Slashdot Mirror
Bulk Email Tax Getting Closer
Strudelkugel writes "The Financial Times reports a growing interest in the concept of bulk email fees: Direct Marketing Association and libertarians oppose, ISPs and companies losing marketing messages to spam filters in favor. Then there's the rest of us."
This would be capitally stupid. Just like CAN-SPAM, it would legitimize spam! Once the spamming scumbags PAY for it, your ISP would not be allowed to block it!
So all those thousands of messages that are blocked now at the ISP level and higher would flow down to your poor little inbox. Suddenly your inbox is 99.6% spam, and most of your bandwidth is dedicated to downloading it. That would be the end of email.
...we're all in trouble. Once AOL realizes they can charge even so much as a penny for spam, it won't be long before some executive, eager to show a profit for his department at a shareholder's meeting will realize he can start charging for incoming or outgoing e-mail.
Then Earthlink, MSN, and everyone else will realize they can do the same thing and within a year or two e-mail won't be free anymore -- at least if you're sending to the big guys.
Then again, once that gets to be common practice, someone will probably realize they can gain customers by advertising as the one major ISP that doesn't charge for e-mail, so maybe there'll be a balance.
But I don't trust the big guys to charge for spam only and realize they could charge for other e-mail and NOT charge everyone else. Remember, in America, profit is the bottom line and just about all most businesses care about.
If the ISPs begin charging for email, and the system is put in place by federal law, it is likely that there will be a ban on spam filters at the ISP level, at least for spam that is in compliance with the regs.
I do not want to see spam legitimized by law. I enjoy the effective spam filtering my email provider has implemented. Actually, they are not likely to be affected by this because they are not in the US, but do not think there is any reason that US based email providers should be prevented from filtering spam, and I do not trust the DMA or other Corps to come up with a definition of spam the I or other users would agree with.
The largest ISPs are being insincere about the spam issue, and are attempting to ensure that their spam spewing customers are protected while they can enjoy increased revenues by helping the spammers to stuff our inboxes.
They (MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Earthlink, Comcast, etc) do not want to stop spam, they only wish to get rich off of it.
Read, L
But advocates of a fee-based system for bulk e-mail believe it would help distinguish between legitimate e-mail from respectable corporations and offensive spam from shady operators who presumably could not afford to send tens of millions of messages a day.
Okay, but what about the guys who are NOT corporations and are NOT shady operators? What about guys like me who run small to medium internet sites with less than 100,000 registered members on which their entire SERVICE is based on communication through email? (Registration notifications, password reminders, auction notices, etc)?
This is going to drive spammers under ground even further (or out of the company) and put the big corporations in the power-seat. And it's going to leave the honest guy trying to make a living (or run his hobby) who does no harm to anyone, right out of "business".
This is a worse idea than the Tarriff-22/CARP thing they tried in 2002/2003, where they wanted to tax EVERYONE who broadcasts music in any form, per listener, whether or not the person had direct permission of the artist and whether or not the artist had anythign to do with the music associations - and then distribute that tax to the top few dozen artists.
In other words, if Mr. McSmallBand records a CD for free and gives it to you with permission to play it on your online radio station, you have to pay a fee for every person who listens to that song to the government association and that association redstributes it to the top RIAA recording artists, even though they have NOTHING to do with it and the artist that you played isn't even a member of them or signed by anyone.
This is EXACTLY the same and JUST as bad, if not worse. This WILL DRIVE ME OUT OF MY HOBBY... And I have never harmed ANYONE and I DO NOT SPAM ANYONE. This is fucked up and I'm seriously pissed off.
And email will be saved ? unless the ?good guys? mess it up. Microsoft (and I?m no MS basher) wants to make a little bit ? just a tiny bit ? off of every email sent. And that will cause a huge change in how email is used. Does the NYTimes send you email every day? Slashdot? Rueters? The Florida Fowl Fanciers Association? (OK, I made that one up?.) Are you on any technical email lists? (Many programming lists have 50-100 messages a day, or more, to the list, and the list goes to 1,000?s of people.) These are free now. They won?t be if the ?solution? to spam involves the people who run these paying 1/4 cent per email. Either they will pass those costs on to the people who want the mail ? or they will fold, unable to pay the additional costs.
In the meantime, those of you who want to send 20-30 emails a month, all to friends, will pay higher prices.
But that?s if MS gets their way. I don?t think that will happen.
In order for the pay-to-send model to work, you have to have something that doesn?t happen now. As things stand, when you send an email, it is incredibly easy to put any email address you want in the ?From? field. I can send an email from bill.gates@microsoft.com or president@whitehouse.gov without any trouble. And email programs can?t tell that those are, obviously, forgeries.
If you can?t tell who sent the mail, you can?t charge them for sending it.
If you can tell who sent the mail, then verifying that they aren?t lying to you in the header of the email is easy.
If you throw away all mail that doesn?t have legitimate, verifiable headers, then most of the spam goes away ? and filtering for legitimate messages, as well as filing complaints about illegitimate messages ? gets easy.
The pay-per-email systsems that get talked about all require the same verification. So lets do that first. If, after we can verify who the mail came from, it still seems to be needed to charge for mail, then we can start charging for email then . In the meantime, the goal of any geek that cares about spam should be to verify that the mail that claims to be from XXX is really from XXX, not ABC.
One system that I know is working on this is SPF. Sender Permitted From. I?m not convinced that this is the final solution. I am convinced that they are going the right direction.
Sure, we may dislike taxation in general, but this tax is not being done to expand government but rather to remove a parasitic business practice
What stikes me about the proposed tax is that it is so inequitable. Taxes should be simply for funding government; using them to regulate markets is sinful, IMO.
Vote in November. You won't regret it.
I agree. Charge to either receive or send e-mail by the piece, and I'll start using something else. If my ISP forces me to have an Inbox, nothing says I have to empty it. If they ask about it, give them the reason. It's all junk. To reach me, my fax number is ... After dialing, use this PIN to connect to the machine.
The truth shall set you free!
They could rather easily just have two cars, one with windows and one without, and use the one without when not parking in a secure garage.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?