatures here, the service could issue those as part of sign-up). If email isn't read in X days, charge is refunded.
- astrodust 14y ago
  I couldn't eyeroll enough if I got something back from an MX like this. I don't care who you are. I'm not paying money to send you mail. There's a pile of problems both technical and social so enormous that this idea is so blatantly bad it isn't even worth serious consideration.
marcamillion 14y ago
You are totally off the mark with this response. As people have said, this is not a suggestion for a replacement of email. I imagine some central hub that manages the protocol used to send messages over the network. In order for you to get on the network you have to enter some identifiable information - as both the sender and receiver. Perhaps, including credit card information. Once you get credit card information, everybody buys credits and they use that credit to send messages to "important" people. This could totally work if you get a few "high profile" people to try it out and iron out the kinks. If people like PG, Arrington, MG, etc. actually use it and like it....it will likely be a success.

slig 14y ago

Except it's not about fighting spam, it's about fighting legitimate email.

unohoo 14y ago

you missed the gist of the idea -- its not a replacement for email, but reducing the inbound flow of messages/email for famous people.

ams6110 14y ago

I don't see why you need a central controlling authority. You could implement this on your own MX. Senders initially get a bounce explaining the deal. They can then sign up, select what they are willing to pay per message, and they go onto the whitelist. When subsequent emails arrive, sender is charged (might need to require digital signatures here, the service could issue those as part of sign-up). If email isn't read in X days, charge is refunded.

astrodust 14y ago
I couldn't eyeroll enough if I got something back from an MX like this. I don't care who you are. I'm not paying money to send you mail. There's a pile of problems both technical and social so enormous that this idea is so blatantly bad it isn't even worth serious consideration.

marcamillion 14y ago

You are totally off the mark with this response. As people have said, this is not a suggestion for a replacement of email. I imagine some central hub that manages the protocol used to send messages over the network. In order for you to get on the network you have to enter some identifiable information - as both the sender and receiver. Perhaps, including credit card information. Once you get credit card information, everybody buys credits and they use that credit to send messages to "important" people. This could totally work if you get a few "high profile" people to try it out and iron out the kinks. If people like PG, Arrington, MG, etc. actually use it and like it....it will likely be a success.