[Mailman-Users] The economics of spam

[Rich Kulawiec]

On Sat, Jan 03, 2009 at 02:52:21PM -0800, Jan Steinman wrote:
> No, it is based upon the idea that a system could be implemented whereby 
> it would be impossible to avoid the payment.

It can't.

This idiotic idea resurfaces periodically (see "hashcash" and other
similar products of the wishful thinking of clueless newbies [1]).
It is one of the very stupidest anti-spam ideas -- and there's a lot
of competition for that "honor", unfortunately. [2]  I suggest that
you refer to the archives of the spam-l and irtf-asrg mailing lists
for a quite thorough debunking of this nonsense by the most senior and
experienced people working in the field.

---Rsk

[1] Hashcash fails on inspection because attackers control vastly more
computing resources than defenders, by several orders of magnitude.

[2] Including "anti-spam" ideas which actually make the problem worse.
See "C/R" and "SAV", for example.