[10559] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
bill to insure flat rate Internet email pricing (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Sun Feb 27 00:53:05 1994
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 1994 22:58:49 -0500
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: rciville@civicnet.org
Cc: welch@oar.net, love@essential.org, com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Richard Civille's message of Sat, 26 Feb 1994 11:38:03 -0500 (EST) <Pine.3.07.9402261102.D10927-d100000@cap.gwu.edu>
>From: Richard Civille <rciville@civicnet.org> [responding to me]
>> One nice thing about some metering is that it provides at least some
>> feedback as to what is rational and what is just plain crazy. I could
>> certainly see some big-name charitable org under this flat-rate scheme
>> hitting millions of mailboxes daily or at least weekly (perhaps under
>> guises like newsletters, reports on some kid we fed today and what a
>> great difference your contribution will make, emergency alerts on
>> environmental news, etc.) Is this a desireable result?
>
>The United Fund or National Rifle Association? Well, I have to let the
>skinheads screech and the KKK march in the streets if I want free speech,
>so exactly what do you mean by a "desireable result"?
I was referring to quantity, not quality per se.
I was wondering out loud: If non-profit e-mail were infinitely
flat-rated why the several thousand or more (in the US, for
discussion's sake) non-profit orgs who rely on individual donations
wouldn't just hit millions of email boxes daily? That could, quite
literally, be billions of appeal messages going out, hundreds or
thousands per day per mailbox.
Now an obvious objection would be, well, that might not work very well
(to raise funds), in some sense. I don't know, if it's free I am not
sure why many of them would think it would matter. If they got back
1/1000th of a per-cent response it would still be nearly free money.
At least when orgs do blind mailings to lists via paper mail they have
to come up with some strategy such that returns average higher than
their printing, mailing and postage costs. This would be almost zero
cost, really almost zero, and probably not scaled at all with the size
of the mailing. I suspect sending out 1,000 letters of appeal or
1,000,000 letters of appeal would cost about the same, plus or minus
finding 1,000,000 e-addresses but it's just a matter of time, not a
big deal (just save every address that goes by in usenet with a little
script.)
And I suspect it will be the shrillest, most lost causes that will
tend to abuse this. Much harder to find kindred needles in the
haystack, so shotgun everyone (99.9% won't like your message anyhow so
who cares if they resent one more bit of junk email?)
>And your reference
>to metering for feedback, means for monitoring purposes -- not billing.
I was thinking of something akin to the good old postage meter.
>> Having myself worked for non-profits and helped manage their budgets
>> could there be any motivation here arising from the "sticker-shock" of
>> suddenly realizing that postage, even at bulk/non-profit rates, can
>> cost thousands of dollars per month for even simple little mailings?
>> Say it costs $0.14/letter, that's $14,000 in postage per 100K, easily
>> an activity that even a small non-profit may look at longingly.
>
>I guess commercial entities look longingly some times in mass emailings as
>well.
Yes indeed. But the proposal was for no metering for non-profits, so
the commercial entities would merely get to look.
>They will be judged as harshly for this abuse of netiquette as a
>non-profit would I am sure. Probably not a good way to raise revenues
>unless the emailings were pretty well targeted (a separate issue). I
>mean, let the market decide, right?
When you're merely trolling for donations, or political support, or
similar, the "market" is very different. There's no real feedback
unless you make yourself anathema to a wide audience somehow. And
let's face it some political or social causes thrive on that anyhow.
Bitch once about a KKK (e.g.) mailing being too massive or whatever in
an effective way and they'll sermonize their membership about how
they're being censored by "vested interests" for years, forget
rational discourse. And many of their members will eat it up, "give
'em hell!" they'll respond. Underdog causes tend to be like that.
>> You take stats on real e-mail usage at real places. You make the first
>> one or two or even three standard deviations of everyone fall under
>> some flat-rate, and then meter thereafter. I'd have no problem with
>> that rate being adjusted for tax-exempts a la the current US Post
>> Office practices.
>
>In principle I think we could support something like this, as long as
>there was not any itemized metering.
What's the problem with itemized metering? Do you consider your own
postage meter a threat to your freedoms?
I could imagine schemes where it's not constantly metered by outsiders
per se. But where there would be serious penalties (perhaps even just
contractually with a provider) for being dishonest. That could be
enforced by occasional investigation, or there are other schemes
possible. For example, suppose you were contractually required to
merely put a unique sequence on each envelope, 1, 2, 3, and so on,
``X-Sequence: "Nuns for the Homeless" 00012345''. If you're caught
lying on sequences you're in trouble. And everything else could be
based on that.
Once a month you send your sequence counter into your provider. If
it's under 100,000 msgs or whatever is deemed reasonable no charge, if
it's over maybe you owe a few bucks. Maybe this is even handled
through a third-party organization entirely, analogous to ASCAP or
that organization that independently audits magazine circulations (I
forget their name.) This isn't real sensitive information, is it?
Perhaps you don't want it paraded about but it's not super-secret
stuff I don't think.
It could be a function of msgs and total volume, I dunno, the typical
post office model is somewhat compelling here.
>The stats that would interest me would
>be the total amount of email data sent over a period of time, and the
>number of email items sent over the same period. This data would be
>collected from specific places as you say, with informed consent. I would
>be very interested in such a survey. Any ideas how we could set this up?
You could monitor such things on large receiving sites like World,
Well, etc. Some mix tho, not just public access, some corps, some
universities, etc. It's not that hard.
>I think a tier-based structure, that would preserve flat-rate
>capacity-based pricing would be preferable in any event. If Nuns for the
>Homeless go above 10MB, they just buy another block at the bulk rate -- and
>this should cost a HELL of a lot less than snail mail bulk rate.
I agree it should cost less, there's a lot less handling etc involved
in delivering non-tangible medium. How the tiers might work, well,
it's the same thing again, some might prefer just paying the overage
rather than buying another 10MB. What you suggest gets into the old
"but I'm paying for another 10MB just for sending ONE too many letters
this month?!"
I think it has to be studied further, for example feedback on various
schemes from those who would be affected might be nice to have. I
think it may be dangerous to just say ``I'd like it like this so I am
sure everyone else will also.'' Some organizations thrive on being
able to control costs down to detail levels.
>Metering generally troubles me, not only because it opens up monitoring abuses
Expand on "monitoring abuses" because not a lot is coming to mind.
>but just seems economically inefficient in the long haul for the sake of
>excessive profits in the short haul. How would we keep track of how much
>email Nuns for the Homeless sent?
It's not that difficult really. Some simplicities could be installed
For example: If the same or substantially the same note goes out to
100 or more people (1,000, whatever) then you have to record how many
recipients your organization addressed them to, if it goes to mailing
lists elsewhere that further expand that doesn't count, it might count
for *them* (those who installed those mail exploders), but isn't
counted against the source.
Anyhow, see my example above with sequence numbers.
>Maybe the Clipper Chip on their
>wheezing XT's could send transaction data to the US Government Cyberpost
>Bulk-Mail Auditing Center? ;-)
Well, not sure what you mean by clipper chip in this context. I
realize you were kidding but I also think you're trying to put some
sort of ominous air on something that really shouldn't be very
different than your office postage meter.
AHA! And the big fly in this particular ointment...
If the flat rate is only for non-profits doesn't every objection you
raise above to metering necessarily apply then to commercial e-mailers
who *will* have to pay metered costs under the proposal?
Thus, generic objections about lack of mechanisms etc are sort of
baseless, since all those mechanisms would have to be created for
commercial entities anyhow.
Oh what an evil web we weave,
When first we venture,
To transmit and receive.
-Barry Shein
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