Re: Mail delivery fee was

From: Jeff Davis (jrd1415@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Jul 15 2003 - 16:16:11 MDT

  • Next message: Mike Lorrey: "Re: FWD (SPAM) Solve your woman problems forever"

    --- 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

    __________________________________
    Do you Yahoo!?
    SBC Yahoo! DSL - Now only $29.95 per month!
    http://sbc.yahoo.com



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Jul 15 2003 - 16:25:29 MDT