Re: Conservation Laws, Money, Engines, and Ontology (fwd)

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 01:46 AM 9/6/96 -0400, Donald E. Eastlake 3rd wrote:
>Suggest you look at draft-eastlake-internet-payment-*.txt in the
>IETF shadow directories.  I don't think any one step will solve all
>our spam problems but I wouldn't mind spending, say, 5 cents for each 
>real piece of mail I sent outside my company and if end machines charged 
>5 cents per piece of ouside mail received, I think spamming would be 
>crippled.  (Note that with bad guy lists, you could collect the money and 
>then just throw away the mail.)

Assuming we all agree that we're moving from a paper-based mail system to 
email, it is logical that "junk mail" will move as well.  As I recall, 
statistics show that the average cost of a piece of junk mail is about $1 or 
so, including postage, printing, etc.  It occurred to me a while back (and 
this proposal appears to be at least approximated by other proposals around 
here) that since companies are already saving a dollar, they should use some 
of those savings to "bribe" Internet-users into reading those (commercial) 
messages. 

Don't bother with all the details on how to verify this, just include 
digital cash along with the message, to be credited automatically to the 
recipient.

Assuming the average Internet user already pays about $15 per month for 
access, he would only have to receive 2 emails a day which pay him 25 cents 
per, to pay for this service.  At that point, his Internet access would be 
free, at least somewhat analogous to free TV which is paid for by commercials.

Everybody's ahead, except for the postman, the printer, etc.






Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com