From: Anonymous <anon@anon.efga.org>
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 1997 07:29:30 +0800
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: Digital Postage (fwd)
Message-ID: <32a47212ab68bda3923a472826c01e98@anon.efga.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



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Jim Choate wrote:
>[Tim May wrote: ed.]
>> Some will remail for some form of digital postage. Some will charge too little, some too much.
>> Some will adjust their prices based on market/customer reactions. And so on.
>
>And there are a couple of problems with this:
>
> -  it relies on a mechanism not currently in place to interface with
>    other more traditional financial institutions. Which I might add
>    don't look upon this as the most trustworthy mechanism.

Ecash is in place right now.

> -  how do you charge for the postage, per submission? What happens when
>    I want to send 10,000 parties the email. Do I still pay the digi-postage
>    equivalent of $.35? Or do I pay $350.00?

This is easily worked out between the remailer operator and the
customer.  Were I running a remailer, I would charge $350.00.  As a
customer, I would not see this as unreasonable.

>    What about intermediate remailers and their desire to get a cut
>    of the pie?

Each hop should charge, of course.  They are all providing the same
service.

>I suspect that anon remailers will operate by something similar to
>ISP's where when the account is setup some fee is paid for use and
>not on a use by use based fee. The problem with that is it creates a
>'concrete' link between the party desiring anonymity and the remailer
>operator that may be exploited in some (most? all?) cases to break
>that anonymity.

The way to break the concrete link is with blinded credentials.  Of
course, ecash already provides this feature without the hassle of
opening an account with a remailer operator, writing and deploying new
software, etc. etc.

Monty Cantsin
Editor in Chief
Smile Magazine
http://www.neoism.org/squares/smile_index.html
http://www.neoism.org/squares/cantsin_10.html

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