Jim Byrne wrote the following a few days ago. I hadn't had time to properly
respond prior to this, but I think that his idea is such a good one that I'm
going to repeat his post here. The root problem with spam is that email is a
free communications channel -- and so long as it remains free, it will be
exploited by the worst among us in the most perverse manners.

Jim wrote:

> A proposal that I have been kicking around in my head for some time
>  would see each e-mail header carry a unique PEK style token validated
>  by a DNS service that would pass the transmission fee along to the
>  ultimate recipient.  Providers would be required, as a condition of
>  internet e-mail connectivity, to subscribe to such service and to
>  guarantee payment, probably through the use of a performance bond.
>  Compliant MTA's would require such a header to the forward mail.  The
>  ultimate e-mail recipient would receive the fee as a credit to their
>  account.  This would not eliminate UCE/spam but it would most certainly
>  change the dynamics.  It would then be profitable, possibly, for an
>  individual to receive spam but it would likely be uneconomical to send
>  mass e-mail.
>
>  Even if the fee was set as low as $0.001 per message then it would still
>  cost $1,000.00 per million e-mails to send UCE, driving most of the
>  amateurs out of the business.  The average iNet user would hardly
>  notice such a fee since I very much doubt that the many people send
>  more than a few dozen e-mails a week, if that. Mailing lists might suffer
>  but consider that it would be possible for all members of such a list to
>  refund the cost of delivery by automatically generating a receipt
>  confirmation to a special address used by the list operator specifically
for
>  such purpose.
>
>  Fraudulent senders would still remain but their ability to operate would
>  be severely impacted by a requirement to pre-pay for a set volume of
>  delivery service rather than exploiting the current practice of in effect
>  posting a promissory note for unlimited bandwidth using a stolen credit
>  card account.  A delay of several days between payment and
>  authorization of the e-mail service key would no doubt cut back
>  enormously on the number of successful credit misrepresentations.
>  Since the e-mail fee is prepaid to DNS-like service providers (rather like
>  a postage meter) the issue of collection does not arise.  This would not
>  be any more (or less) difficult to accomplish than the present DN Service
>  itself or the existing anti-spam utilization of specific DNS servers. It
> could probably be effected by an extension to DNS itself.
>
>  Obviously this is not a completely worked out technical solution, but the
>  critical elements needed to make it happen are already proven in
>  practice. It only remains to develop a reasonable business model to see
>  it realized.  As the fee is passed along to the ultimate recipient the
issue
>  of a tax or user fee does not really arise since this is a transaction fee
>  that is paid between the originator and recipient.

Wirt Atmar

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