Slashdot Mirror
E-mail Tax As Way Of Preventing Spam
scubacuda writes "This FT article criticizes current attempts to regulate spam. Re: Lessig's bounty-on-spammer proposal: 'This is a terrible idea that will make millionaires of two classes of people: reprobates who illegally maraud through others' hard drives; and those who have built their expertise about spam by peddling it, 'He considers the recent FTC spam conference "barking up the wrong tree," and thinks that the simplest way to regulate spam is through a tax: 'This requires smashing some myths....But, very soon, the Internet should turn into a penny post, with a levy of 1 cent per letter. This would cost the average e-mailer about $10 a year. Small companies would pay bills in the hundreds of dollars; very large ones in the thousands. And spammers would be driven to honest employment. The tax could be made progressive by exempting, say, those who sent fewer than 5,000 letters a year. The proceeds could go to maintain and expand bandwidth.'"
Urban legend comes to life. Wasn't this a myth passed along (via spam of course) years ago. Except I think it claimed the USPS was responsible for the tax.
The problem is that the little "feature" of SMTP named forged headers is incredibly useful for people. What needs to happen is a header that can identify the server and user that sent it. But not the From: feild. This would require some combination of digital signatures and SMTP auth.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
Why does the U.S. government insist on insinuating itself into every aspect of my life? I really don't want to pay $.01 for every email I send to get rid the 4-10 pieces of I get a day (and subseqently get rid of before I look at them with MailWasher).
The fee will start out small at a penny, but the cost *will* go up. Just like every other service ever thought up by the U.S. government. Eventually will be paying per MB for email like we do with snail mail.
Well I guess if this happens, people will start using & spamming IM more. Wonder what will happen then?
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Lots of good points have already been made, so I won't rehash them (and I'm only looking at +5 already!) but here's a good article on why micropayments will never, ever, ever, ever [emphasis mine] work by Clay Shirky.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I would gladly pay $0.01 per email to get rid of the 50-70 SPAM messages I get per day. Unfortunately, this really can't work until there is a good way of authenticating the sender.
You already pay taxes on your internet service, your pc and utilities..
Adding an additional tax directly onto each email would pretty much kill the system.
People would cut back on its use to the bare minimum, as people do with paper mail now.
The US postal service keeps claiming they are loosing money, its not really that. The volume of internet mail is due to the near zero cost of each email, nothing more. If the cost was raised, the volume would go down. Pretty simple concept.
But I agree SOMETHING has to be done, as I'm sick and tired of paying to receive this crap every day. That includes popups too.. not just
Spam-email..
And don't tell me I'm not paying.. I pay for my power bill, my ISP, my bandwidth, my drive space, my time..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How would something like this be collected? Monitoring port 25? All something like this would do is drive traffic off of public protocols and onto proprietary ones. Instead of paying an email tax, business will set up proprietary links (exchange server, anybody?) Sure, it kinda sounds like a good idea, but you've got to watch out for those unintended consequences.
I've wrestled with reality for 35 years and I'm happy to say, I finally won out - Elwood P. Dowd
How does the government expect to track *all* email? The support isn't in the underlying protocols, and nobody wants to throw away 20+ years of developing email servers just because the government wants a cut. And what about local email? I get emails from my crond daily - would those get taxed, too?
This is the stupidist idea I've heard in a long time, it shows how US-Centric people think, do these people realize that the internet is INTERNATIONAL!?
How can you impose this type of tax? The spammers would just move offshore and you would just be curbing the usefulness of e-mail for simple things like say, Slashdot notification that someone replied to this rant.
The best the FTC could do is impose a standard of email on the government that would authenticate the sender in some way that would be open to use by all, and set the example of a spam free email system that people/isp's could implement themselves.
Legislating this, then using the weight of the US to bully the rest of the world into it will never work.
Because, sometimes they just have to touch the stove.
-YY1
I'll reply to this one, since it seems the most intelligent :) (Note that I'm not disagreeing in any real sense)
Paved transportation infrastructure should be paid for in gasoline and other transportation related taxes
It is. Much in the same way that bridge tolls go mainly towards their mainteinance (or at least it's supposed to). Last I heard, the Clinton administration raised the Gasoline tax here to an all-time high of 18.4 cents per gallon. (I am not sure if the current administration raised it since, but you can pretty much guess that it hasn't gone down!)
Now, whether or not that tax goes to maintaining roads and other traffic infastructures is a good point. It should, but probably doesn't.
Three decades of declining education proves that the more money you throw at it, the worse it gets
I wouldn't be so quick to make such a direct correlation, but the overall sentament is true. Personally, I feel the decline of the education system is due to the population growing faster than the supply of qualified teachers. Money is certaintly one thing that would be required to fix this, but not the only thing.
I could rant about stupid teachers for pages, but to sum it up in a single analogy: I work as an engineering consultant (designing plumbing and HVAC for the architects)... a very large portion of our work has been school expansions and renovations, which inevitably requiers visiting the schools to record existing conditions.
When declaring that we're from the engineer's office (when checking in at the administration desk, or when someone asks what we're doing), it's not uncommon to hear someone make comment about what trains have to do with the work that was going on. (Try not to think about that too hard, it hurts after awhile)
Basically, I feel the problem with the education system is more related to lack of qualified teachers than it is with misappropriation/lack/excess of funds. Bad teachers make for poorly educated students, and poorly educated students grow up to (sometimes) be bad teachers.
Public libraries? Same thing. In fact, libraries would be better off if they weren't free.
See, that's soemthing I don't necessarily agree with. The whole point is that information is supposed to be available to anyone, not just those who can afford it (Note that I didn't use the word "free", clearly not all information can really be free, nor should be). Although the internet has the potential to draw a lot of interest away from physical libraries, it's never going to replace them.
Plus, if a library "goes out of business" jsut because there's not enough interest, what about future generations? It's not like a video store or pizza shop, which are a dime a dozen (around here at least) and can come and go overnight. A library is a big invenstment, and once it's gone it's very likely to stay gone.
There are other things that simply deserve to die - like the National Endowment for the Arts.
Again, I'm not sure I'd agree with such a generalization. I think we agree that the arts are an important part of society, and that it's worth preserving. Although I admit I'm not comfortable with the wholesale subsidizing of our culture just because it won't stay afloat on it's own, I do support tax money going towards it.
I don't think many people would complain about their taxes if they really got the feeling that they were getting something for their money. (Clearly, tax money is not being handled wisely, and that's a big problem.)
To borrow a phrase from you: the more money you throw at it (more taxes), the worse it gets (poor handling of tax revenue). New taxes solve nothing in the long run.
=Smidge=