Slashdot Mirror
Attention Bonds Gain Momentum
Thede writes "Hi all - the ABM, a proposed solution to spam first posted to /. back in February, is gaining some momentum and refinement. It has been presented it at the Federal Trade Commission, the ACM, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and at the ITU in Geneva earlier this month. The original post referenced an academic article that not so accessible. We now have a short FAQ and a very detailed Q and A that covers a lot of the issues raised over the last five months. Next step (barring gaping holes) is to get a standards effort going - and most of the needed standards already exist."
Hi all - the ABM, a proposed solution to spam first posted to /.
A spam solution that attempts first posts on Slashdot? I think it failed it.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
There has to be a working micropayment system and if there isn't one yet, can I be the one who skims 10% of every bond?
Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative (x) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
(x) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
Incorrect, see other posts
(x) Users of email will not put up with it
Depends on the effectiveness and the cost. This system promises legitimate users negative cost!
(x) Microsoft will not put up with it
Who cares?
(x) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
No, it's a recipient driven system. A spammer cannot choose to ignore the system if the recipient uses it.
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
Incorrect, a non-participating recipient will simply not request bonds. As with most other anti-spam solution, a fall back address can be used which is checked with lower priority and stricter content rules to discourage users from sending mail to the non-participating address.
(x) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
Correct, this would work best for private email.
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(x) Asshats
Correct, if you frequently need to converse with asshats, you have a problem.
(x) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
Correct, but since it is not a tax, this point is irrelevant.
(x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
Correct, a working and secure micropayment system is a requirement.
(x) Extreme profitability of spam
This works in favor of the system, not against it. The spammers pay for the system because they're the ones whose bonds are cashed in.
(x) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
Incorrect. Why would you accept to provide bonds for messages which you didn't send?
(x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
Incorrect, this works in favor of the system, because they end up paying for the anti-spam system of more intelligent people through the spammers.
(x) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
Incorrect. With increasing popularity of Attention bonds, the ratio of sent mails to accepted messages (by non-participants) would fall dramatically, so spammers would have to target their advertising, resulting in lower traffic.
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
Correct, but that doesn't mean it can't work. Spam is a bigger problem today than when similar approaches were proposed.
(x) Blacklists suck
Irrelevant, no blacklists involved.
(x) Whitelists suck
The question is: Does this system (including the whitelist) suck more than 80% spam in your inbox?
(x) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
Correct, this system is designed to be phased in gradually.
(x) Sending email should be free
Sending email is never free, neither with nor without this system. Legitimate senders would end up receiving a percentage of the money which non-legitimate senders pay, so this would make the system unattractive to spammers and attractive to normal users. That's the point.