The nice thing about e-mail is that it practically costs nothing. But this allows spammers to mail out millions of messages at a time offering you fun things such as penis enlargement or whatever.
So, according to CNN.com, there actually are plans to charge postage on e-mail. Several schemes have been proposed:
To every message, an electronic stamp has to be attached for the mail to be delivered or to evade your spam filter
An elaboration of this would allow users to set their own rates: E-Mail to me is not accepted (or at least scrutinzed by my filter) if the amount I think people who really want to contact me are willing to pay hasn’t been paid
Every time you mail out a message, your computer would be given mathematical puzzle which would take a few seconds to solve. This too would cause costs for the bulk mailers.
Proposal #3 just appears nonsense to me - total waste of computing power, and a real pain for the impatient. #1 and 2 have something interesting about them, but except for the technical problems of collecting the money, the question of who should get the cash remains. The ISP? The recipient?
Would you accept any of those schemes if it were really effective in the war on spam? Regarding scheme 3, how much would you be willing to pay?
the only way this should happen is if the email fees go directly to the person RECIEVING the email. Then at least spam will pay its way and people will be a little more careful about sending unwanted mail.
But why do I respond that way? Quite a few reasons, but the shortest way to describe my reservations: implimentation.
Who’s going to decide who pays, and how much? Who collects? What will be done with the monies collected? How will this be implimented with the current standards? (Can it even be done? If not, can it be made backwards compatible?) How much of the cost of implimentation will be passed on to the consumers? Will the implimentation keep in mind the many different kinds of computers/OSs/ISPs/etc.? What happens if some ISPs/states/countries decide not to play along with this? How will the system be protected against spoofing? What will happen if I spoof an e-mail from fred@foo.bar: does poor Fred have to pay? What’s to stop me, or anyone, from using one of the bulk re-mailers that doesn’t have the capability to handle ‘stamps’?
While reducing spam is a good thing, I see so many potential problems with this method that I’m not sure it’ll work. Maybe I’ll be proved wrong, maybe I won’t.
I prefer the ‘addressee decides’ proposal. I recieve email, I decide it is spam so I bounce a reply that charges the sender a nominal amount. That way worthwhile email costs nothing, and unwelcomed email costs. Senders would quickly learn who is going to charge them for receiving their email.
Unfortunately it won’t work. The money would have to go to a third party, otherwise plenty of people would try and earn a living attracting email and then charging for it. It would also be hideously complicated, and most spammers would just continue hiding their identity so they couldn’t be charged.
For similar reasons the ‘penny an email’ postage wouldn’t work. Too many third-parties would be willing to under-cut it. Hideously complicated. Who would collect the money? Who would distribute it? You already get viruses that spam out on innocent party’s computers. This scheme would make this an even more attractive option. Send your spam from some other sucker’s account and get them to pay for it too.
Microsoft, of course, are quite keen on the idea because it would have to involve a great deal of centralising of control over email, not unlike national postal services are now. I wonder if they’ve thought who could be Postmaster General?? Hmmm?? Who’d administer it and issue the ‘stamps’??? Who’d insist that everyone in the planet had an account with them?? Perhaps even embed it into an ‘official’ emailer??? Maybe it could stop working once a person had run out of ‘stamps’, or maybe if their software licence had expired? Or maybe if you haven’t bought the latest upgrade??
Oh the possibilities are endless. Microsoft has seen what Dubya has managed to introduce to ‘fight terrorism’ and reckon that ‘fighting spam’ can do the same for them.
A small delay on sending email is a waste of computing power, yes. But this would be on a PC, which have plenty of cycles to spare. Compare this to the amount that SPAM mail taxes mail servers, many of which need any cycles they can spare.
As far as patience, I dunno about other people, but I have very little patience for dealing with SPAM mail, even a good filter doesnt get everything. I can stand watching a progress bar for 3 seconds longer more than finding another email filled with great info on how to enlarge my penis.
While I would be for an OPEN standard that used this concept to cut down on SPAM, a much better solution (and more difficult) would be to start using more authetication methods. Or perhaps some kind of captcha to verify that a human is sending the message (when trying to send alot of email over a small duration).
You know how sometimes, when filling out a form online or uninstalling a program, it says “to ensure that a human is performing this action, please type the word seen below” and displays a slightly fuzzy word? Why can’t we just have that little test before an email gets sent?
Because there is money to be made.
I don’t like it. What about anonymity? I sometimes frequent Yahoo! groups and the alike, and I’d like to remain anonymous (to outsiders, not within the groups). And if an email stamp is implemented, anonymity will be no longer, as the ID would have to be hooked up via PayPal, Credit Card, or financial institution that requires real info. Not a good idea. Bad. BAD!
People know about junk mail right? You know, real junk mail? That you get in your physical postal mailbox? It costs money to send that stuff out. They’re still doing it.
I want to be the founder of EmailFedEx…I promise to have your emails delivered first thing tomorrow morning if you get them to me by 3:30 PM today. Just fill out this half page form and then give me six bucks.
Until some chip shop designs an ASIC, hard-wired to solve each math puzzle in .04 nanoseconds max and cost $1.00 apiece. And they would, since there would be a BIG market for that device.
