posted on March 7, 2004 06:49:08 PM new
I can live with spam. Even before I got Earthlink Totalaccess email that pretty much shunts it aside, I didn't have all that much of a problem simply deleting it unread. Clue: just use the "delete" button.
But now Gates is using spam as excuse to start charging for email. Greedy bastard. Hey, we all knew such a thing was coming, but I figured it would be the government leading the charge. Let's give it a good fight, though...
Gates: Buy stamps to send e-mail
Paying for e-mail seen as anti-spam tactic
Friday, March 5, 2004 Posted: 11:25 AM EST (1625 GMT)
Microsoft's Bill Gates, among others, is suggesting computer users start buying "stamps" for e-mail.
NEW YORK (AP) -- If the U.S. Postal Service delivered mail for free, our mailboxes would surely runneth over with more credit-card offers, sweepstakes entries, and supermarket fliers. That's why we get so much junk e-mail: It's essentially free to send. So Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates, among others, is now suggesting that we start buying "stamps" for e-mail.
Many Internet analysts worry, though, that turning e-mail into an economic commodity would undermine its value in democratizing communication. But let's start with the math: At perhaps a penny or less per item, e-mail postage wouldn't significantly dent the pocketbooks of people who send only a few messages a day. Not so for spammers who mail millions at a time.
Though postage proposals have been in limited discussion for years -- a team at Microsoft Research has been at it since 2001 -- Gates gave the idea a lift in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Details came last week as part of Microsoft's anti-spam strategy. Instead of paying a penny, the sender would "buy" postage by devoting maybe 10 seconds of computing time to solving a math puzzle. The exercise would merely serve as proof of the sender's good faith.
Time is money, and spammers would presumably have to buy many more machines to solve enough puzzles. The open-source software Hashcash, available since about 1997, takes a similar approach and has been incorporated into other spam-fighting tools including Camram and Spam Assassin.
Meanwhile, Goodmail Systems Inc. has been in touch with Yahoo! Inc. and other e-mail providers about using cash. Goodmail envisions charging bulk mailers a penny a message to bypass spam filters and avoid being incorrectly tossed as junk. That all sounds good for curbing spam, but what if it kills the e-mail you want as well?
Consider how simple and inexpensive it is today to e-mail a friend, relative, or even a city-hall bureaucrat. It's nice not to have to calculate whether greeting grandma is worth a cent. And what of the communities now tied together through e-mail -- hundreds of cancer survivors sharing tips on coping; dozens of parents coordinating soccer schedules? Those pennies add up.
"It detracts from your ability to speak and to state your opinions to large groups of people," said David Farber, a veteran technologist who runs a mailing list with more than 20,000 subscribers. "It changes the whole complexion of the net."
Goodmail chief executive Richard Gingras said individuals might get to send a limited number for free, while mailing lists and nonprofit organizations might get price breaks.
But at what threshold would e-mail cease to be free? At what point might a mailing list be big or commercial enough to pay full rates? Goodmail has no price list yet, so Gingras couldn't say. Vint Cerf, one of the Internet's founding fathers, said spammers are bound to exploit any free allotments.
"The spammers will probably just keep changing their mailbox names," Cerf said. "I continue to be impressed by the agility of spammers." And who gets the payments? How do you build and pay for a system to track all this? How do you keep such a system from becoming a target for hacking and scams?
The proposals are also largely U.S.-centric, and even with seamless currency conversion, paying even a token amount would be burdensome for the developing world, said John Patrick, former vice president of Internet technology at IBM Corp.
"We have to think of not only, let's say, the relatively well-off half billion people using e-mail today, but the 5 or 6 billion who aren't using it yet but who soon will be," Patrick said.
Some proposals even allow recipients to set their own rates. A college student might accept e-mail with a one-cent stamp; a busy chief executive might demand a dollar.
"In the regular marketplace, when you have something so fast and efficient that everyone wants it, the price goes up," said Sonia Arrison of the Pacific Research Institute, a think tank that favors market-based approaches.
To think the Internet can shatter class distinctions that exist offline is "living in Fantasyland," Arrison said. Nonetheless, it will be tough to persuade people to pay -- in cash or computing time that delays mail -- for something they are used to getting for free.
Critics of postage see more promise in other approaches, including technology to better verify e-mail senders and lawsuits to drive the big spammers out of business.
"Back in the early '90s, there were e-mail systems that charged you 10 cents a message," said John Levine, an anti-spam advocate. "And they are all dead."
But leave that aside. Edward talks about what the model change would mean for the behavior of ordinary e-mail users. But what would it mean for spam? I think it would mean several things, by which I mean, three. Or so.
1) It's always cheaper to buy in bulk. That's true of meatspace postage today. Volume purchasers will get better rates than the rest of us. In other words, e-mail will cost money, but it will cost less for spammers.
2) Edward says people will write longer e-mails and eschew short ones. True. But people will also move quickie traffic to instant message channels like AIM, MSN Messenger and IRC.
3) Spammers will figure out how to bother you through your instant message client.
4) Bill Gates will suggest that "we" should "buy" virtual stamps for instant messages.
5) And so on. Down the line spammers are beaming Cialis come-ons directly into our frontal lobes and Bill Gates is suggesting that "we" should "buy" virtual stamps for our thoughts.
6) At that point the Cialis people aim lower.
Okay, that's sort of more than three. But I thought it would be three.
ed to correct link.
[ edited by Helenjw on Mar 7, 2004 09:20 PM ]
posted on March 8, 2004 04:29:05 AM new
Well, it would be one way for Gates to rid himself of some competition. There are a lot of small businesses out there that rely on newsletter e-mails to reach their customers. Small businesses like mine will be. I couldn't afford to pay to do that. Even at $.01 for each email. It's little more than an attempt to squash the little guy yet again.
I hate spam as much as anyone else, but I understand that for some of these people it's nothing more than a way to get word of their business out. Unlike phone spammers who I literally used to hang up on, if I don't want to read it, I simply delete it. My blocked e-mail list is a mile long and will continue to get longer. I'm just not willing to pay to prevent spam. Using the "delete" key is free. If the Do Not Call Registry cost money, I wouldn't have signed on to it.
What a crock this all is. I already pay for the privilege of sending e-mail in my cable Internet bill each month. I'm not willing to pay twice.
posted on March 8, 2004 06:13:28 AM new
This would be a gift for the spyware/malware companies that foist crap onto computers using security flaws in IE, a Microcrap product.
There are already security measure to foil bots, whey could certainly be used for email. And how about closing some of those open relays? What about a Do Not Spam registry, similar to the Do Not Call Registry?
"Against the advice of all anti-spam organizations, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed the CAN-SPAM Act, a bill backed overwhelmingly by spammers and dubbed the "YOU-CAN-SPAM" Act because it legalizes spamming instead of banning it. Spam King Alan Ralsky told reporters the passage of the House bill "made my day". Spammers say they will now pour money into installations of new spam servers to heavily ramp up their outgoing spam volumes "all legally".
CAN-SPAM is expected to pass the Senate next week and be signed into law by President Bush on January 1, just in time to kill off California's strong anti-spam law which would have come into effect on January 1 making spamming illegal in California. With the passage of CAN-SPAM, spamming will be officially legal throughout the United States, CAN-SPAM says that 23 million U.S. businesses can all begin spamming all U.S. email addresses as long as they give users a way to opt-out, which users can do by following the instructions of each spammer. Anyone with any sense would of course realize that if CAN-SPAM becomes law, opting out of spammers lists will very likely become the main daytime activity for most U.S. email users in 2004. The second main activity will be sorting through mailboxes crammed with 'legal' spam every few minutes to see if there's any email amongst the spam."
posted on March 8, 2004 07:13:03 AM new
Annonymous email is a pain in the ass. Before I discovered Earthlink's spamBlocker, I was spending a lot of time sorting through hundreds of emails several times every day.
Most spammers will work around the fee proposed by Gates and the victims of spammers will be left to pay it.
