Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site umcp-cs.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!rlgvax!cvl!umcp-cs!fred
From: fred@umcp-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.mail
Subject: E-COM electronic mail from UseNet
Message-ID: <3114@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 14-Oct-83 19:08:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.3114
Posted: Fri Oct 14 19:08:37 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 16-Oct-83 09:41:45 EDT
Organization: Univ. of Maryland, Computer Science Dept.
Lines: 31

This is probably going to start a lot of flaming, but here goes:

There's a small company in the Washington D.C. area, whose only
business is to forward mail to the U.S. Postal Service's E-COM
system. They are one of the six (I think) companies which have an
exclusive line to the Post Office's E-Com printing centers, and
provide the service to local businesses at a markup. They are
interested in expanding their market, and would like to provide
the service to UseNet. This opens a whole can of worms, because if
they just hang their system onto UseNet, and start accepting mail
from customers at sites on the net, those intermediate systems
which forward mail to them will (rightfully) object to forwarding
mail which someone else will be making a profit off of.  Some sort
of advance permission from, and renumeration to, these intermediate
sites is in order. The simplest solution would be to insist that
anyone wishing to make use of the service connect to them directly.
Also: there would be the problem of verification of the source of
the mail for billing.  Perhaps they could use some type of encryption.

For the record: I'm not affiliated with this company in any way,
but I'm posting this on their behalf since they're not on UseNet,
and I'm interested in seeing this service provided in some form.

How do people feel about this? Does anyone have any good ideas as
to how to handle mail-forwarding & such? Should this discussion
include other newsgroups?

					Fred Blonder
					harpo!seismo!umcp-cs!fred
					fred.umcp-cs@CSNet-Relay