That’s the system I proposed 10 years ago, to not use a stamp but a cheque that is not redeemed most of the time. (Back when I was one of the first advocates of this idea and before I figured it was wrong.)

And no, not like sms.ac or plaxo. Sending real individual email from real people who want to reach other real individuals. They would have sent the email from their own tool, but they want some software to generate it and send it. I guess they could cut and paste, that sounds like a great UI.

Anyway, once again you and others argue for e-mail postage by saying, “Spam is bad, spam is ruining email” — which is true — “so if we don’t have email postage email is doomed” which simply doesn’t follow. Yes, we need solutions — that isn’t the subject of debate. The question is, which solutions have the least collateral damage. You act as though there is no way to deal with spam but this. At least that’s how I take the phrase “barring a postage s ystem…”

As I’ve said, there are other systems, and we’ve hardly explored the entire solution space either. I know we think in internet time, but spam is, on the grand scale, a very young problem.

Adapt a postage scheme, and it’s hard to see it as anything but permanent. Even if better schemes come about, where are the incentives to strip out the postage scheme? Especially if the recipient or their ISP is getting they money. Why not just continue to run that pay system in addition to the new one?

Now mostly in the past I wasn’t too worried, because I judged it to be too difficult, as I write in my main essay on this topic, to get this started. After all, you bounce my mail with a demand for money (and for me to install new software to offer the money) and I’m just not going to send you the mail unless I am desperate to reach you. One innovation to give to goodmail, they’ve found a way to get some people paying and get a foot in the door, which is the real thing that’s scary about them.