E-mail postage floated to stamp out spammers

[Adams Wulff]

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~33~1997142,00.html

It's like that urban legend about congress taxing e-mail, only this time, apparently, it's for real.
There's even a picture of Bill Gates, the floater of the idea, on the site.

Hey Bill, maybe if you actually put out a decent product, you wouldn't have this spamming problem. I know I don't.

But then again, I'm a Mac user.

[kalian]

1. Its quite a possibility....

although I don't see it happening given that the moment people
start having to pay for email, they'll dump it in a heart beat.

[Florida_Geek]

2. And if Bill is pushing it, he wants a cut of the money

IMHO, 1 cent to sent, 3/4 of that to MS to process the email. Sounds fair to Bill.

[everythingsxen]

3. What a bunch of bullshit

This is ridiculous.

I love technology.. but I am leaning toward being a fantaical anti-techno freak fast! :grr:

[randr]

4. The obvious solution to spam

is to allow the market place to rule.
No form of advertising goes without payment. Indeed, advertising is the fuel of all media.
Why can't I charge anyone wishing to advertise on MY computer, using MY phone connection? I am charged for line usage whenever I connect outside my home. I should have the same right to assess fees for anyone wishing to enter my private domain.
A simple program to identify email senders and a way to automatically bill them would settle the issue right quick.
If I want to unblock my personal mail box and allow advertisers access to my system to advertise their products I should have the same rights that all the other advertising outlets have.
Now let me see. If I receive an average of 10 spams a day and charge, lets say, 37 cents a pop, the going mail rate I have to spend, I would be earning $1350.50/year.

[Ratty]

8. The only solution to SPAM

A simple program to identify email senders and a way to automatically bill them

But that's not simple at all. In fact that's the hardest part of all. The internet isn't set up anything like being able to support such a program that magically identifies email senders. Almost all the spam we get nowdays has forged and bogus sender addresses, so billing that would be useless.

Legislation is most certainly not the answer and in fact would be one of the worst things of all. This isn't like telemarketers who *do* pay for each call and who *can* be traced back to their true phone number. Most spam comes from offshore and no US legislation on Earth will have any impact on that. Can you imagine these guys just salivating to get ahold of a national "Do Not Email List?" The government would LIKE us to believe legislation is the answer. They know it wouldn't affect spam but boy they've been itching to tighten their control over the internet for decades. To spy on us or to help their buddies in the commercial sector collect marketing information on us all.

The real answer is a bit of federal legislation but not the kind people would think. This legislation should protect anti-spam services from lawsuits for a set period of years. There've been all kinds of anti-spam services that have been hounded out of existence by endless lawsuits from spammers. We need to protect these guys, encourage them to grow, then look at regulating them somewhere down the line.

I agree, the marketplace should rule here. Let's keep the government out of it as much as possible.

[markus]

5. This is a very old idea

The fellow who invented Ethernet (<can't remember first name> Metcalfe) has been proposing micro-postage for a long time as the simple solution to spam.

Hell, wouldn't you cheerfully pay $0.001 or even $0.005 for every e-mail if it made Spam go away? Of course you would.

(On further thought: Another Good Idea Made To Look Like Bill Gates Invented Rather Than Appropriated It).

[LoneStarLiberal]

6. Signed Messages And/Or Postage

I laughed at the urban legend emails I've seen before touting some mythical piece of legislation that is going to put a price on email.

But in reality, we either need digitally-signed email or we need to charge for it to make it a net loss for spammers.

As long as we continue to overextend SMTP and not hit the spammers in the only place where it will hurt them, spam will continue to be a problem.

I think signed messages and micro payments are both a good idea.

[markus]

7. Signed messages! Why you evil, anti-privacy troll! Gendarme!

At your next logon to slashdot, you local drives systems will be wipped.

I personally think there are privacy issues and logistical nightmares with the repositories for such signatures. I think such a scheme would prove more expensive than a millage on each e-mail.

Now, if the signing was at the ISP level, I would probably have less of a problem with it.

[TXlib]

9. I like the idea of time as postage