From: "David K. Merriman" <merriman@arn.net>
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 1996 02:25:50 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Digital postage and remailer abuse
Message-ID: <2.2.32.19960113061303.0068e1f8@arn.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Thus bespoke Alan Bostick:
>
>The very nature of this attack makes me wonder whether it would be
>worthwhile to implement a digital postage scheme for remailers that
>doesn't happen to be backed by real money.  The remailers would continue
>to be free to use, and currency exchange hassles would be avoided, but
>many of the benefits of abuse prevention would be in place.  So would
>the infrastructure to upgrade to pay-to-play remailers at a later date.

Doing something like this might also further the analogy of email to
snailmail; particularly if the remailers were able to issue 'books' of stamps.
It might even be possible to have each remailer issue Estamps (tm) of
different 'kinds', much as there are different postage stamp 'themes'.
Having different stamps from each remailer would also allow some means of
tracking spammers and rip-off artists ("hmmm. an 'Elvis' Estamp. That came
from hactic; let's see if they can tell us who they sold this book to.....")
IF the nature of the offense were sever enough.

Too, Estamp-based remailers would be a start on reputation basing: if the
email goes through a postage-based remailer, there will eventually be an
increased level of confidence that it isn't some kind of scam or other
nuisance ("This came through vox, a postage remailer; therefore, someone had
to go through some degree of bother; therefore, it's a lot less likely that
it's some Frosh playing with his new Internet toy.").

Of course, I could be just spitting into the wind, or posting what is
blatantly obvious to everyone else :-)

Dave Merriman


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