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.'"

Comments

Historical First.

[Chris_Stankowitz]

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.

Re:Not with false headers

[terraformer]

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.

good article on micropayments

[sootman]

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.