BBC article on spam "solution" of hashcash, from Microsoft

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 09:38:22 -0500
From: Seth Finkelstein <sethf () sethf com>
Subject: BBC article on spam "solution" of hashcash, from Microsoft
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>

        Dave, BBC News is running an article on Microsoft researchers
who are writing reports on the old, old, idea of solving the spam
problem by requiring some sort of nontrivial CPU cost or similar time
delay for sending an email. As the maintainer of a large mailing list,
I imagine you have an interest in that "solution" :-).

http://research.microsoft.com/research/sv/PennyBlack/index.asp

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3324883.stm
"Microsoft aims to make spammers pay"

"The development has been called the Penny Black project, because it
works on the idea that revolutionised the British postage system in
the 1830s - that senders of mail should have to pay for it, not
whoever is on the receiving end."

"Stamp of approval"

"The basic idea is that we are trying to shift the equation to make it
possible and necessary for a sender to 'pay' for e-mail," explained
Ted Wobber of the Microsoft Research group (MSR).

"The payment is not made in the currency of money, but in the memory
and the computer power required to work out cryptographic puzzles."

"For any piece of e-mail I send, it will take a small amount computing
power of about 10 to 20 seconds."

"If I don't know you, I have to prove to you that I have spent a
little bit of time in resources to send you that e-mail."

--
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  sethf () sethf com  http://sethf.com
Interview: http://grep.law.harvard.edu/article.pl?sid=03/12/16/0526234
Seth Finkelstein's Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/ 

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/