From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 93 12:22:27 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Handling Abuses of Remailers
Message-ID: <9303032020.AA21829@netcom.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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(Sorry, Cypherpunks, for the ">" in this message--I made the classic
mistake of sending this message only to Fen, hence this forwarded form.
I'll try to watch this in the future!)

>Fen Labalme believes Eric's "penny a hop" is still too expensive, especially
>for "the poor":
>
>>Geeez, Eric!  I'd think a penny a hop would be a pretty high price...  And
>>given that most messages go through two hops, then you'd really be giving
>>your 2 cents worth!
>>
>>Note that there can be about 50 cypherpunks messages a day -- if each went
>>through 2 hops at $0.10 / hop, as you proposed, that would be $10 / day in
>>revenues for the remailers.  Seems like a lot to me.
>>
>>I would support the idea if I felt that the system would quiet the flame
>>wars, but I think rather it would simply quiet the poor...
>>
>>Fen
>
>You don't have to support the idea, Fen, you just have to open your own
>remailing node! If you think you can do it more cheaply--perhaps subsidizing
>the costs from your other income, or perhaps just doing it as charity--you are
>completely free to do so.
>
>The "liquidity" of remailer hops (with the "Mark V" software that handles the
>grunge automatically) will be quite interesting to see. Some will go for
>minimum cost (one cheap hop), others will route messages through dozens of
>hops. 
>
>Services will arise which "rate" the quality of remailers, in terms of
>pricing, security, latency, message sizes accepted, past experiences, etc.
>
>Bandwidths are increasing so rapidly and computer hardware is getting so
>cheap, that I doubt even the poorest of the poor, in the U.S. at least, will
>be unable to send these kinds of messages. The costs of transmission are just
>so trivial compared to other costs that even poor people routinely pay.
>
>(Whether the poor and downtrodden will _want_ to participate in this Brave New
>World is another matter. My guess is they will.)
>
>-Tim