[Mailman-Users] The economics of spam

[Bernie Cosell]

On 24 Dec 2008 at 3:45, 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.

My thought on this [from years ago -- I haven't pondered it much 
recently] was that using the international postal-service model would 
likely work; basically convert the problem from nanopayments between 
individuals to bulk payments between servers.  The US and Canada don't 
tranfer back and forth to each other so many cents for each letter, they 
just aggregate them and come to a settlement in bulk.

What I think would work would be to have the *servers* keep cross-
accounts of mail sent and received and the payments would only have to 
flow in the sent-more to sent-less direction and would only have to 
happen occasionally to balance the books.  That would also leave open 
[and irrelevant in the large] how the various servers recouped those 
costs from their customers.  If a particular server refused to pay their 
bill, you'd just refuse to accept any more email from them until they 
paid up.

  /Bernie\

-- 
Bernie Cosell                     Fantasy Farm Fibers
mailto:bernie at fantasyfarm.com     Pearisburg, VA
    -->  Too many people, too few sheep  <--