Email peering (Was: Economics of SPAM [Was: Micorsoft's Sender IDAuthentication......?]

Fri Jun 17 09:53:24 UTC 2005

> There are, however, three very big problems.  First, it forces people to 

> pay for services that they don't pay for today. 

Businesses often pay, not for services, but for accountability.
They want someone else to take responsibility for a problem
even if it costs them more money than taking that responsibility
on themselves. Insurance, maintenance contracts, etc.

Today, if Joe Business gets lots of spam, it is not his
ISP's responsibility. He has no-one to take responsibility
for this problem off his hands. But if he only accepts
incoming email through an operator who is part of the
email peering network, he knows that somewhere there is
someone who will take responsibility for the problem.

That is something that businesses will pay for.

But first, ISPs have to put their hands up and take
collective responsibility for Internet email as a service
that has value and not just as some kind of loss leader
for Internet access services.

--Michael Dillon