A "left" version of Gates penny per email thought - a business excise tax

[papau]

The penny idea is not focused - how many individuals send a million spam except as a money making attempt?

But a business excise tax - bonded and charged for every spam email not accepted - is both easier and will actually close down the spam. We begin with overseas mail as presumed spam unless addressee accepts, and then all senders "not registerred and reported to gov as US Individuals" (or the reverse "exclude those not reported as spammers by ISP folk, and give appeal rights to appeal to IRS" (this later one would be easier to admin).

This would be simple to work - expand imployement at the IRS - help with deficit - and not hit any of us.

I can't think of a downside!



CNN: (Bill) Gates: Buy stamps to send e-mail
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/03/05/spam.charge.ap/index.html

If the U.S. Postal Service delivered mail for free, our mailboxes would surely runneth over with more credit-card offers, sweepstakes entries, and supermarket fliers. That's why we get so much junk e-mail: It's essentially free to send. So Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates, among others, is now suggesting that we start buying "stamps" for e-mail.

Many Internet analysts worry, though, that turning e-mail into an economic commodity would undermine its value in democratizing communication. But let's start with the math: At perhaps a penny or less per item, e-mail postage wouldn't significantly dent the pocketbooks of people who send only a few messages a day. Not so for spammers who mail millions at a time.

Though postage proposals have been in limited discussion for years -- a team at Microsoft Research has been at it since 2001 -- Gates gave the idea a lift in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Details came last week as part of Microsoft's anti-spam strategy. Instead of paying a penny, the sender would "buy" postage by devoting maybe 10 seconds of computing time to solving a math puzzle. The exercise would merely serve as proof of the sender's good faith. <snip>

[kalian]

1. Friggin morons....

the problem with email spam is that there are way too many
"open relays" out there that can be exploited by email spammers.
I personally believe that in order to separate the abusers from
the legit bulk emailers, I think that email companies should
establish "bulk mailer programs" where the users that would like
to be able to send massive distro lists can do so...but at a price.

The other thing that can be done is email quantity monitoring.
Scripts can be created that watch for patterns of bulk emailings.

Its not that difficult...its just sys ad laziness...

[papau]

2. Verizon says if total mail size exceeds 5 meg, then shutdown email account

number times size of each equals mailing size

seems a filter that is easy to use at the sending in - but not of use if ISP sells tp spamers as a business plan.

But IRS is very good at stopping tax "leaks" - and I can see "open links" being fixed within a year of passage.