[ih] History of the Economics of the Internet?

[John Levine]

>> All of the various problems with email today, including the ones you
>> listed, are I think dwarfed by one big one that has caused this:
>> spam. 

Pretty much, although these days spam is mixed in with phishing and malware
so it's one big blended threat.

>Use of some resource, such as email, must have some "cost" associated 
>with its use, to prevent rampant overuse.   We actually tried to 
>introduce the notion of "stamps" to the develolping email standards in 
>the 1970s to provide a form of negative feedback.  Even just a limit on 
>the number of emails that one address could send over some time period 
>would exert back pressure.

E-postage is one of those superficially appealing bad ideas that just won't go away.

I wrote this white paper about it in 2003.  I'd add a few zeros to some of the numbers,
but other than that not much has changed:

https://www.taugh.com/epostage.pdf

R's
John