On Fri, Mar 28, 2014 at 4:15 PM, Barry Shein <bzs@world.std.com> wrote:
On March 28, 2014 at 00:06 owen@delong.com (Owen DeLong) wrote: [snip] I thought the suggestion was that a recipient (email, or by analogy postal) could indicate they wanted an email which would cancel the postage attached, that is, no charge to sender if they wanted it.
So if a spammer or junk mailer could, say, trick you into accepting mail in those schemes then they get free advertising, no postage anyhow.
*Postage schemes as proposed with end users email clients 'attaching postage' simply not workable Not in IPv4. Not in IPv6. Not in IPng Not in any conceivable future version of IP. *Believe end users being served by mail servers WON'T tolerate postage, or the extra difficulty in configuring their email client, even from a free service. Spam is a serious problem, and different mail users don't agree on exactly what messages are spam, BUT from end users' perspective: they all tend to agree that it is their provider's job to have made all the spam go away, but delivered all goodmail with 100% accuracy. Moreover, mail users expect, this should be 100% transparent, requiring no extra work from the mail user. Confirming that a message was OKAY, or that it was spam is definitely outside the compass of your average mail user. Therefore.... it would almost definitely be e-mail mailbox providers footing the bill on behalf of their subscribers in any 'charge postage' scheme that ever had a reasonable chance of working. Must be completely transparent to end users. Any treatment for spam ultimately needs to have some conceivable way of being implemented to be less harmful and annoying than the disease. Therefore: Must not have any significant burdens for at least 95% of legitimate users, and the burden of the 5% of legitimate users must be low and worth it. Email hosting providers still just have to use the flat rate monthly service fee to recover their costs, AND costs have to be low enough that free mail providers can still work -- supported by advertising : users will revolt against SP, if there are extra charges. Therefore "Postage must be optional". Perhaps, by separating mail into multiple classes, and requiring postage only for certain classes. Such as "Unpostaged Email" --- Extreme spam filtering, likely deliverability issues (what we have today) "Bulk Class Email" --- subject to reduced spam filtering, reduced postage, Only available to authorized SMTP senders. "First class Email" --- Intended for private correspondence, greater postage, reduced spam filtering "Priority Email" --- Intended for extremely urgent messages, high postage, for time sensitive matters very little or no spam filtering. And the process by which SMTP operators could reach agreement to charge each other for traffic, and on what rate should be standard, is difficult to conceive..... Postage would incentivize SMTP operators: to scrutinize users' traffic and limit abuse or excessive mail outflow from any one user. But who could say... that a particularly lucrative spam campaign won't come from the spammer attached with the proper postage?
In theory SMTP providers could do this... exchange postage between SMTP operators and completely hide it from end users, but the problem is it requires agreement... and consistent rules, otherwise e-mail perhaps becomes too expensive: or not sufficiently predictably inexpensive. Now.... if SMTP providers charge each other postage... postage SPENT should be offset by postage RECEIVED. When e-mail conversations are mostly symmetrical --- for example: two users e-mailing each other, then the ratio of messages OUT to messages IN should be pretty close to 1.0, or at least not 1000 to 1; Which means.... the two SMTP servers could charge each other postage, but the postage spent is offset by postage received. This would be different for commercial bulk mailers ("legitimate" or otherwise), AND as a result --- they would pay. Shifting some costs back from sender to receiver of the message. And... perhaps the commercial mailers _should_ bear costs. As commercial mailings create support costs (when false positive'd by spam filters), And... additional storage cost (before the user downloads their message from their POP3 mailbox). Also large-scale bulk mail consumes bandwidth, memory, and processing power. So... how could it work technically... One possibility: a SMTP server proves postage deposited, by each presenting a cryptocurrency wallet address in the HELO banner and the 250 reply; for the smtp transaction to proceed, the sending server needs to be challenged to prove it has the balance to pay --- and challenged then to provide the signed transaction in the form of a "Temporary deposit". Probably through SMTP Extension verbs. For example: "250 Hello: new SMTP server at IP address Xyz. Before you can start sending me mail, except to abuse or postmaster, or clearly marked BULK class mail: you need to introduce yourself with an AUTH message and provide a Base64 signed transaction paying out a minimum of a $0.002 deposit. to unique address [blahblah]. Deposit forfeit if not used to send First class Email within 48 hours, or upon any abuse complaint. After this SMTP server receives confirmation of your deposit; this SMTP server will track your balance by your IP address, and you will be allowed to send mail from this IP, as long as your balance is not negative. The cost of postage will be subtracted from your deposit. Note, that every time you place a new deposit, $0.0001 will be subtracted as an introduction fee. Every future SMTP connection you make to this server is $0.000001 times the number of simultaneous connections. After the introduction, The first 100 valid recipients and the first 10 invalid recipients or 500 kilobytes of First class traffic per SMTP IP address are free for the first 100 times you connect to my SMTP port. Beyond this, every time you present a RCPT TO with an invalid e-mail address, or address with an unauthorized recipient domain, $0.0005 will be deducted. Every time you present a RCPT TO, $0.000001 will be be immediately deducted. Every time you complete DATA stage, the charge will be $0.000001 times the number of RCPT TO lines for successfully accepted recipients every 1 Kilobyte after the first 250 Kilobytes of message data received. If the entire delivery fails due to a connection timeout, only 1 recipient is charged for received data. SPECIAL MAIL CLASSES: Bulk Solicited Mail - 1/1000 the normal postage rate per recipient for first 250Kb. - Identify by specifying 'Precedence: Bulk' in the message header. Must prepay the standard postage for the first 1000 recipients. Excess postage refunded after no spam complaints for 48 hours. Priority Mail - 10000x the normal postage rate per recipient. - Charged if Subject line contains the word PRIORITY or the message contains a X-Priority, Importance, or X-Priority Header indicating high priority. Urgent Mail - 100000x the normal postage rate per recipient. - Subject line contains the word URGENT, or the message contains a Disposition-Notification-To or Return-Receipt-To header or the message contains a X-Priority, Importance, or X-Priority Header indicating high priority, " So there may be a $0.002 cost to send a 250 Kilobyte message to 1000 recipients. Or $0.10 to send to 100000 local recipients. In the event of a user sending mail to a free mailing list, well.... The mailing list provider is likely to require whatever fee is needed to offset the number of members in the mailing list. We're getting lost in the metaphors methinks.
-- -JH