Klarinet Archive - Posting 000085.txt from 2006/02

From: "Doug Potter" <doug@-----.net>
Subj: RE: [kl] Email 'postage'
Date: Mon, 06 Feb 2006 16:39:54 -0500

If I may give my 2 cents.

Part of the advantage and disadvantage of the internet is that there is
little central authority. Typically if a route fails, another route for
that message is available.

I've found it infuriating that people can continue to operate dangerous
scams (such as please verify your bank information) - and that the site that
they are using to operate the scam isn't shut down immediately. But they
operate out of strange and wonderful places with little central authority.
I suppose the central nameserver could stop serving a domain (such as
woodwind.org) - but even that would take a while to propagate through all
the secondary name servers.

I think the only way we are going to solve SPAM is to require sender
certification. I rather doubt the AOL/Yahoo proposal is the answer -
especially since it significantly enriches them and only applies to
companies, but I can imagine that once such a system is in place, you won't
even see mail - probably by your choice - that isn't certified in some way.

How to make this happen is the interesting question. How much would you pay
to be "certified?" (not to be confused with certifiable!) $20/year seem
reasonable?

Doug
http://ConicWave.net

-----Original Message-----
From: Ormondtoby Montoya [mailto:o4rmondtoby@-----.net]
Sent: Monday, February 06, 2006 1:16 PM
To: klarinet@-----.org
Subject: Re: [kl] Email 'postage'

Thank you, Mark. If I may be permitted one final off-topic question:

Most (all?) Postal Services on this planet have sufficient control over
their individual post offices that they can say: "No letter will be
accepted for delivery in the first place unless it has a postage stamp
on it."

Is there a similar 'authority' on the Internet, perhaps related to
assigning domain names or to creating routing maps, which could order
that no email of a certain description be accepted for delivery if it
lacks a 'postage stamp'?

Or does the decision to deliver email rest entirely with the addressee's
ISP?

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