Paying for E-Mail

Bill Gates suggests that everyone pay a penny to send email. This (according to Bill) would cut down on spamming. I’m just wondering how this would affect listservs (LMNet for example).

See Paying for E-Mail May Be Anti-Spam Tactic

March 6, 2004 by rudimyers Uncategorized 7

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madcow says:

March 6, 2004 at 1:25 am

I’ve got a feeling
that most of that cent would Micro$oft’s if he had his way.

I know he’s proposing this as an antimspam mechanism. I think COMMERCIAL entities should have to pay to send an email that has more than 10 recipients. How’s that sound?

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mcbride says:

March 6, 2004 at 1:52 am

Really burns my biscuits
It still amazes me. We spend all this time trying to stop spam, all while thousands of trees, fossil fuels, plastic, etc., are wasted delivering physical ‘spam’ to my real mailbox. I estimate that 90%+ of my real mail is waste, and the remaining 10% are bills (which can be delivered online). I’m one of the few kooks that would prefer more spam in order to get less paper waste being generated.

I hope someone in Congress (especially the environmentalists on the Left side) quit wasting time on legislation designed to clean up my email. Cleanup my mailbox instead.

That’s my Friday rant.

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Fang-Face says:

March 6, 2004 at 3:10 am

Ha!
As far as I’m concerned Bill Gates can kiss my assets.

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AshtabulaGuy says:

March 6, 2004 at 5:49 am

What would this do to AUTOCAT?
Moderated listservs would definitely be problematic under this proposal. Not everything submitted to AUTOCAT makes it past moderation and out to subscribers. Would such a proposal by Mr. Gates mean that we are creating in one way a type of vanity publishing that involves a gamble with potentially little pay off?

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ChuckB says:

March 6, 2004 at 12:20 pm

Re:I’ve got a feeling

Surely you mean unsolicited email to more than 10 recipients. Otherwise, commercial entities who run free support mailing lists will have to pay for the privilege of helping me.

In any case, I don’t think legislation offers much hope for dealing with spam. Technicques like Bayesian analysis are the future. Spammers can easily off-shore their re-mailing, and in that case it becomes difficult to know if a domestic company is behind the spam or if it is being framed by a competitor.

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Anna says:

March 6, 2004 at 6:18 pm

Filters
I pay $30/year for an account with SpamCop.net, which I use for all of my non-work email. The filters they use are based on known spamming practices as well as user input. I’ve had this account for about as long as I had my Hotmail account, and the spam that gets through to me has been drastically reduced. It’s a rare day that more than five items are in my Held Mail box, compared to the 50+ per day that I was getting at Hotmail before dumping that account. Another feature – instant spam reporting. One click and the spammer’s ISP is notified by SpamCop. Yeah, I’d be happy if the spammers had to pay to send email, but I’d rather pay a nominal amount to not to see it.

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Anonymous Patron says:

March 8, 2004 at 7:45 am

I’ve said it before…
I’ll say it again: Have stamps eliminated junk-mail?

There are other solutions besides the economic ones, which are the primary ones to be pushed because they will make the large providers (or the government) profit, and it’s the primary mode of thinking for those types of people. There are other solutions (calculation, response-challenge, etc, etc).

— Ender, Duke_of_URL

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