RE: [Asrg] The pay-per message myth again

["Hannigan, Martin" <hannigan at verisign.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: asrg-bounces at ietf.org [mailto:asrg-bounces at ietf.org]On Behalf Of
> Jon Kyme
> Sent: Monday, December 27, 2004 12:17 PM
> To: ASRG
> Cc: John Levine
> Subject: Re: [Asrg] The pay-per message myth again
> 
> 
> >>>Ten years ago there were lots of e-mail services that 
> charged by the
> >>>message.  Now they're all dead.  This is a big hint.
> >
> >
> >>Of course, nothing has changed in the last 10 years. 
> Nothing ever does,
> >>right? And besides, there have been a lot of businesses that did the
> >other
> >>thing, and have gone also. I just love these "common-sense" 
> arguments.
> >
> >I'm sorry, but other than that you're trying to be snide, I don't
> >understand what point you're trying to make.
> >
> 
> No, I'm pointing out a clearly fallacious argument. This is 
> not to say that
> your conclusions are wrong of course, but to say that 
> pay-to-send can't
> work in the future because it didn't work in the past is to 
> say nothing
> useful.

Pay to send clearly does work in other models today. SMS, as mentioned
below is one. 

 
> >Of course things have changed in 10 years.  In 1994 there 
> was no giant
> >unmetered e-mail infrastructure, and there were people willing to pay
> >per message for e-mail.  Today SMTP exists everywhere, and as I noted
> >the pay per message services are gone.
> >
> >It's blindingly obvious that a system that really did charge all
> >senders even a little bit per message wouldn't have a spam 
> problem, so
> >why don't we have pay per message email?
> >
> >The only ppm service of which I'm aware these days is SMS, the text
> >message add-on to cell service.  PPM charges mirrors cell service
> >charges.  In North America, where mobile users pay for both incoming
> >and outgoing calls, PPM is charged per message in both directions.
> >Carriers all offer message bundles similar to minute bundles that are
> >a lot cheaper than individual messages.  Elsewhere in the world where
> >mobile service is all caller-pays, sending SMS costs money, receiving
> >SMS is free.  Is SMS the wave of the future?  I doubt it.
> >
> 
> It's interesting that you mention SMS, in the European 
> market, 160 billion
> messages are exchanged per month
> [ http://www.gsmworld.com/documents/netsize_guide2004_mda.pdf 
> ](I haven't
> got a good figure for email to hand - probably rather more, 
> but how many
> are spam :-) ). So it seems foolish to speculate about SMS 
> *in the future*
> - while the US 'cellphone' biz is weak by comparison, in most of the
> 'developed' world SMS *is* the asynchronous messaging channel 
> of choice for
> for some big (and important) user-groups.


I'll have to differ on the opine and insinuation regarding SMS not
being the wave of the future. It's already here and it's the absolute
rage in Europe and Asia. 


> 
> >For one thing, the assumption that you can get people to pay for all
> >of the messages is wildly optimistic.  I was talking to a security
> >manager at Vodaphone earlier this year, and he told me that they have
> >a moderate number of gateways through which messages SMS can be sent
> >into their SMS system, and they have constatnt problems with spam
> >gushing in through them due to some combination of configuration
> >errors and hacks.  Maybe they can fix it, but as I've noted before if
> >email costs real money, there will be constant attacks to 
> either avoid
> >paying or (the zombie problem) to charge the messages to 
> someone else.
> >
> 
> I've seen a lot of *very* poorly secured web/SMS gateways and 
> I'm sure that
> there exist all sorts of other ways that spam gets into the 
> system that
> could (and should) be closed.

And Vodafone is a telco. Their experience billing voice minutes, 
and their reliance on the revenue as a public company, will help
them resolve that issue, but it will *never* be gone. Fraud will
account for 3 to 8% of all their revenue across all product lines,
including SMS. But this is good. Telco's prosecute fraud under 
theft statutes which are more cut and dry than any electronic spam
statute I've seen is.

> >Also, people who do serious messaging on their cell phones don't pay
> >per message now.  If you use something like a Blackberry, you don't
> >pay per message, you use GPRS and pay for bandwidth, or more 
> typically
> >a (rather high) flat rate, just like everyone else who uses e-mail.
> >
> 

That is slightly inaccurate. I have a blackberry and I do have a message
cap before I must start paying.

> I think you'll find that a lot of email is sent using somebody else's
> bandwidth. Apart from that, I'm not sure what "serious messaging" is:
> is 100 users each sending 1MB messages more 'serious' than 100K users
> sending 10 of 100 character messages per day?

Serious messaging would be "us". But I will keep emphasizing that
"we" are not the target market anymore, we're simply the milk men.
In 1995? Yes. "Us". Today? "them".

Think "Milk and Cereal".

> >So what am I missing?  Unless you believe that spam will get so awful
> >that people will turn off SMTP mail, it's hard to see how 
> you're going
> >to get an interesting number of users to move to something that costs
> >more and can only exchange messages with other people on the same
> >system.
> >
> 
> No, rather, spam gets so bad that people are prepared to incur costs
> reducing the pain. I don't know (any more than you, perhaps) what that
> means. Do they move to other channels? Closed systems? Spend 
> on hardware
> and bandwith so that their PCs can cope?

Under the billing model, SPAM is eliminated. It becomes fraud.


> Presumably the market will respond to the problem in a way 
> that tends to
> maximise the utility of the system for the largest number of 
> participants?
> Oh no, wait, I meant to say: "maximise profits for those with the most
> control over the current system".

The market won't respond until it's lost revenue. We keep spawning
these technology areas that are fairly useless and of limited lifespan
i.e. IPS, IDS, etc. It's all fraud when it's revenue based.

If I were a fraud software developer I'd be buying some of these
companies that have been created related to this failure to address
these problems at the revenue and executive levels.

In fact, IMHO, we are partly to blame. We've consistently gone to our
management and said "we can do this" and "we can do that". It's time
to say "we can't do anything -- help us".


-M<

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