Points: 1. It advocates a technical and market-based solution in combination. Both facets are required.
2. Define how mailing lists and other legitimate uses would be affected? The system is layered on top of, and co-exists with, traditional e-mail. Neither need to be affected.
3. The promise of payment is only valid if the originator is an organization that has agreed to participate in the system, and to make up the payment. It is to their advantage then, to only participate in the system if they *can* find the guy by some means. They may require a credit card if you want access to use this.
4. Why will users of email not put up with it? For receivers, the system is essentially non-invasive. If you receive a mail that is spam, you simply hit a button requiring the promise of payment be fulfilled. For senders, they can choose, either as a default or per-email, whether to send something with the promissory system.
5. You obviously do not understand the system I'm describing. As it can be layered on top, it can be rolled out in phases. If you don't have the ability to accept/request payment, you simply never require that the promise be fulfilled. If you don't have the ability to send payment, you don't send it out using the promissory system. ISPs can choose on their own whether to implement it and/or support it. At first, it wouldn't be very useful, as very few would have the ability to use it, so we would be forced to make do with the traditional email system. However, as it spread and came more into use, it would become increasingly powerful.
6. Valid objection. There would need to be a central agency, or set of central agencies, which ISPs and/or mail relayers could use to verify that if a mail is saying it comes using a promissory system that it actually *does* indeed do that. Very much like Verisign and other domain name providers or authentication providers. ISPs would need to warrant that they can indeed collect from their customers, or at very least that they will pay on behalf of their customers should a promise of payment be required to be fulfilled. However, this is an organizational challenge, and not an insurmountable one at that, as is evidenced by Verisign.
7. Asshats are not accounted for by the system, but no system is perfect. Asshats will abuse the system, and some people will suffer for it. Hopefully they'll learn and take steps to lessen asshattery being possible from their end. But this is no change from today -- with the exception that the asshats today are the spammers and getting rich off of making all the rest of us suffer. At least with this system, asshats will be quickly identifiable and individuals can take steps to stop dealing with them (ie stop sending them e-mails)
8. No new weird form of money is required. You have an ISP bill every month yes? At times it has surcharges yes? This seems like regular money to me.
9. No change is forced on SMTP. This is simply another header placed on the email, checked with an authority of some sort (ala Verisign).
10. Valid. There would need to be some sort of protocol in place to verify that the header is accurate -- that the mail comes from who it says it came from, and that the sender has the ability to fulfill a promise of payment. However, this need not be email, and would require spammers be able to hack the ISP, the central authority, or the line between the two somehow in order to take advantage of this. Any ISP participating in the system would have strong incentive to make sure that this system was secure, otherwise they could find themselves having to pay out of their own profits to fulfill the promises.
11. Irrelevant. This would, if anything lead to a solution to this very problem by costing those people owning the worm-ridden boxes large amounts of money to remain connected to the internet if spammers were using their accounts as promises-of-payment senders
11. Profitability of spam can be easily addressed by the amount of fee charged. If as few a
While the economics of email favor spam, spam will flourish. It's as simple as that.
To get rid of spam, we need to change the economics of email.
However, most systems proposed are too simple in that they serve to make a lot of the legitimate purposes of email too expensive, Maillists being a primary one, as well as mail from new potential customers.
Essentially, we can arrange email into a grid of Expected or Unexpected vs Desired or Undesired. We need a way to freely receive all Desired mail whether it is Expected or not, while making it expensive for mail that is both Unexpected and Undesired.
To address this, I believe a system where the promise of payment is encoded into the delivery may solve the problem. Note that the promise of payment doesn't mean that payment will be necessarily be required. However, having the promise encoded into the email does require that it be possible to place a charge on that email by the recipient. This would require verification at intermediate servers that the mail came from a known system that allows payment to be made before relaying it on.
Legit users send out so few emails that they could easily send out mails with promise of payment encoded, companies would not require the payment be made (as what a great way to lose a potential customer) so the status quo is preserved, and friends who they send mail to similarly would not bother requiring payment. Of course, if payment is required (you get into a fight with your friend) it should be a small enough amount (sub-dollar range) that it is not an extreme hardship even then.. provided you're only getting charged for one or two.
Mail-lists could be sent without the promise of payment, but since they are typically subscribed to directly, it becomes very easy to implement a white-listing solution for all the lists you're on.
Spam could not be sent using promise of payment -- if it was, the costs would quickly dwarf the profits since it is only the very low cost of email that makes spamming possible. Anybody receiving the spam would simply click the "Require Payment" button or some such, and the spammers credit card would be automatically charged the amount. Assuming only 25% of the recipients are actually able and willing to require payment, since the typical spam run sends out hundreds of thousands of email, the charges mount significantly quickly. Yet if spam was forced to not promise payment, since all legitimate email is using promise of payment, it becomes very easy to whitelist the spam out of existance.
Essentially, the promise of payment system allows unexpected but desired mail to proceed as normal, while unexpected undesired mail incurs a fee. Expected mail can use the standard email system with whitelists, or still use the promise system with no difficulties.
Now if we assume that some of the 40% who do want to switch actually do, what we're seeing is that the number of people who don't want to switch is shrinking over the years.
Add that in to the overall percentage of people *with* broadband, and we see that the actual percentage of people who want to use dialup out of the entire net-population is shrinking rapidly.
Because no system is "really" secure, and anybody who thinks so is doing so against the evidence of various holes being found in all systems and applications.
Or in otherwords, sooner or later someone's probably going to find a hole. Better that you're not on the list of "possible targets" when that hold is found.
All you've paid for is the right to access their private property. Not even for a specific period of time.
Fortunately for you, they happen to have seats and be running some high-budget entertainment at the time, and they probably won't tell you to get out until the entertainment is over.
Being as it's private property however, they are fully entitled to do anything they wish within confines of the law. That includes restricting you from accessing certain sections of their property, limiting what type of items you can use on their property, calling the cops on you if they see you doing something illegal, kicking you off their property, hell, they're under no obligation to provide seating, or places to purchase food/drink, or even provide a movie.
If you don't like it, you're free to leave and not pay for access again.
It's impossible to ever tell what was really gained and lost, because time continues forward. What we see now may be manifestly different from what we would have seen had AT&T not been broken up.. or it may not have, market forces may have accomplished the same thing. You can play "What if" til the sun goes down but that doesn't make it any more likely.
However, besides all that, my point was that thinking Microsoft is blameless in this affair is foolishness.
If your system is secure, adding a lame layer that hides the secure port makes your system even less inviting to script kiddies.
If you're system isn't inviting to script kiddies to begin with, fewer of them hit it when it's suddenly found that your supposed security has a hole in it.
You've bought entirely into the corporate white-wash of the be-all and end-all reasons for a corporation is to generate profits. That's simply false.
Here's the primary thing: Corporations were initially *allowed* to exist because even though people realized the dangers of limiting liability, it was also apparant that doing so could provide a net benefit to society.
Any corporation that is no longer providing a net benefit to their society is not holding up their end of the bargain that allows them to be a corporation in the first place. Hence, Microsoft is nowhere near blameless, though I will admit a good chunk of blame also falls onto the governments and regulators who did not stand up to ensure that Microsoft was following its end of the deal.
Well.. it doesn't have to be....but considering that the US spends more on its military than the next 9 nations combined, it seems to be the most efficient use of resources.
After all, I don't call for a gardener to fix my sewer lines, I call for someone who specializes in handling shit jobs like that. If you as a nation choose to specialize in handling the shit jobs, don't be surprised when you're called to help out with them.
Discriminatory: 2. Marked by or showing prejudice; biased.
The prejudice shown is that any person purchasing media is doing so for copying music. As you point out, you have to pay it whether you use it for that or not.
Politicians are too clueless to do anything but count votes.
If you want them to stop something, make them count the votes going away. If you don't, one suggests its the public at large that's been too stupid to stop it.
Her email address: Scherrer.H@parl.gc.ca Paul Martin's email: Martin.P@parl.gc.ca
Honourable Ms. Scherrer;
I have heard your recent comments about seeking to change the Copyright Act. I would urge you to consider very carefully what steps are taken in any changes to this act. As the act stands, Canadians pay a levy on recordable media, money from which specifically goes to the music industry in compensation for supposed lost revenues.
As such if the law is changed, I would also expect any media levies to be immediately lifted, as the proper method for handling any cases of copyright infringement would then fall to the music industry and the legal system of Canada, and not to a discriminatory levy applied to the majority of law-abiding citizens.
Beyond this, the issue of whether revenues are lost at all is entirely debatable, as you can see in this story from the Washington Post citing a study done by two university researchers specializing in economics: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story& u=/washpost/ 20040330/tc_washpost/a34300_2004mar29
I realize that I am not of your riding, but I have been a Liberal voter for many years now, even though I live in Calgary, Alberta. I am probably one of the few Liberal voters here.
However, this issue of copyright is a very important one to me because those countries that address the issue properly stand to be at the fore-front of the information economy. Limiting information flow to prop up business models that simply are no longer feasible is not the way to go about this. While I do not support the policies of the Conservatives, your actions on this issue will certainly be enough to determine whether I decide to place my vote in a party other than the Liberals in the coming election.
..Alistair Crowley wrote the same thing about Magic(k)
So long as you perform it exactly right, it will always work perfectly. If it doesn't work, you didn't do it right, that's all.
Sorry, I don't have time for things that either work perfectly or not at all. If I get something 99% right, I want something that works 99% of the time, thanks.
Yes and no....they can do this today if they're A) Large enough to withstand microsoft's contract leveraging, or B) don't sell microsoft products at all, or C) willing to go out of business.
The number of companies in A is within two digits.. and I mean fingers.
Slashdot Mirror
Points:
1. It advocates a technical and market-based solution in combination. Both facets are required.
2. Define how mailing lists and other legitimate uses would be affected? The system is layered on top of, and co-exists with, traditional e-mail. Neither need to be affected.
3. The promise of payment is only valid if the originator is an organization that has agreed to participate in the system, and to make up the payment. It is to their advantage then, to only participate in the system if they *can* find the guy by some means. They may require a credit card if you want access to use this.
4. Why will users of email not put up with it? For receivers, the system is essentially non-invasive. If you receive a mail that is spam, you simply hit a button requiring the promise of payment be fulfilled. For senders, they can choose, either as a default or per-email, whether to send something with the promissory system.
5. You obviously do not understand the system I'm describing. As it can be layered on top, it can be rolled out in phases. If you don't have the ability to accept/request payment, you simply never require that the promise be fulfilled. If you don't have the ability to send payment, you don't send it out using the promissory system. ISPs can choose on their own whether to implement it and/or support it. At first, it wouldn't be very useful, as very few would have the ability to use it, so we would be forced to make do with the traditional email system. However, as it spread and came more into use, it would become increasingly powerful.
6. Valid objection. There would need to be a central agency, or set of central agencies, which ISPs and/or mail relayers could use to verify that if a mail is saying it comes using a promissory system that it actually *does* indeed do that. Very much like Verisign and other domain name providers or authentication providers. ISPs would need to warrant that they can indeed collect from their customers, or at very least that they will pay on behalf of their customers should a promise of payment be required to be fulfilled. However, this is an organizational challenge, and not an insurmountable one at that, as is evidenced by Verisign.
7. Asshats are not accounted for by the system, but no system is perfect. Asshats will abuse the system, and some people will suffer for it. Hopefully they'll learn and take steps to lessen asshattery being possible from their end. But this is no change from today -- with the exception that the asshats today are the spammers and getting rich off of making all the rest of us suffer. At least with this system, asshats will be quickly identifiable and individuals can take steps to stop dealing with them (ie stop sending them e-mails)
8. No new weird form of money is required. You have an ISP bill every month yes? At times it has surcharges yes? This seems like regular money to me.
9. No change is forced on SMTP. This is simply another header placed on the email, checked with an authority of some sort (ala Verisign).
10. Valid. There would need to be some sort of protocol in place to verify that the header is accurate -- that the mail comes from who it says it came from, and that the sender has the ability to fulfill a promise of payment. However, this need not be email, and would require spammers be able to hack the ISP, the central authority, or the line between the two somehow in order to take advantage of this. Any ISP participating in the system would have strong incentive to make sure that this system was secure, otherwise they could find themselves having to pay out of their own profits to fulfill the promises.
11. Irrelevant. This would, if anything lead to a solution to this very problem by costing those people owning the worm-ridden boxes large amounts of money to remain connected to the internet if spammers were using their accounts as promises-of-payment senders
11. Profitability of spam can be easily addressed by the amount of fee charged. If as few a
The joy of it is that it can be layered on top of traditional e-mail usage.
The systems can easily co-exist. Those who want to take advantage of it to basically guaruntee that their message will not be spam-filtered can do so.
While the economics of email favor spam, spam will flourish. It's as simple as that.
To get rid of spam, we need to change the economics of email.
However, most systems proposed are too simple in that they serve to make a lot of the legitimate purposes of email too expensive, Maillists being a primary one, as well as mail from new potential customers.
Essentially, we can arrange email into a grid of Expected or Unexpected vs Desired or Undesired. We need a way to freely receive all Desired mail whether it is Expected or not, while making it expensive for mail that is both Unexpected and Undesired.
To address this, I believe a system where the promise of payment is encoded into the delivery may solve the problem. Note that the promise of payment doesn't mean that payment will be necessarily be required. However, having the promise encoded into the email does require that it be possible to place a charge on that email by the recipient. This would require verification at intermediate servers that the mail came from a known system that allows payment to be made before relaying it on.
Legit users send out so few emails that they could easily send out mails with promise of payment encoded, companies would not require the payment be made (as what a great way to lose a potential customer) so the status quo is preserved, and friends who they send mail to similarly would not bother requiring payment. Of course, if payment is required (you get into a fight with your friend) it should be a small enough amount (sub-dollar range) that it is not an extreme hardship even then.. provided you're only getting charged for one or two.
Mail-lists could be sent without the promise of payment, but since they are typically subscribed to directly, it becomes very easy to implement a white-listing solution for all the lists you're on.
Spam could not be sent using promise of payment -- if it was, the costs would quickly dwarf the profits since it is only the very low cost of email that makes spamming possible. Anybody receiving the spam would simply click the "Require Payment" button or some such, and the spammers credit card would be automatically charged the amount. Assuming only 25% of the recipients are actually able and willing to require payment, since the typical spam run sends out hundreds of thousands of email, the charges mount significantly quickly. Yet if spam was forced to not promise payment, since all legitimate email is using promise of payment, it becomes very easy to whitelist the spam out of existance.
Essentially, the promise of payment system allows unexpected but desired mail to proceed as normal, while unexpected undesired mail incurs a fee. Expected mail can use the standard email system with whitelists, or still use the promise system with no difficulties.
Now if we assume that some of the 40% who do want to switch actually do, what we're seeing is that the number of people who don't want to switch is shrinking over the years.
Add that in to the overall percentage of people *with* broadband, and we see that the actual percentage of people who want to use dialup out of the entire net-population is shrinking rapidly.
Because no system is "really" secure, and anybody who thinks so is doing so against the evidence of various holes being found in all systems and applications.
Or in otherwords, sooner or later someone's probably going to find a hole. Better that you're not on the list of "possible targets" when that hold is found.
Your ticket doesn't even give you that.
All you've paid for is the right to access their private property. Not even for a specific period of time.
Fortunately for you, they happen to have seats and be running some high-budget entertainment at the time, and they probably won't tell you to get out until the entertainment is over.
Being as it's private property however, they are fully entitled to do anything they wish within confines of the law. That includes restricting you from accessing certain sections of their property, limiting what type of items you can use on their property, calling the cops on you if they see you doing something illegal, kicking you off their property, hell, they're under no obligation to provide seating, or places to purchase food/drink, or even provide a movie.
If you don't like it, you're free to leave and not pay for access again.
It's impossible to ever tell what was really gained and lost, because time continues forward. What we see now may be manifestly different from what we would have seen had AT&T not been broken up.. or it may not have, market forces may have accomplished the same thing. You can play "What if" til the sun goes down but that doesn't make it any more likely.
However, besides all that, my point was that thinking Microsoft is blameless in this affair is foolishness.
If your system is secure, adding a lame layer that hides the secure port makes your system even less inviting to script kiddies.
If you're system isn't inviting to script kiddies to begin with, fewer of them hit it when it's suddenly found that your supposed security has a hole in it.
Nice try. Wrong answer.
You've bought entirely into the corporate white-wash of the be-all and end-all reasons for a corporation is to generate profits. That's simply false.
Here's the primary thing: Corporations were initially *allowed* to exist because even though people realized the dangers of limiting liability, it was also apparant that doing so could provide a net benefit to society.
Any corporation that is no longer providing a net benefit to their society is not holding up their end of the bargain that allows them to be a corporation in the first place. Hence, Microsoft is nowhere near blameless, though I will admit a good chunk of blame also falls onto the governments and regulators who did not stand up to ensure that Microsoft was following its end of the deal.
Except individuals don't have the green to protect themselves when Microsoft comes knocking.
Teh TrollCorps thanks you for your participation.
Well.. it doesn't have to be.. ..but considering that the US spends more on its military than the next 9 nations combined, it seems to be the most efficient use of resources.
After all, I don't call for a gardener to fix my sewer lines, I call for someone who specializes in handling shit jobs like that. If you as a nation choose to specialize in handling the shit jobs, don't be surprised when you're called to help out with them.
Yeah.. you'd like it if we all believed that tatoo is photoshopped, wouldn't you?
No.. he's using exactly the same internet you're using.
That's the problem.
It's customized for him, not you.
Discriminatory: 2. Marked by or showing prejudice; biased.
The prejudice shown is that any person purchasing media is doing so for copying music. As you point out, you have to pay it whether you use it for that or not.
Politicians are too clueless to do anything but count votes.
If you want them to stop something, make them count the votes going away. If you don't, one suggests its the public at large that's been too stupid to stop it.
Sure, Americans find a lot of little things about Canada weird (mounties, mooses, and Manitoba, to name a few)
That's okay.. we find Manitoba werid too.
My feelings as well.. maybe I'll vote for that Funky transcendence party we had going.. though I think that was provincial.
Her email address: Scherrer.H@parl.gc.ca
& u=/washpost/ 20040330/tc_washpost/a34300_2004mar29
Paul Martin's email: Martin.P@parl.gc.ca
Honourable Ms. Scherrer;
I have heard your recent comments about seeking to change the Copyright Act.
I would urge you to consider very carefully what steps are taken in any changes to this act. As the act stands, Canadians pay a levy on
recordable media, money from which specifically goes to the music industry in compensation for supposed lost revenues.
As such if the law is changed, I would also expect any media levies to be immediately lifted, as the proper method for handling any cases
of copyright infringement would then fall to the music industry and the legal system of Canada, and not to a discriminatory levy applied
to the majority of law-abiding citizens.
Beyond this, the issue of whether revenues are lost at all is entirely debatable, as you can see in this story from the Washington Post
citing a study done by two university researchers specializing in economics:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story
I realize that I am not of your riding, but I have been a Liberal voter for many years now, even though I live in Calgary, Alberta. I
am probably one of the few Liberal voters here.
However, this issue of copyright is a very important one to me because those countries that address the issue properly stand to be at the
fore-front of the information economy. Limiting information flow to prop up business models that simply are no longer feasible is not the
way to go about this. While I do not support the policies of the Conservatives, your actions on this issue will certainly be enough to
determine whether I decide to place my vote in a party other than the Liberals in the coming election.
I do not feel that I am alone.
Thank you for your time.
Name & Address Stuff
Just more proof that Canada is secretly running the world.
Why else would they get the beer, the chicks, and legal music-sharing? Hm?
You see.. now's he's got the perfect excuse if she ever starts complaining about him not proposing.
"I did. You just never answered."
You're not paranoid enough.
What you should *really* be afraid of is accidentally pissing off the guy in the company who delivers these lists to the feds.
Absolutely correct.
Just like they were no longer allowed to do these same practices from their previous settlement with the DoJ...
How much did that stop them?
..Alistair Crowley wrote the same thing about Magic(k)
So long as you perform it exactly right, it will always work perfectly. If it doesn't work, you didn't do it right, that's all.
Sorry, I don't have time for things that either work perfectly or not at all. If I get something 99% right, I want something that works 99% of the time, thanks.
Yes and no.. ..they can do this today if they're A) Large enough to withstand microsoft's contract leveraging, or B) don't sell microsoft products at all, or C) willing to go out of business.
The number of companies in A is within two digits.. and I mean fingers.
The number of companies in B hardly matters.
The number of companies in C? 0.
This is the effect of an OS monopoly.