[ale] OT: the Penny Black anti-spam proposal

[ChangingLINKS.com]

> It *should* be stopped at the source.
That attitude is why spam is still successfully sent today.

> I don't know that it can be.  Most of 
> the solutions I've heard tend to collapse in the face of mailing lists.  
All except the spamarrest solution, which by the way, IS VERY simular to the 
one we use in the current ALE mailing list.

> Without solving that solution, the solution I like is that it costs someone 
> some price (1 cent ?) to send an email to my inbox.  I get that 1 cent.  So, 
> to carry on a bidirectional conversation, there is no real cost to the end 
> user.  If I could configure my account to NOT charge certain people (like 
> mailing lists, or subscribers to a list (if I run it)) that would be even 
> better.
Right. Tell you what. I will pay you a penny for each commercial email I send. 
Easy. Spammers would gladly pay 1 cent for each email sent (assuming this 
payment also protect them from other more scary anti-spam measures). 
Will that stop spam?????????

Noooooooo.
Affordable costs have never stopped direct mail, telemarketing, newspaper 
advertising, or paid listing search engines which ALL cost more to deliver 
the message. Even if the cost to send an email was as much as 32 cents, that 
would not stop spam (or even dent virus based spam).

The more you guys support the pay-to-send model, the more I realize that 
M$FT's solution is not so far fetched. That was the idea that started this 
thread, and an idea that I think would be as effective and easy to implement 
as the pay-to-send method. I see so many obvious weaknesses in both methods. 

However, from my experience and observation, I have seen no weakness in the 
spamarrest solution. EVEN THE USER is prevented from compromising the system.

Does anyone see weaknesses in a client-side spamarrest TYPE solution?

If AOL or M$FT were to implement such an AUTOMATED system (set on by default), 
do you think spammers would be able to successfully send bulk email and 
profit as they are now?

Another example of what I am talking about can be found here:
http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop 
(note how the "sender/user" must enter the security key)
 
> David
> 
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> Ale at ale.org
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-- 
Wishing you Happiness, Joy and Laughter,
Drew Brown
http://www.ChangingLINKS.com