From: Zooko Journeyman <zooko@xs4all.nl>
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 10:25:53 +0800
To: dlv@bwalk.dm.com
Subject: Re: non-censorous spam control (was Re: Spam is Information?)
Message-ID: <199708030213.EAA12948@xs2.xs4all.nl>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



A million monkeys operating under the pseudonym 
"Dr. Dmitri Vulis, KOTM <dlv@bwalk.dm.com>" typed:

> "William H. Geiger III" <whgiii@amaranth.com> writes:
> 
> > In <199707311120.MAA00669@server.test.net>, on 07/31/97
> >    at 12:20 PM, Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> said:
> >
> > >Another longer term way to improve the situation is to charge some small
> > >token amount per article, just to encourage people to use it with some
> > >intelligence (use cross posts rather than separately reposting to each
> > >group).
> >
> > This will not work!!!
> >
> > Charging for e-mail/news posts will no nothing to prevent spam and more
> > than likely increase the noise on such lists. It is the spamers who have
> > the money to post volumns of their crap. Allso I think you will find that
> > it will be the fanatics who will think it worth the $$$ to get their
> > message out.
> 
> In all fairness, it would decrease the "spam" because some spammers are
> certain to be unwilling to pay for braodcasting the kind of crap they
> now broadcast for a flat fee. However it would not eliminate the "spam"
> and it would damped the "signal" more than it would damped the "noise".


You guys are all forgetting the second part of the protocol-- 
receiver receives message, reads it and decides whether he 
wants to receive more mail like this one from this sender.  If
so, receiver sends the token back.


It's called "good faith deposit".


--Z