One Answer To Spam: Sell Your Interruption Time

An anonymous reader writes "A recent article in the IBM Systems Journal describes an innovative solution to curb both spam email and telemarketing. In short, the potential recipient of a message/call advertises the potential cost of contacting him uninvited. If the sender agrees to pay that cost, it acquires a token that it includes in the message/call and the message/call is accepted. The recipient decides to collect the fee or not, while recipients in a white list are not required to carry a token. The author also provides for a more detailed description."

Comments

Waste

[Sc00ter]

First off, if it's telemarketing all you have to do is ask to be put on a do not call list. If they call back within a year then they just gave you $500 - See http://osiris.978.org/~brianr/telemarketing/

If they're spammers good luck collecting since most of the time the headers are all forged anyway or they're coming from some asian country.

Re:Waste

[Sc00ter]

Umm, what are they selling you? If it's a slinkey just call the slinkey company and tell them that the company they are using to do their telemarketing is doing so unlawfully. I'm sure they'd be more then helpful (I've actually had to do this for some telemarketing scumbags that were trying to get me to get the local paper, the newspaper compay was VERY agry and ended up dumping them as telemarketers)

Re:Waste

[droid_rage]

Who cares about forged email headers? There's almost always an address or link to their site, and in Washington State, you can send a bill for $500 for each spam to the address listed on the domain registry for the link provided in the email to order whatever product they're selling. All you have to do first is register your email address in a public directory as a Washington State resident.
If you're interested Here's some more info

Re:But actually,

[jjo]

It's hardly original with Bill. For example, in Robert Heinlein's 1966 book "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", he outlines a similar scheme. In Heinlein's book, he deals with actual visitors at the door, but the basic concepts (pay for interruption, and only collect if the interruption was unwarranted) are the same.

I wouldn't at all be surprised if the idea even predated Heinlein.

Been there, done that

[macterra]

I worked for a company Javien that implemented this solution for email last year. The product was called Bouncer and would sit in between your email client and POP3 server. When it received a message from someone that wasn't on your accept list, it would bounce it back with a contract that could optionally include a request for payment. This was hooked into Javien's micropayment system, so if the sender accepted the terms of the contract they could attach a digitally signed proof of payment with the email when they send it again.

Not new at all, first proposed before 1985 ...

[gweihir]

In R.A. Heinlein's The Cat Who Walks Through Walls Hazel Stone (posing as Gwen something) uses a similar system to protect her messaging system: Spend some money to record an urgent message to her and she decides on whether to pay you back or not.

Give that the book was published in 1985, I would say the idea is pretty old.

roblimo.com

[rmohr02]

If you're wondering how something like this can be implemented, look at the email agreement on http://roblimo.com/

RTFA!!!

[ThinWhiteDuke]

Wow, more than 100 posts already and still 90% of posters obviously did not grasp the (rather) simple concept. I've seen a number of completely irrelevant objections:

The law would never pass : That's one of the best feature in this idea. No need for a new law. The recipient already has the right to block incoming messages. You know, when your phone rings, you won't go to jail if you don't take the call.

Spammers will never accept this : Of course not, but nobody asks them! Using this kind of solution is YOUR decision; you don't have to ask anybody's permission, especially spammers.

Widespread adoption will never occur : So what? This system will work for me even if I'm the only user. It's not one of those things that require a critical mass of users to be useful.

This will not completely eradicate spam : Frankly, I don't care. If it prevents spam sent to me, it's good enough.

5 cents to read spam is not worth it : You're missing the point. This is not about making money, it's about discouraging spammers. No spammer will ever send you an email if it costs him 5 cents. And the price is not for making you actually read the spam, it's only for allowing it to reach your inbox. In the very unlikely case a spammer actually pays, just delete the message as usual.

So please, read the article. The idea may not be completely new (email stamp) but the details address most obvious objections.

One problem I can think of is still pending : what happens if the sender is also equiped with a similar system? Will we see payment notices bouncing back and forth between both ends without ever reaching an inbox? I guess a solution would be to automatically whitelist any address you've sent an email to, if only for 1 hour.