[DanBC]

White listing a single IP address is the functional equivalent of block listing the rest of the Internet?

You claim it's not a closed ecosystem, but it appears to be totally closed and locked off. The only way to get access to it is to be invited in.

> The point is that if someone wants a better solution than what "email providers" offer, she can get it.

Not if they want email.

[overbroad]

Where did I claim it's not a closed ecosystem?

It's starts closed and it is opened by invitation. Yep. That is exactly how it works.

If you cannot understand that approach, then that just means it's not how you think. It does not mean that the approach makes no sense or has zero utility.

Maybe a stupid analogy can be made if we pretend "Facebook" is the internet (of course it's not, but it does present a messaging system so play along for a moment). On the one hand you could make every Facebook user your "friend" and thus able them to send you messages, and then when people abused that privilege - and we know from experience some would - you could block them. On the other hand, you could only make a select number of people who you know and trust your "friends" and thus only give a select number of people the privilege to send you messages. Chances are, they won't try to sell you Viagra.

On the one hand there are times you may want to enable the entire network to be able to send you messages. On the other, there are times you may only want to allow a small subset to send you messages. Not sure about you, but I don't receive important email from all that many different people. People's social circles are only so big. There is a certain carrying capacity beyond which it becomes unmanageable.

[DanBC]

Your posts contain a baffling mix of incompatible ideas.

You argue against block listing, but then suggest blocking the entire Internet except the few people you want to send you email.

You say that only people who you have given your email address to should be able to send you email, and then you say there should be a lookup system to get email addresses. (But what's the point of the email directory system if you can't send email to someone because they haven't white listed you yet?)

> but I don't receive important email from all that many different people.

Eh, depending what you mean by "important" I do receive a lot of important email from lots of different people. My email addresses have been used on the public Internet for many years, and I've had a lot of communication to those email addresses, and those communications have brought me great joy. And I also have a variety of people who email me about work related stuff - I won't have prior knowledge of those people.

I think I'm missing something about your system. Please, is it something that you already have well planed out? (Even if not in a state that can be deployed yet) Or is this something that you've just started thinking about?

So long as you're not suggesting Challenge Response we can have a discussion about it.

[overbroad]

I never said there should be a lookup system. Where are you seeing that? I said there isn't one and people still manage to get by. The other commenter was suggesting looking up addresses was some sort of problem. I'm saying it's a non-issue. If not having a public name-to-email lookup was a show stopper, then we would not be having this discussion because email would not be popular. People get by just fine without lookup. They exchange addresses and store addresses on their own.

Discussion is great. But you have to read carefully to understand what's being said. (If I am not being clear, then I apologize.) But if your mind is closed then there's no point reading what I'm typing because I am not regurgitating the usual ideas on email.

Anwyay, discussion is irrelevent when juxtaposed against running code. I'm interested in stuff that works more than getting approval from people in online forums.

This is not some new thing. Anyone can use email this way now. We all have good connections and bandwidth. There is no need for store and forward. What has stood in the way of using email as direct communication is people who can only see email being used one way: daemons that accept commands from any connection, spoofed IP's and all, and email as a service run by someone else, not a small program on the client's machine. If it was impossible to authenticate connections based on any other means besides real-time challenge-response, or DNS run by someone else, then how would people manage to run ssh daemons without the same problems as email?