Trade in your Junk Mail for Spam

QueueEhGuy writes "CNN is reporting that the Swedish Postal Service, Posten, is now offering a service where customers can choose to receive spam via a free, government run, service. Business are given the option of using this at a 25% discount from carrier delivered mail. For those of us with physical addresses, it raises an interesting question as to which one is less annoying, environmental benefits aside." Interesting step towards charging postage for email.

Comments

the hidden benefit

[frovingslosh]

There is a major benefit to this approach that was not mentioned: Once the Swedish post office starts making that 19 cents per piece of spam, the Swedish government will look twice at all the spammers who are sending UCE directly without paying. While I certainly wouldn't want the government to stick it's nose so far into e-mail that any e-mail was taxed (and I expect this would be the final result), this should lead to some serious anti-spam laws with teeth in them. If done here in the U.S., and followed up with anti-(direct)-spam laws and serious enforcement, I'm certain it would significantly decrease the amount of spam sent to me each day.

Re:junk mail over spam

[bmalia]

The article says that "To send mail through ePostbox, companies pay about 2 kronor (19 cents) per item, some 25 percent less than it would cost to have the mail delivered by carriers."
Since they are paying for it, it is different from the normal spam. They'll probably target an audience (and do a spell check!) before they send it off. I'd probably sign up if they were to send me a coupon for a free pint of Ben & Jerry's every month. Anyway, I'm just pointing out that these SHOULD be a higher quality spam that what we're used to.