[ih] History of the Economics of the Internet?

[Dave Crocker]

On 7/28/2026 1:39 PM, Jack Haverty via Internet-history wrote:
> We actually tried to introduce the notion of "stamps" to the 
> develolping email standards in the 1970s to provide a form of negative 
> feedback. 


I don't recall this.  Especially since the first (and I believe only) 
spam in the 1970s, was the DEC one in 1978.

Can you provide any details (or even better a citation)?

As for schemes to try to prevent or counter email abuse, there have been 
enough over the years to prompt Cory Doctorow, many years ago, to create 
a template for responding to such proposals. I think it was intended for 
humor, but he did such a good job, some of us have used it seriously:

    http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt

d/

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Dave Crocker

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