RE: freedom of spam (was: Re: benchmark print suplies )

[mgraffam@idsi.net]

On Sun, 4 Apr 1999, Tim May wrote:

> Digital money (stamps) is a likely solution, someday.

I would support the idea of requiring digital stamps for unsolicited
email, however I do like the idea of essentially free communication
between two parties. 

I can roughly envision a system where Alice maintains a list of authorized
coorespondants, and these individuals (or spammers, if you like that sort
of thing, I guess) are allowed to email Alice without the cost of a stamp,
while anyone not on the list needs to pay up. A first time contact between
Alice and Bob would require use of a stamp, but if they chose they could
place each other on the authorized list and then be free of the charge. 

There are problems related to privacy here.. I don't like lists of names
particularly, so we'd probably want to blind the list. 

Any thoughts on this?

> Too many parties are used to "free" services and are more interested
> in using the coercion powers of governments to maintain the status quo.

Yeah.. I prefer a technological solution, myself.. not only is it more
relevent to a global network where no one country's laws mean a hell of a
lot, but it is a lot easier to break laws than it is to break good crypto.

> And there's the pesky issue of there being no usable digital money at
> this time.

:) This puts a rather large damper on things, does it not?

Michael J. Graffam (mgraffam@idsi.net)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary 
 safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Ben Franklin, ~1784