Subject: [Asrg] The wonders of telephones and paper mail

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 14 Nov 2008 10:28:06 -0000

> Perhaps as an exercise we should take a month, stop all spam-related
> topics, and discuss how the global postal system or telephone system
> should work.

Let's start by looking at how they do work.

Phone and postal systems are either run by national government
monopolies, or else by relatively small sets of private providers who
need a government license to join the club.  Members of the club do
not interconnect with non-members; the only way for outsiders to
connect is via a deliberately limited customer interface.

Eleborate and complex billing systems keep track of each message, with
elaborate and complex inter-provider settlement systems managed by
sluggish international bureaucracies (the ITU and UPU) that are part
of the UN.

Except for limited places that offer unmetered service, e.g., local
calls in North America, every message costs at least several cents,
typically more.

Is this the future of the Internet?  I sure hope not.  For a taste of
what phones would be like if they were run like e-mail, look at VoIP,
which outside of walled gardens like Skype has roughly the same spam
problems as e-mail, and just as little success dealing with it.  Google
for RUCUS for more details.

R's,
John

PS: If it's so easy to run a phone company, why isn't World a CLEC?

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From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:14:45 -0500

Well, once again, straw man alert.

Someone posits that it's impossible to set up and run a system based
on usage charging, asserted with nearly mathematical certainty.

An easy response is gosh, better tell that to all the postal and
telephone services as one example.

This is countered by the procrustean claim that aha, you said (e.g.)
phone service...then CLEARLY what you mean is that all email must have
an earpiece and spiral cord and a numeric keypad and entering email
via numeric keypad would just SUCK so forget this idea.

Wha? Huh? Several cents per each? What? Numeric keypad? Who said that?
(key in Beavis & Butthead voice: you did, you said PHONE COMPANY!)

See, if one argues that it's possible that one day people will fly
(bill for commercial bulk email), and someone else says flying is
impossible, which is countered with "but birds (telcos et al) can fly
(bill) so there might be some way...", the right disproof might NOT be
"BUT MEN DON'T HAVE FEATHERS! QED!"

Let's be honest here (oh god not that):

This particular clique has as a deeply held assumption that all email
must be free and never charged for per item in any way, shape or form.

The rest is just working backwards from that dogma.

You have no doubt it could be done, you just don't want it to be
done. This is the worst kind of demagoguery, the kind which no doubt
infuriates most in other venues. (Ahaha, regulate wall street, are you
kidding, you can't regulate wall street, besides it'd do more harm
than good, ahaha, wall st can only do good, what a dumb idea...oops,
lost *that* election!)

Numeric keypad entry my eye.

I'm sure if you ("you" plural) were generally favorable to the idea
you could see many ways to make this workable (and perhaps stop
ignoring the actual proposals being made over and over and over.)

Bulk commercial emailers should be made to pay. It would produce many
benefits.

This is unlikely to begin to happen until there is some glimmer of a
mechanism to do this.

These sophomoric "proofs" that it's impossible, which only amount to
"*I* don't want it, and I am god of email, it shall bend to my will
alone! THEREFORE it's impossible!"  notwithstanding.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

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From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:14:45 -0500

-- 
        -Barry Shein

---

From: Franck Martin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:23:31 +1200 (ANAT)

It is not impossible to set up an usage based system 

You could do on the Minitel in France 30 years ago what you just can do now on the Internet. 

Which one is in use now? 

The Internet is not suitable for usage charging (at the packet level), otherwise it would have been done long time ago. 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Barry Shein" <[email-masked]> 
To: "Anti-Spam Research Group - IRTF" <[email-masked]> 
Cc: [email-masked] 
Sent: Saturday, 15 November, 2008 8:14:45 AM (GMT+1200) Auto-Detected 
Subject: Re: [Asrg] The wonders of telephones and paper mail 

-- 
-Barry Shein

---

From: Franck Martin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:23:31 +1200 (ANAT)

Which one is in use now? 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Barry Shein" <[email-masked]> 
To: "Anti-Spam Research Group - IRTF" <[email-masked]> 
Cc: [email-masked] 
Sent: Saturday, 15 November, 2008 8:14:45 AM (GMT+1200) Auto-Detected 
Subject: Re: [Asrg] The wonders of telephones and paper mail 

-- 
-Barry Shein

---

From: Seth <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:57:02 -0500 (EST)

> Bulk commercial emailers should be made to pay. It would produce many

Better yet, why not just make spammers pay?  That would produce even
more benefits.

Barry, don't tell me that's infeasible or impossible, that would just
be a strawman argument, procrustean claim, 'sophomoric "proofs"', etc.

Seth

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:19:01 -0500

From: Franck Martin <[email-masked]>

 >You could do on the Minitel in France 30 years ago what you just can

There's a difference between "is it possible" and "if possible, have
implementations produced only successful businesses?"

Besides, Minitel is still around. According to wikipedia it generated
206M euros (that would be about one gazillion US dollars) in 2005. Not
that shabby!

Minitel's initial business model was to make obsolete the need for
printing and distributing phone books for France Telecom. From what I
understand it accomplished this. It was only later that it was seen as
a potential competitor to internet but it mostly stuck with services
more like what we'd call "pennysaver" in the US (see: Juno.)

 >The Internet is not suitable for usage charging (at the packet
 >level), otherwise it would have been done long time ago.
 
This is another straw man, nobody is suggesting charging at the packet
level. To say it's infeasible to charge per email message isn't that
different than saying it's infeasible to look at any other email
message header.

But no one (not I!) is proposing per message charges, not quite that
simple-minded. Think something more like postal meters, not stamps.

But, for argument's sake, hasn't Australia had internet data volume
charges for years and years?

Oh well.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:19:01 -0500

Oh well.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

---

From: Barry Shein <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 17:40:29 -0500

> Better yet, why not just make spammers pay?  That would produce even

Well, that would be the ultimate goal, yes.

But to do that you need an economy of some sort, it's not likely to
happen for free with a completely free medium as we have seen.

Notice for example how much more activity there is (justified or not,
I just mean as a point of fact) regarding music piracy and charging
for music online. Why? Well, there's money on the table.

But they were smart enough not to just only go after pirates. And
forget the sob stories there were some egregious pirate sites, some
had 100,000+ selections and were selling them 3 for a dollar just like
iTunes et al only cheaper.

 > be a strawman argument, procrustean claim, 'sophomoric "proofs"', etc.

I didn't say it's infeasible etc.

You must be amusing only yourself.

HOWEVER...

In my description I don't need to distinguish between spam and other
commercial email. I consider it all billable.

As an example, we get a lot of "spam" from constant contact.

They might protest the label. But can they possibly be sending to
staff aliases here like info, sales, etc if they were exericising even
the most minimal constraints. Nobody on those aliases ever performed a
double opt-in (I know because for some of them *I* am the only
recipient!)

But I don't want to distinguish, I don't want to have that discussion,
I just think someone like constant contact should pay a small and
reasonable fee for what they use (of course they could pass that on to
their clients.)

And then maybe it would be worth our while to gather and send back
lists of aliases etc they are paying for but aren't appreciated.

That's called an economy.

What we have now is just a clusterf***, something which we outgrew
over a decade ago.

If I sell pencils I don't really care who buys them or what they write
with them.

But if I give them away for free...aha! Now I have to institute
rationing, decide who is worthy of a free pencil, I would like to know
what you will do with that pencil, etc.

Screw that. I just want to be paid.

Of course, the corollary is that spammers cum spammers won't be able
to pay, and there'd be money for enforcement and an interest in
enforcement (because there's money involved.)

Graffitti on walls in public places is just a big nuisance, a time and
money sink. It seems impossible to stop.

Graffitti on public paid-for billboards is relatively rare and quickly
fixed.

-- 
        -Barry Shein

---

From: der Mouse <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2008 22:58:46 -0500 (EST)

> level), otherwise it would have been done long time ago.

And in fact it is being done today.  Between providers it's common
(well, actually, it's commoner to charge per (mega)bit rather than per
(mega)packet, but the difference is minor).  Providers charging end
users do it too, but less honestly; they usually put a floor under the
cost, label it "unlimited", and then apply additional charges and/or
cut service when customers take "unlimited" to mean, well, unlimited.
(More honest providers quote flat rates for the first however much with
some rate for additional usage, which is still fundamentally per-packet
and/or per-bit, just, again, with a floor on it.)

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