[cap-talk] can one use capabilities to stop spam without identity?

[John Carlson]

On Jan 20, 2007, at 1:39 PM, Mark S. Miller wrote:

> Patroklos Argyroudis wrote:
>> On Sat, Jan 20, 2007 at 09:42:26PM +0100, Matej Kosik wrote:
>>> is (I believe) the only reasonable solution that might work. It is
>>> possible to enforce such an security policy where you charge  
>>> senders for
>>> sending you a mail certain amount of money. You then review/read  
>>> your
>>> mails and money connected with non-spam-mail is returned back to the
>>> senders. This of course does not prevent unsolicited mail  
>>> (because you
>>> do not want to prevent it) but you are compensated with appropriate
>>> amount of money. How much you will charge for a mail (you might even
>>> discriminate among people you already know) is up to you.


How about this?  If Carol wants to  communicate with Bob, Carol finds  
Bob's identity
on a server somewhere, and sends Bob a "write to Carol" capability.   
The server provides
Bob a page of new "write to" capabilities, and a way to selectively  
pick "write to" capabilities
(search etc).  Also there would  be  a "hide all" "write to"  
capabilities that Bob could invoke
to clean up the mess.   There would  be  periodic program that would  
clear up hidden
"write to" capabilities that Bob hasn't accepted.  Carol can revoke  
the "write to Carol" capability
that she sent to Bob at anytime.

Bob uses the "write to Carol" capability to send Carol a "write to  
Bob" capability.
Communication is established.  Bob can revoke the "write to Bob"  
capability that he sent
to Carol at anytime.

I'm not sure of the usefulness of "read from" capabilities, but they  
might be used here.
Generally I think this would be a server capability to read from a  
message box.

What do you think?  It requires identity.  For human to human  
communication, this
might be OK????

John