Charging for emails

[Ridirich]

While I was driving in my car yesterday, I heard on the news that 'email companies were going to start charging users to send emails'. Now...I think I missheard that, so I went and looked on google for simular news. Here's what I found:

Link
NewYork Times even. Now, I thought that this news is older, and keeps getting brought up and taken down over and over again like a broken record....my question is, what is everyone's opinion about the validity of this? I would like to see spam senders charged so I don't open my email and see headers like 'Make yur d1ck larger and th1cker!', or '(name) MAKE YOUR BREASTS LARGER', or 'Get free viagra now!'...you get the idea. Spam filters are nice, but they don't block everything, and even block some good things. Heh.

In any case, I thought this might be a good thing to discuss.

GOD DAMN IT! I just noticed that I made the title 'Charcing' instead of 'Charging'. Teaches me to make a thread when I just woke up.

[TheCotMan]

GOD DAMN IT! I just noticed that I made the title 'Charcing' instead of 'Charging'. Teaches me to make a thread when I just woke up.

Fixed typo in thread title

[Deviant Ollam]

like a lot of proposal and suggested courses of action relating to the internet, i think this one will generate a lot of chatter from many factions (indeed, Dave Faber's Interesting People mailing list featured a discussion about the AOL portion of the proposal recently) and in the end -- like other similar suggestions -- it won't amount to anything because there is no real way to implement the logistics, billing, etc. there is no way to get everyone to play along. if i send email from my personal mail server which sits in my tech center (the spare room of my house) to renderman at his renderlab.net server (let's for assume in this hypothetical that it's also a small box on his property that he controls, but i don't know if that's the case) how on earth will any billing, etc, come in to play?

the only way that this works is if one or two huge providers (like AOL or yahoo) start putting a sender verification system into place and integrating that with billing technology. however, at that point you're not sending SMTP email. you're operating a sort of "email mk. 2" with a whole host of additional steps in the protocol. therefore, only the other big boys will (potentially) pick up on this, while the rest of us with servers in our basement (or with smaller ISPs) will be unable to reach recipients at large providers.

in the past, we've seen what happens when large portions of the 'net are cut off from one another due to filtering or other related configs. AOL used to block all mail from servers whose identifying strings didn't match their rDNS. at least i think that's the case... i couldn't send to AOL people (not that i had a hell of a large need to) since my server (which identifies itself in the SMTP exchange as deviating.net) appears during a reverse DNS lookup as a Comcast cable client. any time that such filtering is put in place (or when companies just blindly switch on "block everything that ever comes from any IP address on the ORDB, MAPS, etc etc etc) the clients of that network end up losing mail and they kick and scream at the network ops. as well they should, since such filtering methods are always buggy and shitty, in my opinion.

i believe that networks transporting mail should take the "it's better for a hundred guilty men to go free than to have one innocent in jail" approach and not attempt any hardcore spam blocking. filtering should happen at the user's level... bayesian content filters (not IP block lists) that are either part of the user's mail client program or web interface have my biggest support.

would have more to rant about but i have to take someone to the train. we'll see where this thread is when i get back.

[Ridirich]

Thank you for the edit Cot. I went back and was like 'Yeah, did a retard manouver again...'

Deviant, I am thinking it is for large companies, unless I misread it.

[Thorn]

the only way that this works is if one or two huge providers (like AOL or yahoo) start putting a sender verification system into place and integrating that with billing technology.

Funny, I block AOL and Yahoo at my mailserver now.

[converge]

Funny, I block AOL and Yahoo at my mailserver now.

exactly.. no matter how huge the customer.. everyone would have to subscribe to this, otherwise AOL or whoever would have to explain to their customer why no one from the outside world gets into their little plastic playground. If they want to go back to 1993, so be it .. there was a day, time, and place when AOL rocked .. but now they have more competition than CompuServ, Prodigy, and BBS' in general .. and I surpassed puberty ... it just wouldn't be a smart business move unless they can truly convince the entire industry that this is the way it will work for everyone.

[INIT_6]

If they are going to charge a fee to send e-mail. I would hope they would include some features normal users don't know about.

Have pgp encrypet the messages. Have a nice key server for everyone.
Not sure if a normal user would need this but it would be nice.
Thats about all I can think about right now.

If they are going to charge people to send e-mail they are going to have to make it worth it to the customer. You also have to think we pay for Water :| they will pay to send e-mails.

[bascule]

A horrible solution to fundamental design flaws in the SMTP protocol, all of which are addressed in sender pays (in terms of bandwidth) mail systems like IM2000

[dYn4mic]

Have pgp encrypet the messages. Have a nice key server for everyone.
Not sure if a normal user would need this but it would be nice.
Thats about all I can think about right now.

Yeah.. I don't think this a good idea unless you made it entirely transparent and didn't let people sign keys. (which, unless you had AOL be some kinda trusted third party, would kinda defeat some of the security of pgp.)

The reason why this isn't a good idea also is because of a good article called
"Why jonny can't encrypt"
http://www.gaudior.net/alma/johnny.pdf

Also, allowing joe shomoe and billy bob's grandma to sign keys isn't the best thing in the world (unless they are into PGP and properly auth'd the key owners).
In case you didn't know... A large part of the PGP security model was build off distributed trust. By allowing stupid people to sign keys, they weaken the security of the entire system... the web of trust. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust
Unless there was some kinda AOL, cert auth system....

Pay per email is an idea to make spam not such a great idea. That is, assuming most spammers do some Cost Benifit Analisys.

[INIT_6]

dYn4mic I didn't think about that. You are right. That johnny.pdf is a good article. Thank you for sharing that.

I hope they don't start charging for e-mail. I hate to see stupid people pay for things they shouldn't be paying for.

[blauman]

I would like to see spam senders charged so I don't open my email and see headers like 'Make yur d1ck larger and th1cker!', or '(name) MAKE YOUR BREASTS LARGER', or 'Get free viagra now!'...you get the idea. Spam filters are nice, but they don't block everything, and even block some good things. Heh.

That would be nice... I used to track them down and do something until I got some satisfation from it... yeaph... back in the days... when it was a hand full of them... now it would take a world wide event to even touch a small amount of the c??ks??ers @#%@#...