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Microsoft, Yahoo Investigate Spam Solution
bllfrnch writes "The NY Times (account required, yada yada) has an article about the suggestion of email postage to stop the advent of spam. Apparently, both Microsoft and Yahoo! support such an initiative, as they are the largest email service providers. Best quote: ''Damn if I will pay postage for my nice list,' said David Farber, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who runs a mailing list on technology and policy with 30,000 recipients'."
Paying for postage already exists, it's called a fax.
This is the worst solution ever and the only reason that MS/Yahoo support it is because of Hotmail/YahooMail. They stand to make huge profits because they host the inboxes of millions of users. Every email received at those accounts would invoice the sender. It's a no brainer for BARRELS OF CASH !!! (tm)
In fact, there already was a good solution proposed a few weeks ago, by microsoft no less. Combine it with Spam Assassin the way Spam Interceptor does (replacing the C/R component) and the solution is plausible.
It's a ridiculous concept really, the reasons email has become successful to begin with is that it's fast and free. If you charge for email, people will just move over to instant messengers or other systems. And how do you enforce charging people who you may or may not be able to track, the proposal to charge for spam based on the reciever's choice is absolutely ridiculous.
Why can't MX records become required to list all in AND out going official SMTP for a domain. From then on, SMTP servers could reject non matching MXed sender IPs and if spam does get through - you know you to blame.