I just read an article on CNN.com that discusses a proposal by Bill Gates and others to start charging a small fee for each email people send. They say an "estamp" which cost pennies would be enough to discourage spammers from sending messages en masse without putting a dent in any normal user's pocketbook.

To me, this sounds like just another way for AOL and Microsoft to line their pockets a little better.

There are alternatives also proposed, such as time-consuming puzzles which upon completion would grant you permission to send an email, or modifications to the postage proposal which would try and narrow the fees to target only companies that use spam.

The question for debate here is:


Would you support tacking on a fee to each email delivered in order to deter spammers?

No.

1. This would not deter spammers
2. Many people use free email services and they don't want to be punished as well as spammers. In other words, you'd be punishing the criminal and the victim.

Spammers will find a way to breach the system of paying and keep on doing it. Also, ordinary people save 34 cents (are stamps still 34 cents or has the Postal Service raised the prices again?) by sending e-cards to grandma or other relatives and can send a christmas/birthday list to 10 relatives using one click.

I think, like you do Pheeler, that this is just another way to get some money. Bill Gates wasn't happy charging MSN chat members who didn't pay before, now he has to charge for email. It won't fly well with hotmail or yahoo! email users. Overnight, he'll destroy the popularity of email

Would you support tacking on a fee to each email delivered in order to deter spammers?

I would agree with tacking on a fee under certain conditions. Unfortunately, much of the spam comes from overseas where spammers have little to fear from American law enforcement. Also, the intricate nature of the Internet might make enforcement next to impossible at any rate.

What I would suggest is this. Mandate a charge of five cents for every e-mail sent through the Internet. Now, before you start worrying, here's what happens to that nickel. If you are the recipient of the e-mail the five cents goes to your Internet service provider. Your ISP then credits that nickel to your account. This way the people who are sending you e-mails are actually paying for your use of the Internet.

Use a not for profit, or other source of non partisan entity to administrate the whole scheme and keep the corporations out of it.

OK, maybe it wouldn't really work, but I'd like to see it tried.

Nope. I'd prefer an "international" law that makes it a serious crime to spoof your e-mail address or tweak the e-mail headers to prevent you from figuring out where the e-mail came from. I'd also make it a crime to send an e-mail to someone who requests that you never send them an e-mail. But I wouldn't charge for e-mail more than we're being charged for ISP access now.

Would you support tacking on a fee to each email delivered in order to deter spammers?

I am 100% absolutely positively against this idea.

The reason is simple:

America's Debate generates hundreds of email each day.

Every reported post-- a dozen email (300+ reported posts since mid-November). Almost every PM-- an email (5,500+ since mid-November). Every forum or topic subscription-- an email (~2,200 subscriptions total). Every registration-- an email (708 since mid-November). Every email-- well, obviously an email (~50 since mid-November).

We would go out of business, as would thousands of other free web forums.

Are you paying for internet access? Has internet access always included unlimited email? Good. Let's keep it that way. There's got to be a better way than imposing a usage fee for something that you already pay to use.

Mike

I would agree with the dissenters. Just look at all the junk mail you get in your mailboxes. Paying for usage is just part of the business, but at the sametime can hurt the ordinary person by just adding another expense that you have to pay for. Exactly like Mike said we already pay for internet usage right now mine is $49 bucks a month for a cable modem and I email on average each month about 50 emails. SO NO EMAIL TAXES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

At first I thought the stamp idea was great, until I began to wonder what would all the networks do? My mother works at SIU, and she recieves emails from the chancellor everyday, not the mention from other workers, it would get expensive.
I do like the authorization code idea. Like some games would put an image up of three numbers that is slightly distorted, but you can still read it. All you have to do is copy those three numbers and your done. Much cheaper, but not easier. I know for America's Debate or other websites this would get time-consuming, but I have yet to find a solution to this problem.

Would you support tacking on a fee to each email delivered in order to deter spammers?

Not at all. I would not support an international law crimminalizing any of the aspects of spamming either. The internet doesn't belong to any national or international governing authorities, nor should it.


I smell a tax...

I might be one of the lucky few, but I do not get spam. The only unwanted emails I get are from colleges who I have no interest in attending.

One idea that might work is allowing the money to be returned to the sender if the person receiving the email does something. Lets say the sender must pay 5 cents for the email. If that person recieving the email is a friend, the friend can just click on some link at the bottom of the email, showing the email company that the email was read and received and that the email was not spam. Then, the sender gets his or her nickel back. People who spam will most likely never see that money again, because no one really opens spam email anyway.

I am opposed to charging for email. I consider email to be one of the services that I pay for when I pay my ISP bill each month.

We have methods of limiting the email that we get already through spam controls and email blockers, so what is the big deal?

When I have no spam controls in place, I typically have about 15 to 20 emails to weed out each morning. This takes about 90 seconds.

If we go for a fee--even if it is only a penney, it will soon be increased until it is a significent expense and will become a big pain in the rectum.

I would have to say that this is an unequivocal NO WAY, NO HOW, NO WHERE! Bank fees anyone? How many people here like to read the fine print on their bills? Or how about the infinite different fees banks charge? Hell, I have twenty different categories for banks alone in my Quicken account. This is an attempt to inundate people with information overflow (and boring information at that - who wants to get their ISP bill with an itemized list of who got blocked and where? just take care of it Gates, that's all). Don't we get enough of this already? Billy Boy needs to wake up and smell what he is shovelling.

Why not just charge for mass mailings over a given threshold? What is the most addresses people have in their address books 20,30 100? So make it five hundred with an opt out, upon proof that you weren't spamming. This should be enough to make it unprofitable for the spammers. Might lead to more hijackings and viruses but Billy boy needs to take care of that too. Get to work and stop whining, Billy boy.

Would you support tacking on a fee to each email delivered in order to deter spammers?

Yes. But in return I'd like the cost of my connection to be reduced slightly.

I'm tired of getting virii and spam all the time through the e mail service and I don't have the time to start hunting for software to get rid of each problem as it arises.

Better to simply buy a stamp as I would if I were posting a letter.

No, I wouldn't support this fee.

In addition to the ethical and otherwise points already mentioned, this process would increase the bandwidth overhead of any email system. So, in addition to hurting legitimate free projects that are primarily run and administered with the use of email, the backend administers would have to ensure that the increased load on the system wouldn't create a violation of bandwidth and service contracts.

All in all, it seems that it would be more trouble than it's worth.

No. It's a ploy to make more money for already rich companies. It will not stop SPAM. SPAMmers will charge their clients more, and their clients will charge their customers more. It will not prevent SPAM. The only thing that will ever stop SPAM is the average internet user. If everybody quit clicking on links from SPAM to the advertiser's website, companies would realize that spending money to have unsolicited emails sent out is not increasing their customer base and actually costs them money. Until that happens, SPAM will continue to be a popular marketing tool for a lot of companies.

Would you support tacking on a fee to each email delivered in order to deter spammers?


No, because like most laws/regulations, there are loopholes and the spammers would find ways to beat the system. Again, the majority of people doing it right get penalized because of the minority of bums who aren't.

There are thousands of good people running a business on the Internet and one of the ways they promote their web site business is sending our FREE newsletters and ezines on a daily, weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly basis to as few as 1,000 and as many as 200,000 subscribers. If they have to pay a penny or five cents per email, one of two things is going to happen....they discontinue their publication or start charging for it. Either way....a lot of good people are going to pay for the sins of spammers.

One good way to stop spammers is for everyone to stop buying from spammers ...no income...no spammers.

I manage a movie theater. We plan to start a weekly newsletter that informs our patrons (that wish to sign up) about upcoming films and events. We get about 20,000 visitors per month, and if only 10% sign up (we think more will sign up, but for the sake of argument...), that's 2,000 messages per week. That works out to 104,000 emails per year (if we don't send out special announcements and stick to one message per week). At one penny per message, we would have to pay $1,040 per year for that, in addition to our hosting charges and labor to update the sight and author the newsletters. That's a hefty chunk of change to add to our expense column. And if more people opt in (and I'm pretty darn sure they will, a lot of our unique users use only the website to keep up with what we are doing), we would pay even more. Why should my company have to pay more to use e-mail because some companies abuse the system?!?

The only people that are hurt by charging 'postage' on electronic mail are honest companies. Spammers will find a way to get around the fee or pass the charge on to consumers, all the while lining rich pockets with more money.

I would never support paying for email - the amount of email I have to do for school alone would empty my bank account - never mind personal emails.



I like this idea - except maybe if it included a step where if the recipient had previously authorized the sender, the sender no longer has the hassle of the puzzle. So, for listservs, etc, when the person "signs up" they send a pre-authorization and the admins don't have to worry about the puzzles.
Unfortunately, I don't think its technically possible considering it would require some sort of central type database and some sort of communication between email servers (which are quite numerous).