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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."
By all means tax that! We've been looking for years to get a better replacement for SMTP. Finally, people would actually have a reason to switch.
Contact Me (got tired of viruses emailing me).
If most people used these technologies, then spam wouldnt be a problem, the problem is that many clueless isps and users don't like spam, but they haven't bothered to fight it much either.
ISPs don't want to be in court because their spam filters blocked e-mail saying "Mom's dying and this is your last chance to see her..." So they choose spam filtering that is weak, at best. Individual users are not going to install spam filters. Hell, over half of them don't even know that Windows has an update feature for patches, so how do you expect them to find, install, configure, and use spam filters?
But, on a philosophical note, why should I have to pay protection money to some company selling a spam filtering solution? Why should my ISP?
This whole anti-government crap is like saying that there should be no laws against theft and that we should rely on technology (burglar alarms, CCTV, etc.) to solve it. If something is unethical and costs innocent people money, then it should be illegal. You have people that say "but you can't catch and prosecute every spammer, so there should be no law against spam passed." Bullshit. You can't catch and prosecute every person who steals a radio out of a car, runs a stopsign, or shoplifts -- but no one wants to repeal laws against those things, do they?