Stamps for e-mail

[Don]

What do y'all think? Start paying for e-mail?

Should ISPs include this in their monthly fees? Monitor the amount of e-mail that you send out, and charge you for any that go over the amount?

What's the intelligent, right thing to do here?

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/03/05/spam.charge.ap/index.html

 

[KimS]

I know their trying to help, but it seems it will hurt the innocent who aren't spamming more than it will stop those who are. My ISP charges a lot for DSL already (I should have gone with another company). I can't afford to pay for all the emails I send. Especially since my family is all out of state (and country) and the phone bills are painful.

Kim

 

[baptistteacher]

On the surface, this may look like a good idea. However I see two different possibilities resulting:

1) The cost will be high enough to make it prohibitive to the average Joe (or Josephine) to continue to participate in the electronic revolution.

-OR-

2) The cost will be so low that it will make no matter to those who "spam for a living". They must make a bundle of money, or they would stop wasting their time flooding my box with their nusiance and vulgarities.

One more thing, it will mean that the rich (internet providers) will be able to get richer from the not-so-rich (you and me)!

 

[pinoybaptist]

Wrong. We're already paying monthly charges.

 

[Don]

How's this for an analysis?

If they charge an extra $2 a month for, say, 100 e-mails a month from your account, and then, say, a nickel for every e-mail over that (100 e-mails would be $5, right?), how would that sound to you?

As opposed to the spammer, who is getting paid to send a thousand e-mails at a time ($2 for the first 100, and $45 for the next 900).

Spammers would simply raise their rates a little bit, wouldn't they?

Based on math like that, I don't see "e-mail stamps" working....In order for it to work, it would have to be a "scale system," such as $2 for the first hundred, $5 for the next 100, $10 for the next $100, doubling each hundred after that (so that 1000 e-mails would equal about $1280) before the spammers would ever start feeling any pain from it.

Baptist Teacher, which part of Oklahoma are you from?

 

[InHim2002]

this will never happen - the question is not important because people will never pay for e-mail, plain and simple

 

[InHim2002]

also Don, you assume that spammers would be forced to pay - I really don't see why they would - how would an isp identify an e-mail anyway?

You could just run a web service that transforms http into smtp data on a server could you not?

 

[Johnv]

Originally posted by Don:
What do y'all think? Start paying for e-mail?

Private enterprise. If there's a cost incurred, and they want to pass it along to us, and the market warrants it, then it's up to them. If I can find a better deal elsewhere, then I'll switch. if I'm with the best provider for my money, then I'll stay.

Of course, I think all companies should give us their service free, but if I ownes stock in an ISP, I'd probably be saying differently.

 

[Don]

1) People will pay for e-mail--if it becomes an additional service, as opposed to "included" (as it currently is).

In other words, when you sign up with AOL right now, you get up to five screen names, with an e-mail box for each name. That set-up for the e-mail boxes is an auto-script for the mail server, as opposed to the basic web server, that can easily be disabled.

So the terms of agreement with an ISP would change. You'd get the basic service--access to the web--for the normal fee, but to get e-mail, you'd agree to pay extra.

2) Many spammers don't run their own web service with direct access to the internet--too easy to get your net address blocked that way. Most of them sign up with different services, do their batch processing, then look for the next service to sign up with and do batch processing from there. As soon as an ISP realizes it's being used to propagate spam, it usually determines the user doing it and terminates their service--unless the spammer is paying for the bandwidth bite, and the ISP is okay with it.

So it's not as simple as setting up your own web server.

3) Johnv points it out: Private enterprise.

Look at the history: Juno and NetZero both used to offer unlimited free internet access, in exchange for us having to put up with annoying advertisement banners. It was simple: You connect, then leave their ad banner stuff in the background while you open a new browser window and do your thing for as long as you want.

NEITHER offer free internet access anymore, although NetZero is still calling themselves "NetZero". In fact, although I'm not looking real hard these days, I can't find a single company that offers free internet access. It's just not profitable.

Bill Gates knew exactly what he was doing. The original Microsoft vision statement was: "A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft Windows." And that's almost true these days. And who gets the profits from this shoddy piece of programming? Bill Gates. Everything the man has done has been from a profit margin point of view.

So watch this latest one, boys and girls. The billionaire swami of computerland has had a vision of the future of profiteering, and made the suggestion that we should pay for e-mail. And when E.F. Hutton talks, people listen (some of you older folks will know the reference).

I give it another year at the most.

 

[SpiritualMadMan]

Paying for E-mail will not work as a spammer prevention.

This is because many spammers are already spoofing the source IP addresses they send from.

If the spoofed 'source IP address happens to be 'real' then that user or ISP would get the spammers E-mail Tax bill.

Now that is definately not very fair.

Also, you could move to Instant Messaging? How would you tax that?

And, would you charge a different rate for a message with an attachment? Or, a 10K text message vs a 20k HTML post?

Just the logisitics alone boggle the mind.

But, the *real* issue is that poiliticians can't stand to see *any* freedom anywhere especially one they think they can tax and spend to buy votes!

That's all internet taxation is. 'We' found a freedom 'They' don't want 'us' to have any...