Re: Hardening lists against spam attacks

[ph@netcom.com (Peter Hendrickson)]

At 2:04 PM 12/31/1996, Douglas Barnes wrote:
> The problem with payment schemes like this is that they're hard
> to rationalize (as Lucky points out here).

> A direct mail piece (via snail mail) can easily cost the sender
> more than a dollar when all costs are taken into account. This
> does not seem to have appreciably slowed down junk mailers IRL.

> Spam to a large mailing list has a multiplicative effect (although
> it's also easier to throw out and/or ignore.) Certainly if someone
> had a real product, it would be worth anywhere from $1 to $25 to
> post an advertisement to a sizeable mailing list.

> On the other hand, a blanket charge would serve as a disincentive
> to people who make valuable contributions, unless it were a
> completely negligible cost, in which case the advertisers would
> have no problem coughing up the money. There's a serious imbalance
> between how annoying spam is and how much we're willing to pay
> to post (most of us would like to see them charged to the point
> where they wouldn't do it at all.)

It won't be worthwhile for a year or two for spam artists to go to the
trouble of figuring out how to do this.  I'm not sure I have a good
solution to this problem in the long term, however.

If our custom was to send money to people who make good posts, then
you could imagine the fee being quite high, say $20, since most of
the money will be made back.  Voila! We have a wonderful feedback
system for how much contribution we have made.

People who want to make sure that they are putting in at least as
much as they take out can make a little rule for themselves: I won't
take money out of my cypherpunks e-cash account.  I will only
send it to other people for their good posts.  In effect, this is
a fully distributed tokening system without the choke point of
a single token administrator.

> In general it seems very difficult to balance the various aspects
> of maintaining a lively discussion, fostering a sense of community,
> allowing anonymous postings, and keeping the whole thing simple
> enough to actually implement.

I agree that we should keep it sweet and simple.  That's one nice
aspect of the e-cash scheme.  All the software is already out there,
except (maybe) the majordomo part which I have volunteered to do.

Keep in mind that if the list brings in, say, $1000/month that buys
a lot of food.  I have to think that this will liven up the
monthly meetings and create many positive and lasting relationships.

> I've been on the verge of responding to certain posters over the last
> few months, and I've realized before I've hit the "send" key that
> I'd be giving them just what they want -- attention -- while further
> degrading the signal to noise ratio.

This is exactly the sort of process which is facilitated by paying
a dollar.  In your case it won't make a difference, but most people
will find their presence on the list becomes much more responsible
when they have to put up a buck.

Peter Hendrickson
ph@netcom.com