E-mail Postage?

ordos45 · March 5, 2004

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/03/05/spam.charge.ap/index.html Yes, the greediest...I mean...that wonderful CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates now wants to make you buy stamps to send e-mail.

Vanguard3000 · March 5, 2004

I think that's a bit excessive. Am I the only one who isn't really bothered by SPAM? It's not really that difficult to just delete.

Andrew · March 5, 2004

Actually I dont think it costs money to send an email to your friends (or people on your contact lists).

It just costs money to send spam.

Dude_Doc · March 5, 2004

Am I the only one who isn't really bothered by SPAM?

No, I'm with you here. It never occurred to me until the newspapers wrote about it, something about how the spam increases today and all that. Then all of a sudden, spam became a big problem. I find this very strange...

So, I'm not surprised there are so many paranoid people out there. The corporations send out spam a'la mass

Mahdi · March 5, 2004

Canada Post has been trying for years to force people to pay them a fee for every e-mail sent.

Acriku · March 5, 2004

This will ruin e-mail forever, but hooray for IMs!

Timenn · March 5, 2004

Don't you know Gob is already updating his accounts, and soon he'll send everyone a bill for all the IM's sent.

Kiyouta · March 5, 2004

It'll never work. Hackers/Spammers will just force e-mails through...

Acriku · March 5, 2004

There will also be programs out there made by people who disagree with e-stamps, after all e-mail is just data set up to look like a piece of mail.

Egeides · March 5, 2004

I wonder... wouldn't simply mean that all those who are honnest would pay a stamp and... the other would hack the whole thing? ::)

Timenn · March 5, 2004

I agree with Acriku. How could you possibly see what is email and what is not. For once I believe Microsoft is really trying to stop spam, but then on the other, this idea sucks because it has flaws on so many sides...

Spam can be prevented quite easily:

- Every spammer wants to advertise something, so you'll always know who sent the mail indirectly

- Forbid spamming. Every organisation must be able prove that it has a signed agreement by the receiver of an advertising mail, when they are sending such mail to that person.

Dude_Doc · March 6, 2004

But, I am afraid that more and more services, in the future, will have a sort of fee added to them. I mean, MSN, ICQ etc, they can really get some money for it. After all, it is they who created the whole thing...

thomas · March 6, 2004

Why are you complaning? you don't buy anything, you just solve a 10 second math problem, did you guys even read the article?

ordos45 · March 6, 2004

Why are you complaning? you don't buy anything, you just solve a 10 second math problem, did you guys even read the article?

That's just one of the solutions offered. Still, it's the whole idea of being forced to pay/solve that goes against the democratization of the internet.

Digital Guerrilla · March 8, 2004

No, you do not have to pay anything Scytale but who wants to spend 13 minutes trying to send a 3 minute e-mail message. One of the reasons e-mail is so popular is because you can talk to people in a small time frame. Really solving puzzles is not a problem but I do not want to play a game before I send my e-mail. most of the Spammers are coming from e-amil systems that do not care if they are spamming. Why not just punish them and not the rest of the internet community (average internet users)?

Dude_Doc · March 10, 2004

Why not just punish them and not the rest of the internet community (average internet users)?

Yes, you are right. The point is, how do you punish a spammer? Is it worth wasting time to find this person? And so on. It's like a parallell to terrorism. Instead of actually finding and punishing them, they create surelliance systems and tappings for the general public.

I find it strange that they just don't create a form of system that doesn't permit you to send one e-mail every second, but instead, you have to send every 5 minutes. This also takes time, but it's always something...

Anathema · March 10, 2004

Christ what a stupid idea. If you want a solution then why not just ban spam mail? I think the EU was going to do something like that.

nemafakei · March 10, 2004

The EU has already set in place legislation by which it is illegal to send such unsolicited correspondence.

Kiyouta · March 10, 2004

The problem is that the e-mails DO NOT COME from Europe. They come from Russia and such places.

nemafakei · March 10, 2004

Granted. But one step at a time. We've shown our willing, it's up to others to join the moral path.

Edric O · March 14, 2004

Whoever said Bill Gates wasn't evil, now would be a good time to eat your words... ;D

But seriously speaking, the idea of email postage is not only despotic and horrendous (it would effectively ban a huge chunk of the world's population from using email, as well as making it much harder for everyone else), but it's also utterly stupid as a measure against spam. It's a case of curing the disease by killing the patient.

The idea of solving a math puzzle may be somewhat acceptable, but the idea of paying money for each email you send goes above and beyond even the usual Microsoft way of squeezing as much money as possible out of their customers.

Digital Guerrilla · March 15, 2004

Screw doing puzzles why not just have companies take further measures to not have spam coming from their systems. If they allow spam charge them more to do business stop punishment of the regular consumers the internet use to be fun it's the @$$holes that are the ones to blame not the average consumer.

Dude_Doc · March 15, 2004

I've been given the impression that more and more technological things is becoming more simple.

For example, they don't want people to learn complicated stuff, because when you do that, you learn how to find ways around the system they want us to live in.

They don't learn HTML in school anymore, they learn us to use HTML Express or whatever it was called. On the other side, it is more useful, and can do much more without having a person sit and figure it all out ;) ...

filecore · March 15, 2004

They don't learn HTML in school anymore, they learn us to use HTML Express or whatever it was called. On the other side, it is more useful, and can do much more without having a person sit and figure it all out ;) ...

That's actually very sad. I run a few websites myself (lazy and old-fashioned... I hand coded them) and I'm always horrified when people come to me so impressed with something they created in FrontPage. They have no idea what they have created; they basically made a pretty Word document and saved it as HTML. As for code, they have no idea of what they're doing (and have you ever looked at the code of a FrontPage/Word HTML document? Bloated, bloated, bloated)... and it's not just coding or programming HTML, it's in lots of other areas - people are no longer learning how to DO something or how it works, they're learning to use the program or machine which makes it happen, without learning (or caring) about what's underneath.

Anyway back to the topic: silly. What else can I say? They already charge for website bandwidth (visitors) commercially, but as far as I know I can send data by FTP, HTTP, or one of a hundred other methods. If they commercialised email, all they're doing is commercialising another form of data transfer. Aside from those who'd find ways round it, they would have to charge extra on all these other systems too. The internet is more than just HTTP and email...

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