Subject: [Asrg] E-Postage, Micropayments, and layering violations

From: Richard Willey <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 08:49:18 -0400

While the great debate regarding e-postage and micropayments is certainly 
amusing to watch, it doesn't seem to be accomplishing very much.
I would like to humbly make the following suggestion:

1. An E-Postage system represents a specialized type of Micropayment 
architecture.

2. Micropayment architectures have an enormous number of uses above and 
beyond E-Postage systems.

3. The mailing list should not focus on implementing its own Micropayment 
architecture, but rather:

(a) Determine whether a working micropayment architecture would represent 
a feasible solution to SPAM
(b) Determine whether an E-Postage system would create a unique set of 
requirements for a working micropayments architecture.
(c) Attempt to ballpark a set of parameters that describe the boundary 
conditions necessary to make an E-Postage system feasible.
      For example, 

       (i) Transaction costs must be less than X
       (ii) The system must scale to support Y requests
       (iii) Peak load over time can be modelled by equation Z

Personally, I started life as an academic economist.  As such, I am very 
biased in favor of user fees.
E-Postage seems like the best way to proceed, but I have no illusions that 
that this list is going to develop a workable architecture.

Ultimately, I very much hope that ISPs are forced to adopt business models 
based on charging for bandwidth and bursting.
I would even go so far as to argue that consumers have a vested interest 
in adopting point-to-point encryption to destroy the ability of the ISPs 
subsidize bandwidth with "value added services"
However, that;s an argument for another day.

Richard Willey

Strategic Marketing
Symantec Corporation
Office:
(408) 517-7740
Interoffice: 
6 [408] 7740
Mobile:
(408) 410-7112
: 
Hail Ants

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---

From: John Levine <[email-masked]>
Date: 26 Apr 2004 14:54:10 -0000

>conditions necessary to make an E-Postage system feasible. ...

 ... which remains entirely hypothetical since nobody has any idea how
to build a micropayment system within a couple of orders of magnitude
of what you'd need for any plausible e-mail system.  The unique
requirement is be that the vast majority of attempted transactions
would be bogus which rules out a lot of statistical approaches, but
it's the scale that's the killer.

>Ultimately, I very much hope that ISPs are forced to adopt business
>models based on charging for bandwidth and bursting.

ISPs do charge for bandwidth.  My ISP charges more for a full T1 than
for a fractional T1.  DSL connections come in different sizes where you
pay more for a faster connection.  Above T1 you also get burst charges.

On the other hand, at the retail level, the trend has always been toward
flat rates, just like it has been in every other even vaguely comparable
service.  See Andy Odlyzko's papers on this subject.

Underlying IP bandwidth isn't the problem.  The total amount of mail
that my users send every day is far less than a single (legal) MP3
download from my web server.  I agree that we need some sort of rate
limiting for mail, but I'd rather address rate limiting directly than
try to invent elaborate indirect systems that we hope will rate limit
as a side effect.

Regards,
John Levine, [email-masked], Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY
http://www.taugh.com