There are a number of issues, not the least of which is enforcement, that must be addressed and resovled for this idea to work. However, I think that the idea was formed under a poor assumption: Spammers will transmit their ilk as legitimate businesses do, by using systems they own. I don't believe that to be the case. Judging from the spam that I receive the messages are usually sent through a hijacked account. The spammers won't be paying for the proposed tax, the legitimate owners of the hijacked accounts will. The economic cost is not applied to the source of the problem and therefore will have no affect.
However, a tax on email transmissions might provide enough economic incentive for organizations to make sure their mail servers are not configured as open realys and that they are properly hardened against other forms of attack that could allow them to transmit spam. It is feasible that relayed spam could cost a significant sum, depending on the amount of the tax. That fiscal incentive would be enough to grab the attention of the suits.
While I think any type of tax on network traffic is a Historically Bad Idea (tm), it could have some unexpected positive benefits. I don't think any of the positive benefits would outweight the general crappiness of the original idea though.
You might not be able to keep corporate America, or anyone else on the Web for that matter, honest, but you can exercise some CYA measures to protect yourself. I rely on Internet research daily in my job and am well aware that the "truth" changes regularly. If I use information from the Internet that is an important part of my research, I record it in my personal archive. That way when source information disappears or is modified I have the original copy with a time-date stamp.
The bottom line is that you must proactively protect your sources if the information is that important to you.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a number of issues, not the least of which is enforcement, that must be addressed and resovled for this idea to work. However, I think that the idea was formed under a poor assumption: Spammers will transmit their ilk as legitimate businesses do, by using systems they own. I don't believe that to be the case. Judging from the spam that I receive the messages are usually sent through a hijacked account. The spammers won't be paying for the proposed tax, the legitimate owners of the hijacked accounts will. The economic cost is not applied to the source of the problem and therefore will have no affect.
However, a tax on email transmissions might provide enough economic incentive for organizations to make sure their mail servers are not configured as open realys and that they are properly hardened against other forms of attack that could allow them to transmit spam. It is feasible that relayed spam could cost a significant sum, depending on the amount of the tax. That fiscal incentive would be enough to grab the attention of the suits.
While I think any type of tax on network traffic is a Historically Bad Idea (tm), it could have some unexpected positive benefits. I don't think any of the positive benefits would outweight the general crappiness of the original idea though.
You might not be able to keep corporate America, or anyone else on the Web for that matter, honest, but you can exercise some CYA measures to protect yourself. I rely on Internet research daily in my job and am well aware that the "truth" changes regularly. If I use information from the Internet that is an important part of my research, I record it in my personal archive. That way when source information disappears or is modified I have the original copy with a time-date stamp.
The bottom line is that you must proactively protect your sources if the information is that important to you.