[Spambayes] Two Stage Plan

Gary Robinson grobinson at transpose.com
Wed Dec 18 14:06:46 EST 2002



> From: "T. Alexander Popiel" <popiel@wolfskeep.com>
> Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 10:59:37 -0800
> To: Gary Robinson <grobinson@transpose.com>
> Cc: SpamBayes <spambayes@python.org>, popiel@wolfskeep.com
> Subject: Re: [Spambayes] Two Stage Plan
> 
> In message:  <BA2627E7.1AE8F%grobinson@transpose.com>
>            Gary Robinson <grobinson@transpose.com> writes:
>> 
>> No. What if people have to pay a penny for each email message they send
>> (such that legitimate people don't pay anything because they "earn" be
>> receiving email about as much as they "spend" by sending it?
> 
> If the money is being verified, then you have a money clearinghouse
> problem... which leads right back to the subscription service.  If
> the money isn't being verified, then it's worthless.

There would be a subscription, but it would not need to cost much at all. It
would not have to be a significant barrier. it would probably be part  of an
overall subscription that included software updates, etc. As should know, MS
is moving toward a "software rental" model.


> 
>> Or what if their computer has to do a certain amount of work... say 15
>> seconds of CPU time... to generate a "hashcash" coin that is required by the
>> recipient before an email can get through?
> 
> First, not all computers are created equal; what's 15 seconds on my
> PentiumII is 5 seconds on my Athlon.  Or less than a second on an
> FPGA programmed for the purpose.  There's no way to tell how much
> someone actually spent on the 'coin'.

Right you can get maybe a factor of 10 or 15 that way. Spammers would need a
factor of thousands. Also, of course, people with slow machines could be
required to put in 10 times as many cycles... it would just be one more
downside to a slow machine... probably still one that would be unnoticed,
however.

> 
> Second, Moore's Law is against you, creating something equivalent
> to runaway inflation... forcing everyone to upgrade their hardware
> as fast as than the spammers do, to keep from paying extortionate
> time costs to send mail while still keeping the spammers from getting
> away free.

People are already upgrading their hardware for other reasons. Those that
don't are penalized for it and this would be one more penalty.

> I don't think they _can_.  Effort in sending purely digital content
> cannot be verified by only software,

That is totally incorrect.

Gary


 and anything else incurs service
> costs.
> 
> - Alex
> 




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