Charge to send email, and stop spam and help the planet.

[barts]

In my view, it's time to charge a small amount to send an email. This is not a new idea, or my idea, it's one that's been raised since the invasion of spam.

See a recent opinion piece in The Prospect, We need and email tax which argues, in part, that:

Some 200bn junk emails are sent daily. More than 40bn come from the US and Canada, and about 6bn from Britain. Estimates vary, but the best guess is that more than 90 per cent of all email is spam. What causes this stupefying supply for which there is no apparent demand? The answer is simple: sending an email is free. ... Spam is used to spread viruses and sell fake or fraudulent goods. Moreover, there is an increasing risk that spam will make legitimate email a form of second-class post.

Over at techdirt, similar views:

...frustrating spammers by disrupting their services and raising costs, as well as trying to hold down responses even more, could diminish the profitability of spam to the point where it's no longer attractive.

And lastly, an ecological rationale for charging for email and purging the Internet of spam: Stop spam and save planet from greenhouse gases

Charging for each email, even less than one cent per message, would quickly make most spam unviable, according to Coroneos, but consumers have shown little willingness to pay for a service they have always considered free.

I am in favor of charging for email. It seems ludicrous to me that email is free, or that a service is the same price for someone who sends one email per month or sends 100 million. A one cent or half cent charge would eliminate most spam, and give legitimate email direct marketing companies a more responsive group to email to.

Is there any practical or rational or legitimate economic reason for not charging to send an email? I don't think so.

[gallo]

So, even if my government taxes me and my friends to use email, what is to prevent someone in Nigeria or India from spamming me?

And, of course, creating a huge government bureaucracy to administer who is allowed to send email and who is not, and to decide what you are allowed to say in your emails is clearly the answer to the problem. Somehow I'll bet that this bureaucracy will "pay for itself."

[barts]

Quote by: gallo So, even if my government taxes me and my friends to use email, what is to prevent someone in Nigeria or India from spamming me? And, of course, creating a huge government bureaucracy to administer who is allowed to send email and who is not, and to decide what you are allowed to say in your emails is clearly the answer to the problem. Somehow I'll bet that this bureaucracy will "pay for itself."

Just like with regular mail, if someone in Nigeria wants to offer you a share of some general's $250 million in stolen gold, they'll have to pay the 1 cent or 1/2 cent fee or their message won't be delivered to our in-box.

There's no question about "who" can send email, just as there are no issues about who can send regular mail. You pay your postage and mail. Also, there's no issue about email content. Where did you get that idea from? It was not, and has never been--suggested in any discussions that I've read about charging people to send email.

The issue is one of making it economically unviable to spam, which is based on "free" email. Even a 1/2 cent charge would make an email phishing scam financially untenable.

A closing thought. Why should the money I pay for my Internet service subsidize spammers? They're free-riding on legitimate Internet users.

[SoylentGreen]

barts The issue is one of making it economically unviable to spam, which is based on "free" email. Even a 1/2 cent charge would make an email phishing scam financially untenable.

There are countries that do nothing now to stop internet spammers, fraudsters and other con men. Theses countries are not likely to want to charge people for sending spam.
Now i know america has a habit of just sending it's army into countries it doesn't like and that is what it will have to do if they want to charge for the sending of spam.

Far more easier to charge the person who is recieving the spam, at least that part happens within the country, where as sending spam can happen from anywhere.

I think the wrong person will end up geting to pay the bill.

[Praxius]

I don't agree with charging people for sending emails, mainly because most email service providers exist simply because they are free.

Charging people to send emails won't solve the problem.... it may reduce it, but it's only going to harm those who use the service as it is meant to be used.

Secondly, where would my money be going? Who gets my taxed money from my emails? What services or programs would they be helping out?

Thirdly..... download a spam blocker or use the spam blocker in your email..... or simply don't open emails from people you don't know.... problem solved and nobody needs to be charged a cent.

It doesn't seem practical and runs along the lines of charging someone per web page they visit.

All this will do is increase the pirate community and third party web service providers who loophole the system.... or new programs will be created that block your computer from sending information that you visited any web page or sent any email..... thus avoid being charged for anything.

And if charging people more then what they're already being charged by their ISP's, I'd promote and help those with these programs to fight this sort of crap.

Spam is a mere inconvenience at best which can already be blocked/controlled..... I see no justification for taxing people.

If people open these things up and get a virus, or spyware, or they send their credit card info to someone they shouldn't.... that's not my problem and that's their own idocy in which they'll simply have to learn from.

When I first came onto the internet with my super powerful 33.6k dial-up modem, I had to learn the hard way.

[barts]

Quote by: SoylentGreen There are countries that do nothing now to stop internet spammers, fraudsters and other con men. Theses countries are not likely to want to charge people for sending spam. Now i know america has a habit of just sending it's army into countries it doesn't like and that is what it will have to do if they want to charge for the sending of spam. Far more easier to charge the person who is recieving the spam, at least that part happens within the country, where as sending spam can happen from anywhere. I think the wrong person will end up geting to pay the bill.

Just like regular mail, if an emailer hasn't paid the "postage" the mail is not delivered. Any country could set up a regime whereby mail that arrives at any local ISP without payment being made is bounced. If a Nigerian sends you letter with no stamps, the US Postal Service doesn't deliver it.

The fact that all email addresses are a matter of record on various national servers (it's what makes the Internet work), adding an extra "postage paid" designation on the header would be pretty straightforward.

As for charging the receiver of spam, the old CompuServe service tried that. They charged 50 cents for every message received. As most messages were spam, and it wasn't possible to ascertain that without opening the message, it became ridiculous paying for something unsolicited and unwanted. I cancelled my CompuServe service. Those were early Internet days so messages where few.

For all practical purposes, the United States controls the Internet. It could unilaterally decide to charge for email. What it would do with money is a question.

Statistics, extrapolations and counting by Radicati Group from August 2008 estimate the number of emails sent per day (in 2008) to be around 210 billion. 183 billion messages per day means more than 2 million emails are sent every second. About 70% to 72% of them might be spam and viruses. The genuine emails are sent by around 1.3 billion email users. [Source]

Let's assume charging 1/2 cent gets rid of most the spammers and reduces some email. It's fair to assume, then, that every day about 63 billion emails would be sent. At 1/2 cent each, that's $315 million per day in charges or about $115 billion per year. (Someone might want to check my math.)

Let's put the $115 billion each year into global Internet infrastructure improvements so that everyone has superfast service into the home. See Coming soon: superfast internet.

If paying 1/2 cent to send an email gets rid of spammers and gives me an Internet connection 10,000 times faster than the one I have now, let me pay the 1/2 cent.

[barts]

Quote by: Praxius Spam is a mere inconvenience at best which can already be blocked/controlled..... I see no justification for taxing people.

Spam is far more than "a mere inconvenience". See Bouncebacks: The Hidden Cost of Spam, High Cost Effects of Spam on Business, The Economics of Spam, and The True Cost of Spam.

As for taxing people, what I'm suggesting is that people pay for a service, just as they pay for a phone call, a text message, a fax, or a letter. That's not a tax; it's a fee for service. I'm not sure where you got the tax notion.

Why should I, for example, subsidize you or spammers sending emails? Why should I subsidize people who send billions of emails? As for regular business and regular people (not spammers) a small charge would not be onerous for most people or businesses. A 1/2 cent charge for me, for example, would cost about 10 cents per day. I spend 50 to 100 times that every day on my landline and my cell phone. My ISP could discount my bill by that much and it would be a wash. But by charging a small amount to send email most spammers would find their costs would rise substantially and the worst of the appeals and cons would be no longer viable.

As for how to spend the money, I've already posted one suggestion, perhaps you have some.

You seem to be suggesting that a 1/2 cent charge to send an email would have dire consequences. That seems unsupportable, considering all other forms of communications are associated with much higher charges. But perhaps you can offer something other than an opinion to support that assertion.

Would a small charge to send an email help solve the spammer problem, the consensus is that it will. But again, you may have something other than a personal opinion to suggest otherwise.

[viper]

Spam is hardly an issue. You know that bulk folder? You know that EMPTY button? Problem solved. With the way governments spend money, they deserve know more of it. They can't be trusted with it, like a child that can't control himself.

[Muckraker]

I don't see how implementing this type of charge would hurt spammers. Nobody has been able to stop hackers from distributing copyrighted material and cracking every single application and game in existence. How are we going to stop something like emails without "postage?"

Here is an interesting solution:
FOXNews.com - Yahoo, AOL to Charge E-Mail Senders Postage - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News

Two of the world's biggest e-mail account providers, Yahoo Inc. and America Online, plan to introduce a service that would charge senders a fee to route their e-mail directly to a user's mailbox without first passing through junk mail filters, representatives of both companies said Sunday. The fees, which would range from 1/4 cent to 1 cent per e-mail, are the latest attempts by the companies to weed out unsolicited ads, commonly called spam, and identity-theft scams.

So you can send as many emails as you want but if you want to be sure they get to AOL and Yahoo users you have to pay a premium.

[grandpa]

Quote by: Muckraker I don't see how implementing this type of charge would hurt spammers. Nobody has been able to stop hackers from distributing copyrighted material and cracking every single application and game in existence.

It might punish those spammers a little, but it will also punish everyone else.

Grandpa h.

[Orangutan]

I would welcome the idea apart from the inherent problems it raises.

1. "!/2 cent" would almost immediately raise, because someone, somewhere, would be getting that money, meaning they would have direct incentive to increase it. History shows time and again that promises to not increase new taxes are fake. They increase.

2. In order to send payment online, you'd need some form of ID. To me this stinks of a backdoor into forcing you to give your ID before sending. I LIKE the fact that I can be anon by email - then again the main reason is to avoid personalised spam..

3. As someone pointed out, the US government already sucks up far too much money. Give them any more and they'd just start another war and piddle on their own constitution even more.

Regarding the idea of hackers bypassing it, that would not be a major problem, depending where exactly the gateway was placed. Certainly not on the user's computer but yes, it could work if implemented at a higher level.

The really stupid thing about spam is there are not that many spammers. Quite a lot of small fry but the bulk comes from a relatively small number of people.

I think, without giving it too much thought, that what I'd prefer would be a system whereby you could charge someone who sent you an email.

You wouldn't do it to friends or your workplace, you'd soon get blacklisted if you did it to regular business but users themselves would be the ideal "filter".

You get some spammy email and get the satisfaction of charging the ^$#.

Works for me...



O.

[barts]

Quote by: viper Spam is hardly an issue. You know that bulk folder? You know that EMPTY button? Problem solved. With the way governments spend money, they deserve know more of it. They can't be trusted with it, like a child that can't control himself.

If you look at previous links I posted, or even Google "spam" with some search terms like "economics" "impact" or "cost", you'll find that your view is without merit. Spam is very real economic problem.

[barts]

Quote by: grandpa It might punish those spammers a little, but it will also punish everyone else. Grandpa h.

Do you consider that you have to pay for telephone calls, text messages, faxes, cell phone calls, regular mail, etc. as "punishment"? Why is email free in the first instance? And clearly a 1/2 cent charge for email is hardly punishment. It would remain, by far, the cheapest media of communications available.

[barts]

Quote by: Muckraker I don't see how implementing this type of charge would hurt spammers. Nobody has been able to stop hackers from distributing copyrighted material and cracking every single application and game in existence. How are we going to stop something like emails without "postage?" Here is an interesting solution: FOXNews.com - Yahoo, AOL to Charge E-Mail Senders Postage - Science News | Science & Technology | Technology News So you can send as many emails as you want but if you want to be sure they get to AOL and Yahoo users you have to pay a premium.

This sounds like a very good test of the concept of charging for messages in order to control spam.

[Praxius]

While I'll address your links later, I'll address this for now:

Quote by: barts As for taxing people, what I'm suggesting is that people pay for a service, just as they pay for a phone call, a text message, a fax, or a letter. That's not a tax; it's a fee for service. I'm not sure where you got the tax notion

Tax, Charge, it's all the same... someone taking money from us and it's very rare that charges or taxes ever reduce, let alone remain the same.... they almost always increase over time due to one excuse or another.

If the emailing companies wanted to charge us, they are already free to do so.

Why should I, for example, subsidize you or spammers sending emails? Why should I subsidize people who send billions of emails?

As an example, you are not subsidizing anybody anymore then anybody else.

You're not the Email King are you?

As for regular business and regular people (not spammers) a small charge would not be onerous for most people or businesses. A 1/2 cent charge for me, for example, would cost about 10 cents per day. I spend 50 to 100 times that every day on my landline and my cell phone. My ISP could discount my bill by that much and it would be a wash. But by charging a small amount to send email most spammers would find their costs would rise substantially and the worst of the appeals and cons would be no longer viable. As for how to spend the money, I've already posted one suggestion, perhaps you have some.

Indeed... putting the money back into my pocket. Why should people who use emails respectively have to be charged one penny or even half a penny for a service that is already free?

Regular snail mail has fees for stamps and such because of the resources required to send that mail.... planes, vehicles, trains, boats, people, fuel, etc...... it is logical that one would need to charge for that service.

Because people are already being charged through their Internet Service Provider to gain access to the internet, they are already paying enough in my opinion.

You seem to be suggesting that a 1/2 cent charge to send an email would have dire consequences. That seems unsupportable, considering all other forms of communications are associated with much higher charges. But perhaps you can offer something other than an opinion to support that assertion.

Higher charges indeed, which is why I don't own a cell phone and unwilling to subject myself to some dumb 3 year contract and other restrictions.

Dire consequences include people starting to get the smart idea of charging for other aspects of the internet that are currently free.

We already pay service providers and some of us already pay for certain pay sites. Start charging people to send emails, esspecially businesses, and expect people demand the cost be covered and compensated through increase pays, or prices increased in products, etc.

Solve one problem, create several others.

Would a small charge to send an email help solve the spammer problem, the consensus is that it will. But again, you may have something other than a personal opinion to suggest otherwise.

This wouldn't remove the problem of spammers, as already stated by other members here, this wouldn't affect people in other countries and spam would still continue, while everybody else is charged.

As an example, in regular snail mail, there are plenty of companies who although still are charged for mailing flyers and ad garbage, yet it still gets mailed out and sits in my mail box for when I get home.

While I do admire the concepts' desired end result, at present, it doesn't seem very practical and your end results won't be as successful as you may expect.

And I'd hate to pull out the Global Economic Downturn card..... but I think more people are concerned over saving money, then dealing with spam, at present anyways.

And like I said, I'll get to your links next chance I get.

[grandpa]

Quote by: barts Do you consider that you have to pay for telephone calls, text messages, faxes, cell phone calls, regular mail, etc. as "punishment"?

Yes, I do, at least when its opposed to free services.

Grandpa h.

[grandpa]

Quote by: Praxius While I'll address your links later, I'll address this for now: Tax, Charge, it's all the same... someone taking money from us and it's very rare that charges or taxes ever reduce, let alone remain the same....

It's bullsh*t, and you know it. It really brings us to the fundamental question of money, and how it has never been an absolute necessity. Hypothetically speaking, what if I could charge all of you for taking the time to read all this? It'd be rude, unnecessary and stupid of me to even suggest such a thing, right? Well, there you go.

Grandpa h.

[Praxius]

Quote by: grandpa It's bullsh*t, and you know it.....

Indeed, but I figured I'd try and keep an open mind in case I missed anything.

[barts]

Quote by: grandpa Yes, I do, at least when its opposed to free services. Grandpa h.

Do you provide your labor or services for free to all who demand or want it?

[barts]

Quote by: Praxius While I'll address your links later, I'll address this for now: Tax, Charge, it's all the same... And I'd hate to pull out the Global Economic Downturn card..... but I think more people are concerned over saving money, then dealing with spam, at present anyways. And like I said, I'll get to your links next chance I get.

I'm having difficulty reconciling your views with all of the goods and services that we either pay for or offer for sale. For some reason a modest even infinitesimal charge for email galls you. Yet you pay for other goods and services. Do you not? What's so special about email? Or is the issue that you're just used to free email, and the change is anathema.

Would you support the notion, as an alternative, of reducing your ISP costs by a small percentage and then charging you for emails such that your montly bill was the same? Unless of course you were a spammer.

For example, let's assume you send 30 emails per day. At the rate of 1/2 cent per email that would be 15 cents a day or a about $4.50 per month. Would you accept the notion of your ISP lowering your price by say $5.00 per month and charging you 1/2 cent for emails. Your monthly cost would be the same, as would the revenue to your ISP. But such a charge, most experts agree, would greatly diminish spam.

I'm looking forward to your comments on the links I posted. Might I ask that you support your comments, as I have done, with something other than mere uninformed opinion?

As for the "Global Economic Downturn" canard, you can't seriously be suggesting that a 1/2 cent email charge will have dire economic consequences. Then, again, perhaps you are. In your view, are people and businesses who can afford Internet access so impovershed that a 1/2 cent email charge would be an intolerable burden? Can you give us something other than a naked comment to justify such a concern? Given what I, my colleagues, and clients--and even my friends and family--spend on communications, we wouldn't notice the charge.

Lastly, in your post you reference yourself frequently. Are suggesting that your use of email and communciations systems is the model we should all follow? Maybe you don't have use for a cell phone, but I do as do all of my colleagues and clients. Not knowing any of our business needs, do you maintain that we should not use this technology or enter into contracts to use it. That seems to be what you're implying. But, I'm willing to be corrected.