From: Keith Moore <moore(_at_)cs(_dot_)utk(_dot_)edu>
Artifically increasing the cost of email will not prevent spam. It will
reduce spam. It will change who uses spam to advertise.
Those two ideas are clearly true.
It will also reduce
the volume of email that we want to receive.
I doubt that's necessary true for all spam targets.
...
If we increase the cost of sending email, we'll find that many of the best
things about email ...
That seems to be based on the false notion the increasing the cost of
any mail must increase the cost of all mail.
I still think the future of spam is what I've been predicting for
years. Recent statements from the Direct Mailers Association seem to
me to be confirmation. I believe that eventually bulk mail will be
taxed like alcohol and tobacco, at a rate of $0.01 to $0.10 per
addressee. The tax will probably not be called a tax, but something
like misleading much like the Gore Tax on telephone serice. It will
be rationalized as "closing the digital divide" and "for the children."
A large part of the money will be spent on bureaucrats to do paper
work and detect and punish scofflaws. The remainder will be sent to
ISPs that agree to participate to support free or reduced price services.
The penalties for failing to pay the tax will be imposed not just on
the spammers like Ralsky and Spamford but on their customers. Recall
that very little spam fails to provide good ways to contact those people,
which means the use of foreign spam service bureaus, open relays, and
so forth will be irrelevant or evidence of intent to evade the tax.
Foreign spammers will be handled with the same mechanisms used to
fight fake Rolex watches and copies of music and movies. Those
mechanisms are not perfect, but they don't need to be.
The taxes will be welcomed by advertisers for two main reasons. The
taxes will limit the amount of spam we get to the volume of junk paper
mail which will defuse the public anger. Second, the current cost of
spam is "too cheap to meter" and so hard to make a business of. A
$0.03/adressee tax would make administrative costs of $0.01/addressee
and margins of $0.01/addressee sound reasonable.
If I'm right about that, then political implications suggest that
body filtering will remain effective. They also suggest that real
opt-out/do-not-mail lists will appear.
Vernon Schryver vjs(_at_)rhyolite(_dot_)com
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