Would you Warranty Your Email?

Kurt writes "A team from the University of Michigan is proposing an economic solution to spam. Instead of relying on technical solutions or government regulations, they use a sender warranty system. In some cases, they argue, it can even be superior to a perfect filter with zero cost, and no errors. Their working paper is available at SSRN. With the caveat that some infrastructure is necessary (isn't it always?), they also claim their approach restores control to the recipient, halts spam, and creates a marketplace for valuable information exchange."

Comments

Would you Warranty Your Slashdot Posts?

[inertia187]

I wonder how well this would work if everyone on Slashdot could warranty their posts. It could be implemented by adding a checkbox next to Post Anonymously, call it Post With Warranty. Your comment then gets bumped up to "+5, via Warranty." If people think it's not worthy of being +5, and they have mod points, they can moderate it down. If they mod it down, they take subscription points from the poster. If the metamoderator disagrees, the moderation is reversed as expected *and* the subscription points are returned to the poster.

I think this could work. But it sounds like a pain to implement.

(fp)

Re:Would you Warranty Your Slashdot Posts?

[Josuah]

The problem is, there are a TON of moderators that will go and mod-bomb people because they don't like them, regardless of how well-reasoned their post is. Posts are supposed to be moderated, not individuals, but that's not how a lot of people do it.

Then does starting at +5 and going down really make a difference from starting at +1 and going down, in that respect?

Two problems I can think of: reading at +5-only becomes just as bad as reading at -1 until enough moderators run through the _entire_ thread culling out the stupid. The penalty for "voiding your warranty" (as proposed by the parent-parent) isn't worse than getting modded down regularly.

Possible solutions? Warranty puts you up to +X where X is a preference setting. Maybe the default threshold you read at. People who have liked what you said in the past will see you at +X+1 (friend/foe system). The first mod-down removes the warranty completely and pushes the post to +Y where Y is what the poster would have posted at without warranty.

A Simple Solution to the spam epidemic?

[norite]

100% of the spam I get comes from America - Maybe over there they should simply legislate against the sending of unsolicited commercial emails, like they have here in Europe.

Then people who get this nonsense in their inboxes can get together and take the companies who use spammers (and the spammers themselves) to market their junk to court. Once the companies who use this service start getting served with class action court orders to stop or else, they should soon get the message.

Of course, there's nothing to stop the spammers moving/subcontracting to e.g. India or some other place where sending unsolicited emails isn't illegal, but it's a start. Ultimately we can hopefully have a worldwide ban against the sending of unsolicited commercial emails.

Get The Geeks Out Of It

[Effugas]

I'm a geek. I'm a security engineer. I'm here to say -- the solution is not in the packets, but the dollars.

Spammers have gotten to the point where they're breaking into people's machines to get them to illicitly send spam. Look at that carefully -- you can't even trust your friends not to spam you anymore. If you don't think Spyware is going to adapt to a spam transport, you're not paying attention. Ultimately, we need criminal prosecution for fraud that follows the money (because money transfers are really well traced). The money link needs to be broken.

Nothing else has even a hope of working.

--Dan

"Children should be seen and not heard."

[iota]

I don't think that free speech requires anonimity ... Basically, you add accountability.

Which would lead to --
"Children should be seen and not heard." (Because they cannot be held accountable for what they say.)
"The nail that sticks up, gets hammered down." (Because you can't voice dissent without drawing attention to yourself and your family.)

Effective free speech requires anonymity -- There's usually needed a period of underground "pot-stirring" in order to add momentum to a movement.
For example: Let's say your boss regularly beats the shit out of you when you walk in the door in the morning. But it's your first job, so you don't know if it's normal or not. But your family depends on your income. You could post anonymously on some forum asking "Hey everyone! Do your bosses kick your asses in the morning like mine?" / or sign your name and likely get a bigger ass whopping along with being fired.

Don't speak ill of moderators...

[gosand]

The problem is, there are a TON of moderators that will go and mod-bomb people because they don't like them, regardless of how well-reasoned their post is. Posts are supposed to be moderated, not individuals, but that's not how a lot of people do it.

And yet, there are moderators who will mod down anything that goes against the "geek norm", regardless of content. On some recent thread about movies, I posted what I thought were reasons why LOTR-ROTK was just a good movie and not fantastic. I was modded as a troll faster than you can download a picture of Natalie Portman. See for yourself Now granted, I didn't go on in great length about my points, but I still think that if you can let go of the fanboy fanaticism and look at it honestly, what I said holds. I was by no means trolling.

The problem with moderators is that meta-moderating is just a little-too-late. And even if it did work well, it wouldn't be able to stop biased moderating. Or it would plunge it into the void of predictable moderating. Or are we already there? There is a mod of "Troll", but not of "Karma Whore".

Re:Don't speak ill of moderators...

[Vellmont]

I've noticed the same thing. If you attack peoples cherished beliefs (LOTR is the greatest movie EVAR!, Macintosh is Sup3r k00l) people will hate you.

Personally I think there should be a special "controversial" tag to a post. It doesn't give points one way or another, but identifies posts where (gasp) you might not like what the person is saying! Those are often the posts I want to see, not the same old opinions rehashed over and over. You could then set up a +3 to posts marked "controversial", or if you're an establishment type and don't want to hear anything that challenges your views, you mark it down -3.