Subject: RE: [Asrg] Re: - More 'pay per' foolishness

From: "Hannigan, Martin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 00:54:02 -0500

If anyone missed it, I'm not talking about "pay per" I'm talking about
inter-carrier bit billing broken out by protocol (SMTP) that causes
providers to know exactly what their SMTP costs are and they can react
accordingly with rate plans that accomodate hamburgers, double cheesburgers,
and Big Mac's with fries. 

-M<

--
Martin Hannigan                         (c) 617-388-2663
VeriSign, Inc.                          (w) 703-948-7018
Network Engineer IV                       Operations & Infrastructure
[email-masked]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]On Behalf Of
> [email-masked]
> Sent: Thursday, December 30, 2004 12:38 AM
> To: [email-masked]
> Subject: [Asrg] Re: - More 'pay per' foolishness
> 
> 
> > - If X is a spammer she will eventually run out of money 
> and will have to
> pay her provider again (for sending mails).(Assuming we use 
> some sort of 
> SMTP extension or some other mechanism for authenticating X's account)
> 
> > - If Y replies to X's mail the same transaction happens the 
> other way round.
> 
> > So, if I am a normal user I am not likely to run out of money in my
> account because i'll be sending as well as receiving mails. 
> If there is
> some deduction in my account but i know i didn't send any 
> mails then it's
> most likely that my machine is infected(assuming there is no way to
> prevent zombies from sending authenticated mail ).
> 
> > And I would love to be spammed because that will only 
> increase the amount
> of money in my account.
> 
> And so what happens for 'free' community mailing lists and 
> other such affinity 
> groups, which get one mail from a group member and send it 
> out to the other 
> thousand members of the affinity group?
> 
> Not all E-mail send/receive traffic is anything remotely like 
> symmetrical.
> 
> Gordon Peterson                  http://personal.terabites.com/
> 1977-2002  Twenty-fifth anniversary year of Local Area Networking!
> Support free and fair US elections!  
> http://stickers.defend-democracy.org
> 12/19/98: Partisan Republicans scornfully ignore the voters 
> they "represent".
> 12/09/00: the date the Republican Party took down democracy 
> in America.
> 
> 
> 
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---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 30 Dec 2004 17:53:51 -0000

>If anyone missed it, I'm not talking about "pay per" I'm talking
>about inter-carrier bit billing broken out by protocol (SMTP) that
>causes providers to know exactly what their SMTP costs are and they
>can react accordingly with rate plans that accomodate hamburgers,
>double cheesburgers, and Big Mac's with fries.

But counting the port 25 packets is only related in the most vague
sense to actual e-mail costs.  I don't know anyone (other than vendors
who want to be the gatekeeper) who thinks there's any merit in
charging for mail that isn't spam, and I don't know very many who
think there's any merit in charging for e-mail in general other than
as an indirect way to stop spam.

If you're going to count the port 25 packets, it seems to me that a
much cheaper and equally effective approach would be to forget about
money and let networks set hourly or daily ingress quotas for their
peers.  If someone on network A sends a huge blast of spam to network
B, they'll hit their daily limit at 12:05 AM, and no more mail over
that path until tomorrow.  Then network A has to deal with the
complaints from its own users that their mail is falling on the floor.

Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
http://www.taugh.com

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 17:24:58 -0500

> as an indirect way to stop spam.

I do. I think spam, as we usually use the term (shady crap) is just
the harbinger of an ever-growing wave of email which will be from
people/orgs who will resist any spam label.

This would include charities, political campaigns, the govt, religious
and other nuts of the more popular variety, not to mention
multi-billion dollar corps who can claim some sort of "legitimate
business" relationship with you because you once had a credit card w/
them or a bank they acquired or bought something at one of their
stores, etc etc etc.

I think it's pure pollyanna-ism to believe that all we have to do is
discourage those evil people and everyone else will behave reasonably.

In fact, I'll say that if we ever did manage to stop The Evil Ones
(tm) then all those others will rush in to fill the void, in a new
york minute. We'd have opened the door for them by unburdening the
average user's mailbox with most crap (except theirs.)

To anticipate the obvious question, why hasn't this happened yet?:

Well, I think to some extent it has happened, or is happening.

But two factors are:

a) As unbelievable as it is, I have good reason to believe that most
of those sorts haven't "gotten" the e-mail thing yet, not by a long
shot. In particular mass e-mailing.

b) I think some threshold has to be breached for their marketeers to
say "ok, spam isn't just for breakfast any more, let's go for it!"

That is, something will breach its very negative connotation.

Probably someone like Wal-Mart just saying ``oh the hell with it I'm
sure our 200+M customers would LOVE To hear from us a few times a day
just go for it''. And if someone like that starts, and another, and a
few more, well, it won't be pretty.

And don't kid yourself, when they decide the day has come they'll have
some strategy to make sure they're not treated like spammers like
lawsuits against anti-spam companies or isp's who filter them etc.

 > complaints from its own users that their mail is falling on the floor.

Ya ever hear the story about King Cnut? He marched to the shore, held
out his hand, and commanded the tide not to come in.

No economics, no go.

The economics right now go the other way, let 'em do what they want so
long as they send in their $20 and let the PR dept sort out any
damage.

That's what has to be changed.

Of course, if one takes a purely populist view, sure, everything
would be free...how hard is that to sell?

         Chorus:
         Oh the buzzin' of the bees
         In the cigarette trees
         Near the soda water fountain
         At the lemonade springs
         Where the bluebird sings
         On the big rock candy mountain

         There's a lake of gin
         We can both jump in
         And the handouts grow on bushes
         In the new-mown hay
         We can sleep all day
         And the bars all have free lunches
         Where the mail train stops
         And there ain't no cops
         And the folks are tender-hearted
         Where you never change your socks
         And you never throw rocks
         And your hair is never parted...

etc.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

Software Tool & Die    | [email-masked]           | http://www.TheWorld.com
Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: 617-739-0202        | Login: 617-739-WRLD
The World              | Public Access Internet     | Since 1989     *oo*

---

From: James Lick <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 31 Dec 2004 14:05:11 +0800

>complaints from its own users that their mail is falling on the floor.

This is similiar to what the Daum company in Korea does.  (They run a 
popular Korean webmail system.)

It works basically like this:

1) They have a whitelist of known high-volume servers which can send 
mail without limit.

2) Anyone else can send only a limited amount of mail per day to their 
servers.

3) A high-volume sender can apply to be whitelisted, or they can pay a 
certain amount to send mail to their servers.  However, this payment is 
more like a bond because they also have buttons on the recipient's email 
for them to vote whether they wanted it or not.  If there is a 
definitive feedback that the mail is wanted, they will be added to the 
whitelist instead.  Lots of bad feedback and the sender may be refused 
anyways.

You can read more about it from a presentation about it:
http://apcauce.mail.daum.net/meeting/meeting_2nd/yonnie.pdf

In the presentation they call it an online stamp system, but most 
senders don't need to actually pay anything.

Disclaimer: As you will notice from the above URL, Daum's employees are 
heavily involved in the Asia-Pacific chapter of CAUCE, and they host the 
APCAUCE web site and mail server.

-- 
James Lick -- 黎建溥 -- [email-masked] -- http://jameslick.com/