Date: Mon, 08 Jul 2002 17:41:12 -0400
From: Steve Smith <sgs at aginc.net>
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Spam Suggestion
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

Barry Newton wrote:
>
> Keith (and others):  There's a letter in today's Post suggesting a novel
> approach to placing a fee on spam. . .looks at first read like it could
> even be workable, at least in some universe.

Basically, the suggestion is that everybody has an e-mail box with the
US Post Office, and spam can only be sent to that address.  USPO would
charge a small fee for messages to that mailbox (presumably sender
pays), and spam anywhere else would be illegal.

In order to work, you'd have to force certain e-mail to go to the USPO
mailbox -- would you even look at a mailbox that was guaranteed to be
nothing but spam?  A worst-case scenario would be to force the use of
the "official" mailbox for bills and official correspondence, so you'd
have to dig through the spam to get to your electric bill, or whatever.

(Once Upon A Time, I had a credit card from Montgomery Ward.  I canceled
it after getting hit with too many late payment fees -- Wards sent out
advertising that looked *exactly* like their bills.  Every time I got
something from Wards, I had to dig through the ads to see if a bill was
hiding in there somewhere.)

Problem is, spam isn't about businesses advertising their products.
It's about spammers selling their services to naive businesses.

--
Steve Smith                                           sgs at aginc.net
Agincourt Computing                            http://www.aginc.net
Go to http://www.spam.com/ and listen to the SPAM song!