Re: Hardening lists against spam attacks

[ph@netcom.com (Peter Hendrickson)]

At 2:32 PM 12/31/1996, Timothy C. May wrote:
>At 1:04 PM -0800 12/31/96, Peter Hendrickson wrote:
>>At 11:47 AM 12/31/1996, Lucky Green wrote:
>>>At 10:25 AM 12/31/96 -0800, Peter Hendrickson wrote:
>>>> The easiest and fastest solution is to set up toad.com to charge a
>>>> dollar per message.  (Proceeds to be spent by John Gilmore as he
>>>> sees fit.)

>>>> We can then leverage off the existing e-cash infrastructure which
>>>> already provides blinding software for free on all major platforms.

>>> I am not sure that this proposal would work. Some of the spammers on this
>>> list are rather dedicated. They might gladly pay a dollar per message.

>> Let's try it and see how it goes.  If it doesn't work, we can try
>> a more complicated scheme.  (I volunteer to modify Majordomo to
>> make this happen.  We could have this feature in the near future.)

> "Let's try it and see how it goes" is often a dangerous step. It could kill
> the list as we know it; exactly what fraction of current subscribers do you
> think will arrange for digital cash accounts, will arrange their mailing
> software to use this, will bother with PGP, etc.?

It's not always bad to take a few chances.  I've noticed that there is
a lot of negativity in the cypherpunks scene.  (I am not without sin
in this department. ;-)  It would be more exciting to try out a few
ideas.

I would much rather be trying lots of things and throwing out the bad
ones.  This should lead to better technology.  This not only benefits the
cypherpunks list, it benefits everybody using the Net, which is (I think)
one of our goals.  It short circuits poorly intentioned authoritarian
schemes to dictate what may or may not be sent to a mailing list.
(For example, people often propose to make spam illegal.  Most
readers of this list will recognize the camel's nose.)

> Now maybe this is a Good Thing, to drive out the slackers and those without
> good tools integrating PGP into their mailers, etc., but maybe it is not a
> Good Thing.

It could be a mistake, but I think the only way we will find out is
to try it.  Unlike the interesting token scheme, this is easy to deploy
and it doesn't provide an insurmountable barrier to dissent.  You
can still put up a dollar to say "This is a drag!  Let's get rid
of it!"  But if your token gets pulled by an abusive token administrator,
it's harder to get the word out.  (Not impossible, though.)

Keep in mind that the worst case is that people will have to ask
their e-cash endowed friends for a few ASCII tokens to prepend to
their posts to the list.  That is not very tough to arrange.

>> I have seen a lot of complaints about "too much noise".  That is
>> not a problem.  The problem is too little signal.  I can extract
>> the signal - unless it isn't there.

> My sentiments exactly. But I fail to see how collecting a dollar per post,
> or whatever the fee is ultimately set at, increases the number of good
> posts (not the percentage, the S/N, the _number_, which is what we both
> agree is the important thing).

> Explanation?

One thing it does for sure is to eliminate attacks where somebody sends
thousands of messages to toad.com and overloads its capacity to forward
them.  It also means that bigger faster hardware can be purchased if
the load gets too high, or to compensate somebody to wrangle majordomo.

I suspect it will also promote high quality posting.  Certainly,
"me too" posts and "unsubscrive" posts will be greatly attenuated.
And, people who post reams of drivel and invective can only do so
at the expense of financing the monthly cypherpunks food bash.  This
doesn't mean they will stop, but it does mean that we can chown down
on hundreds of pounds of guacamole at their expense.

As for other people, I think if it isn't worth a dollar to you to
post a message, it probably isn't worth it for the rest of us to
read it.  Without any real evidence, my feeling is that if somebody
has to pay a dollar to post a message, they will give it more
thought and write it more carefully.

This is sort of like expecting children to use proper grammar, forms,
and excellent handwriting in preparing a report.  The result is that
greater care and thought is devoted to the ideas in the report itself.

I don't believe that people making valuable contributions have any
trouble at all coughing up a dollar to do so.  Very few people post
more than 10 messages a month.  $10/month isn't much of a burden.

If this does turn out to be a problem, when readers see a post they
like they should send the person a buck to encourage more good work.
This is a very effective way of saying "I really enjoyed what you
had to say."

And, nothing stops frequent posters from asking for money on the
list to continue their fine work.

In a sense, this is a fully abstracted version of the token scheme.

Peter Hendrickson
ph@netcom.com