My point is that when at least some of us make a brief remark pointing to
an idea or possibility, it is really not necessarily always the case that
we are ignoramuses trying to "rehash" or "reinvent" something that greater,
wiser and mightier intellects with fancier book credits have "discussed
repeatedly." Many of the discussions in question are no more productive
than this one, for one thing; and some of us do read and follow them as
interest and time permit. I actually installed and played with hashcash
last year, for example, and it did not seem to me to be the model I was
looking for, but I am deuced if I am going to stop thinking about the
problem just because some fellow Net veteran with a case of smartass ennui
wants to jump to conclusions.
What I was going to say about e-postage was this. Most of the existing
postage models use it as a labor- or expense-based barrier to denial of
service. I am looking for something more like a proof of license to send.
An individual email recipient could elect NOT to require valid postage from
all or (more powerfully) a limited subset of senders. If they want to see
valid postage, though, they can. Postage would hash the sender into the
mark, so that a valid stamp could not be passed around. Individual
postage, with sender and recipient hashed into the mark, would be available
for free via an individual Internet transaction. "Bulk postage," for
mailing lists, would only be available via an authenticated Internet
transaction, using an account for which a legit bulk sender would have to
enroll. Bulk postage would only hash the sender (and maybe the listname)
in.
Follow-Ups:
References:
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