From: Jeff Davis (jrd1415@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Jul 15 2003 - 16:16:11 MDT
--- Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal@smigrodzki.org> wrote:
...every email user might have the option in his email
program to demand a "delivery fee" to be paid to
him, in advance, by the sender, for the privilege of
the sender's message actually showing up in the
inbox. Since you, the receiver, imposed the fee, you
can waive it for people you trust...
...Depending on how high you judge the value of your
time, you could demand a higher
delivery fee, and if people really want to
communicate with you, they will pay. ...A beautiful,
self-governing free market system, ...
-------------------------------------
An absolutely terrific idea, Rafal. In fact it feels
like something of a 'killer app'.
Since the spam plague is widely and fiercely hated,
there's plenty of demand.
The micropayment system that is required is an
inevitability in any event and widely desired, not to
mention commercially valuable. So if the two are
developed in concert, value is derived from both. A
synergy of profit, like cogeneration.
Most striking for me is the concept of charging for
access. Which is recognition of the
(personal)property nature of access. Even moreso
privacy.
I always wondered about the property issues behind
telephone solicitation calls. How the service that
you paid for could be used by others without your
permission and against your interests.
The open access telephone system started out just
fine, but gradually evolved into a system that
permitted abuse. Along the way, in the period when
telephone service was a kind of commons, the notion of
access as a kind of personal property was unnecessary.
And later when it might have been useful, the habit
of seeing the 'commons' prevented seeing the property
right. (I speculate.)
In the case of telephone service, the legislature has
recently taken steps to remedy the problem.
The telephone system is (or has been) mostly
unhackable hardware, though now you can interpose a
computer (ie an owner-programmable 'answering
machine') to serve as an access filter/gatekeeper. In
contrast email--which became abusable and abused
almost as fast as it became useful--is inherently
'hackable', ie subject to ongoing modification and
enhancement. Thus the opportunity Rafal suggests.
I want some code on my desk--or in my inbox (no
charge)--by the start of next week.
Best, Jeff Davis
"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles
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