Re: [Asrg] E-postage/hashcash - the future

[JC Dill <jcdill-asrg at vo.cnchost.com>]

At 05:33 PM 4/28/2004, john.oppler@gm.com wrote:
> In any case, I do see your point, but was just trying to express my opinion
> as to what I think will happen if email is chargeable
It's about as useful as expressing an opinion as to what will happen when 
cars run on water.

You have to look at the obstacles to making it happen.  Thinking about how 
nice it will be "when it happens" is a waste of time if it ain't never 
gonna happen.

The first obstacle to making it happen is getting the first 1/2 of the mail 
clients/servers on the 'net to sign-on to whatever plan we propose and 
implementing the necessary changes first, before there is any hope of 
payoff.  The second obstacle is getting end users to agree to cut-off the 
last 1/2 of the mail clients/servers on the 'net (including aunt Sally with 
her old win95 box that can't be upgraded to a newer message system) once 
"critical mass" has been achieved, to force all the older clients/servers 
to upgrade or die so that the new system has 100% of the message traffic on 
the 'net.  Both of these are *big* obstacles, and adding ePostage ON TOP OF 
THIS makes it considerably harder because we add a complicated payment 
scheme on top of a complicated system upgrade.

If it were easy it would have happened already by now.  And we would all be 
driving cars powered by water.

jc




_______________________________________________
Asrg mailing list
Asrg@ietf.org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/asrg