[Mailman-Users] The economics of spam

[Jan Steinman]

On 23 Dec 08, at 10:45, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> Jan Steinman writes:
>
>> I would willingly pay a hundredth of a cent (or so) per email sent if
>> it would reduce spam to near-zero.
>
> Only problem is, you'll have to go to the bank and fill out the
> electronic funds transfer form for each $.00001 you pay.
>
> Nanopayments are not a solved problem.


I agree that the banking industry is too horribly inefficient to  
handle nanopayments. If they claim it costs them $25 to handle a  
bounced cheque, I can't imagine what they'd claim it costs to accept a  
$0.00001 payment. They've grown fat and lazy. Don't look to them for  
any innovation that doesn't involve barely-legal Ponzi schemes.

Besides, individuals wouldn't be doing the payments, their providers  
would. The key is SMTP servers -- THEY would be the ones that would  
have to handle the accounting. And arguably, they might be the ones  
receiving payment anyway, since they are the ones ultimately bearing  
the cost. (I'd love to get $0.00001 for every spam my SMTP server  
passes -- would much more than pay for the email all my customers send  
out.)

So I think the key to nanopayments is to cut the banks right out of  
the process. All of the accounting is already in SMTP -- you just have  
to add billing and collection. Someone write it up as RFC 5821,  
please? :-)

But this is getting way OT, and we aren't going to solve the problem  
on this list.

:::: The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable  
one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore all  
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw ::::
:::: Jan Steinman, EcoReality http://www.EcoReality.org ::::