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Minnesota Senator Says Email Tax Might Reduce Spam
indros13 writes "The Hon. Mark Dayton, Senator from Minnesota, is reportedly considering a "miniscule email tax" to counter the flood of spam. Thinking like an economist, he's obviously hoping to make mass emailing unprofitable. 'You can't say, "We want it to be totally free and unrestricted and on the other hand we want it to work smoothly and civilly," he said.' No word on how all those lobbying groups that use mass emails will respond, but I'm sure there are a few emails on the way..." Politician weasel words are part of the package, though; Dayton says a tax is "just one of the tactics that should be considered, but I don't favor it at this time."
I think many on Slashdot will agree with me that this proposal is, essentially, unimplementable. The SMTP protocol simply isn't designed to interface into some kind of online micropayment transaction system to make everybody pay their tax. That said, I'm very pleased to see a member of Congress acting proactively on the issue of spam (i.e., unsolicited email, not the delicious lunch meat).
.NET enabled heavy iron monsters, guarded by severe-looking men with machine guns, and laser-wielding robots. Every email account in the United States will be routed through these machines, and sophisticated genetic algorithms will filter out any messages containing the words "penis enlargement," "exciting timeshare opportunities," and "URGENTLY SEEKING YOUR AID IN AN EMERGENCY BUSINESS TRANSACTION." Keep in mind, privacy advocates, as an added bonus, this system could spell the end for hated systems like Carnivore (or whatever they're calling it these days) because, with every email server consolidated in a secret underground lab in New Mexico, there's no need to monitor your local ISPs traffic. It's a win-win. As an added bonus, this system could very well stop terrorists in their tracks. Just imagine the look on poor Ahmed's face when DIS (Department of Internet Security) stormtroopers burst through the door of his flat, guns blazing, after intercepting his "Dear Osama, the attacks begin at dawn" email.
/.'ers to write their congressmen immediately, and say, with one clear voice, "URGENTLY SEEKING YOUR LEGISLATIVE ACTION: Please stop Osama from acquiring penis enlargement, such that he may steal our nubile young coeds willing to bare it all at the luxurious timeshare condominium financed with a low, low interest rate!" Think of the children, people.
I guess the problem with Mr. Dayton's approach is, it doesn't go far enough. You can't very well force everyone to change their mail servers over to a system with the transaction processing software in it. On the other hand, the government has got to DO SOMETHING, as no one is interested in lower mortgage or nubile young coeds willing to "bare it all!" for you. Therefore, the only logical option to stop spam (i.e., unsolicited email) is to consolidate the email facilities of the United States. Perhaps we need the creation of a Department of Internet Security.
Imagine, if you will, an underground labyrinth of servers, all secure
Truly, there is no downside to this plan. I urge all
Clearly it should go to a once-a-year ice cream party for the whole Internet.
I have trouble believing that it would be that difficult to restructure US networks to block all outside originated email that doesn't have a "postage paid" bit flipped.
California could explore this option too.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Oh, I am actually in favour of that. That would finally get some people finally fixing their computer ( and hopefully this will extinguish Outlook)
I'm lactose intolerant you insensitive clod!
Sure, go clodbashing, you bigot.
Hey, if you were on as many painkillers as I am, you'd be laughing too.
Clearly it should go to a once-a-year ice cream party for the whole Internet.
Shhh... then they'll impose a tax on ice cream parties!!
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Interesting how everyone who thinks there should be a tax on email thinks that the money should go to their organization or government.
Yeah. I was kinda thinking. "Hey , looks like someones proposing to make money of email.. where have I heard that before".
Email tax, get rich quick, whats the diference?
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
> Hold the emails in some large mail spooler at the border
;-)
Sure, and you will go to jail, if you smuggle emails across the border
> I likes my SpamAssassin, thanks ;^)
Me too. I especially like how the last job I applied for on Monster.com got bounced by the HR person's inbox by SpamAssasin because it "looked like spam". Maybe I used too many buzzwords in my resume...
Spam has made it difficult to set up legitimate servers to send legitimate e-mail to their indended recipients...
yet I seem to get MORE of those 1024 free AOL hours CD's now than ever before
Ever notice there's a return address? Slap a label over your address that says 'return to sender' and drop it off in a mailbox. Imagine their mailroom problems if just 10% were returned. Usually junk mail's not worth the effort since it can just be tossed in the recycling bin, but why should my landfill fill up with these CDs and their cases? Send them back and let AOL deal with it.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Bugger that. Kill the damn spammer.
In order to determine the solution to the SPAM problem you have to get into some pretty hairy mathematics. Fortunately, I am presently unemployed and willing to spend some time working on this.
When you talk about email, you are really talking about sending bytes of information, but a perfectly clear email can be sent in relatively few bytes, perhaps a Kilobyte. So let m be a kilobyte's worth of email. m is a good descripter because it stands for mail.
Now sending mail through the internet requires processor effort. Lets choose E for this to stand for the effort. E would then be the effort required to push m through an email processor on the internet in a second.
There is only so much that the internet can do sending emails, eventually with enough spammers, the internet will get bogged down, certainly there will be bottlenecks here and there. Of course the theoretical limitation is the speed of electrons somewhat approaching a maximum of kilobytes of mail per second per second that we can call c.
It can be shown that mail messages can be related to m through the quantity c using the following formula.
E=mc^2
Aha!!!
The solution is obvious... NUKE THE SPAMMERS.
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --