Gates: Buy stamps to send e-mail

[Gwarsbane]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/03/0...e.ap/index.html

Paying for e-mail seen as anti-spam tactic
Friday, March 5, 2004 Posted: 11:25 AM EST (1625 GMT)


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."

[Miagi]

Thats it.... DOWN WITH GATES!:bgf:Again... I'm guessing this is Gates' way of saying he can't stop spam so let's charge all! (Except Gates cause he thought of this.)

Can anyone else remember the U.S. Government wanting to do this before because more people were using e-mail than the postoffice.

DOesn't amtter if they charge e-mail because like always, people will find a way around it.

[jabbahunt]

We are being charged for our email, its called the service fee we pay our isp. It is the fee we pay to communicate with eachother, wether it be via email, im's, or forums. The post office charges us per item for delivering our communication, but you can get bulk rates. Same as an isp will up someone's bill if they use to much bandwitdth. So if you don't think you pay for email now, think again.

[Wanksta]

:spam::bspam:



I DONT CARE ABOUT JUNK MAIL CUZ SOME OF IT IS...never mind. I agree with Miagi...DOWN WITH GATES ! ! ! Maybe if he would give the money to CHARITY then people wouldnt care as much. EAT THAT MR. CORPORATE MONOPOLY ! ! !:bgf:

[[CAKE]anonymity]

I'm with jabba we pay the ISP. The postal analogy is flawed because we dont pay a stead monthly rate for it, unlike internet. If ISP's want to bring in a monthly rate per the amount of bandwidth you use, so be it.

[kermit]

umm...bill gates does give a lot of money to charity. i just disagree with paying for anything internet related (at least for me). i think paying a monthly charge per month is bad...someone should find a way around it. what exactly do we pay for with our monthly fees? we connect with a server which conects us with the server we wanted? why can't we just connect with the server we wanted in the first place?

[jabbahunt]

Someone has to put the cable in the ground, which the isp rents from ma bell or comcast or whatever. also these servers are able to handle more traffic than you and I.
Btw you still pay for minutes on your cell phone?

[Annatar]

quite frankly, spam is the price you pay for the pure quality of the system as it is now.... how hard is it to press a delete button??

im all up for hanging, drawing and quatering anyone considering changing that.

[Gwarsbane]

Spam wouldn't be so bad if it followed a few rules...

Didn't try to autoinstall crap onto your system without asking you. (not all but some spam does this)

Didn't try to automatically change your homepage to some place you don't want without asking you. (not all but some spam does this)

Didn't include viruses to infect your computer (not all but some spam does this)

Didn't have subject titles like (Problem with the forums, Check it out a friend sent this to me, and other stuff like that) (not all but most spam does this)

Didn't add you to an active e-mail list when you click on unsubscribe (not all but a good number of spam does this)

Didn't have fake info put into header info that can be changed hourly if needed to get around spam filters. (not all but most spam does this)

[Annatar]

ok you have a point.

but then i have very good antivirus/hacks protection.

plus i have a spare email address which i use to sign up for things, thus deflecting most (but not all) of the spam.

and i find some of them amusing, that african bank one for instance, and the ones telling me that i too can get a college degree from yale.

should this be in debates??

[RushJet1]

I also have a fake account, which is [email protected] instead of [email protected];)

Go figure... Anyway, we are paying our ISP and in most cases we have payed for the PC we are using as well- it's impossible to say things like E-mail are free. Nothing is free, someone had to pay for something somewhere... with Yahoo and other services you will always have ads on the site (hotmail too), why doesn't anyone complain about them? Also if you get a private email address then your ISP is paying for it, like my dad. Fortunately he doesn't know anything about FTP and websites so I get the 10mb webspace:D

[[CAKE]anonymity]

People complain a lot about spam with hotmail accounts and i did get a lot of it at first, but then I installed spybot and havent had a problem with it, plus adware which I just installed a little while ago, I havent gotten a spam email in a long time.

Edit: Your the man gwar :thumb:

[Guest]

To be honest, I knew about this idea weeks ago... strange how the press slowly catch on to an idea. Personally, I think it's a good idea. If there's some form of cost involved in preventing someone from doing so then those who wish to abuse it will do so less.

[Wha?]

It's a stupid idea. It fixes the wrong problem entirely.

Making unsolicited advertisement emails should be illegal, if not for the nuisance factor, then for the security risk. People would be able to foward the email to their countries net security organization (something that should exist currently) and they can take it from there. Spam exists because it's a very conveniant way to advertise. This would mean spammers would have to bypass a lot to get the mail to people without being caught, which would cut down on the amount, thereby making it easier to delete the remainder. Adding cost does subtract from that convenience, but the problem is being avoided by making everybodies life harder, instead of being taken care of.