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Spam The Internet Your Rights Online

Bulk Email Tax Getting Closer 39

Posted by timothy from the may-you-get-what-you-want dept.
Strudelkugel writes "The Financial Times reports a growing interest in the concept of bulk email fees: Direct Marketing Association and libertarians oppose, ISPs and companies losing marketing messages to spam filters in favor. Then there's the rest of us."
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Bulk Email Tax Getting Closer More

Bulk Email Tax Getting Closer

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  • Not for the same reasons (Score:3, Funny)

    by Mr. Piddle ( 567882 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:21PM (#8300100)
    "Direct Marketing Association and libertarians oppose"

    DMA: we're scared.
    Libertarians: the DMA will be dead, soon, anyway, so why get the government involved.
    • Problem with Libertarians is that you can't predict what they will oppose. I don't know of any Libertarians that specifically oppose this. Sure, we may dislike taxation in general, but this tax is not being done to expand government but rather to remove a parasitic business practice (remembering that we are paying for -our- email reception just like anyone else).

      Naturally another Libertarian might see this and disagree with me, but that only means they disagree with the SPAM tax, not that -all- of us do.
      • Sure, we may dislike taxation in general, but this tax is not being done to expand government but rather to remove a parasitic business practice

        What stikes me about the proposed tax is that it is so inequitable. Taxes should be simply for funding government; using them to regulate markets is sinful, IMO.

        • Agreed, which is why I recommended it be a fine, but that also implies (which I should have expounded on so that my original post directly stated the fact instead of allowing assumptions) that I think SPAM is the equivalent of theft, be it on a very small yet pervasive scale, and therefore SPAMming should be considered a crime and not a "market".

          While I disapprove of taxes regulating markets, I definitely support fines regulating petty crime and I do consider SPAM a crime which has a very definite 2nd part

  • Stupid idea. It would be the death of email (Score:5, Insightful)

    by computersareevil ( 244846 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:28PM (#8300175)
    This would be capitally stupid. Just like CAN-SPAM, it would legitimize spam! Once the spamming scumbags PAY for it, your ISP would not be allowed to block it!

    So all those thousands of messages that are blocked now at the ISP level and higher would flow down to your poor little inbox. Suddenly your inbox is 99.6% spam, and most of your bandwidth is dedicated to downloading it. That would be the end of email.

    • Just because a company pays a spam tax doesn't mean they can force you to download it and read it, it just means they're paying a fee for the privlidge of sending it. Comparing it to normal junk snail mail, advertisers still pay to send that to you, but there's nothing stopping you from hiring a guy to sort your mail for you and throw out all the junk mail before giving it to you. It's the same deal here, you're just hiring your ISP to deliver the extra service of sorting your E-Mail before delivering it
    • I agree. Charge to either receive or send e-mail by the piece, and I'll start using something else. If my ISP forces me to have an Inbox, nothing says I have to empty it. If they ask about it, give them the reason. It's all junk. To reach me, my fax number is ... After dialing, use this PIN to connect to the machine.

    • This would be capitally stupid. Just like CAN-SPAM, it would legitimize spam! Once the spamming scumbags PAY for it, your ISP would not be allowed to block it!

      Yes, it would be legitimized. But if every e-mail to you cost a penny, do you really think a spammer who gets a few thousand dollar return on a 1 million recipient spam message will find it economical to continue? After all, a 1 million recpient message would cost $10,000 to send. That would eat most, if not all, of the profit.

      But now we're seein

  • Once Companies See They Can Charge for EMail... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheWanderingHermit ( 513872 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:32PM (#8300206)
    ...we're all in trouble. Once AOL realizes they can charge even so much as a penny for spam, it won't be long before some executive, eager to show a profit for his department at a shareholder's meeting will realize he can start charging for incoming or outgoing e-mail.

    Then Earthlink, MSN, and everyone else will realize they can do the same thing and within a year or two e-mail won't be free anymore -- at least if you're sending to the big guys.

    Then again, once that gets to be common practice, someone will probably realize they can gain customers by advertising as the one major ISP that doesn't charge for e-mail, so maybe there'll be a balance.

    But I don't trust the big guys to charge for spam only and realize they could charge for other e-mail and NOT charge everyone else. Remember, in America, profit is the bottom line and just about all most businesses care about.

  • This assuredly isn't for OUR good (Score:3, Interesting)

    by orthogonal ( 588627 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:33PM (#8300215) Journal
    The Financial Times reports a growing interest in the concept of bulk email fees:

    Given that most of our problems with spam involve open relays and off-shore spam hauses, how exactly do they plan to force anyone to pay a fee?

    What will happen is that outlaws will continue to send spam as they do now, and only legitimate users will be assessed a fee.

    Meanwhile, the impetus behind this comes from (emphasis mine)
    corporations that have adopted online marketing [which] are concerned that up to 20 per cent of their e-mails are not getting past spam filters.
    News flash to corporations that have adopted online marketing: I consider your email to be to be spam as much as email from anyone using an open relay. It's not that the email contains porn, or 419 come-ons, or a "great opportunity" to do business with eMarketeer -- it's the fact that it's in my inbox, not what it contains, that steals my time and inflames my temper.

    So there may be a "growing interest", but it's not on the part of actual end-users. This is purely a fight between unscrupulous, time stealing marketeers without Boards of Directors -- that is, traditional spammers -- and unscrupulous, time stealing marketeers with Boards of Directors -- that is, companies in the Direct Marketing association.

    The idea that you're magically morally clean if you're a cheating MBAstard with offices in the "good" part of town doesn't wash anymore.
    • The idea that you're magically morally clean if you're a cheating MBAstard with offices in the "good" part of town doesn't wash anymore.

      That's the most beautiful thing I've heard all day. Where do I sign up for your daily newsletter.

    • I'm not sure what you have against MBA's but you really need some anger management. Maybe try changing your email address, setup one for signups (where you must sign up to login) and one for junk mail. I get 1 in 1000 as a spam from my primary email account, 90% of my signup account is spam and almost 100% (by definition) of my junk account is spam. I use yahoo for the junk accounts and my company address for my personal account (btw I own the company so I doubt I'll get fired for using it for personal busi

      • Re:Lol (Score:2, Insightful)

        by DavidTC ( 10147 )
        Likewise, I don't understand why people get upset when vandals come along and break their car windows.

        They could rather easily just have two cars, one with windows and one without, and use the one without when not parking in a secure garage.

    • I agree that I don't want direct market email. I do however want a lot of marketing bulk mail. I've signed up for several lists that could be considered marketing in your terms. The GOA's email alerts are a favorite of mine. And some products which I use have email lists that I sign up for so I know when there is an update.

  • Procmail (Score:3, Interesting)

    by linuxkrn ( 635044 ) <gwatson@lRASPinuxlogin.com minus berry> on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:51PM (#8300383)
    Just goes to show you, the best things are free.

    Procmail and a good set of rules does wonders. I have a rather strict set myself. It gets around 99% of spam, and about 5% of legit mail. I'm willing to live with that considering it deletes THOUSANDS of spam messages. And yes I know since the setup I have does the following:

    1) Check the email for "flags" and mark add to the header X-Header: Spam-RC [Rule name it matched on]

    2) Count the number of flags in header >= 3 remove from inbox and add to gzipped file.

    3) End of every day report list of messages deleted (From and Subject Only)

    4) Delete all gzip archives older then two weeks. That way I can go back and get a valid message.

    This doesn't work for everyone, but I'm very happy with it. In addition, even if you don't host your own email, you can use fetchmail + procmail no matter what your ISP does.

  • Next up: Outlawing Spam Filters? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by qtp ( 461286 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @09:52PM (#8300392) Journal
    If the ISPs begin charging for email, and the system is put in place by federal law, it is likely that there will be a ban on spam filters at the ISP level, at least for spam that is in compliance with the regs.

    I do not want to see spam legitimized by law. I enjoy the effective spam filtering my email provider has implemented. Actually, they are not likely to be affected by this because they are not in the US, but do not think there is any reason that US based email providers should be prevented from filtering spam, and I do not trust the DMA or other Corps to come up with a definition of spam the I or other users would agree with.

    The largest ISPs are being insincere about the spam issue, and are attempting to ensure that their spam spewing customers are protected while they can enjoy increased revenues by helping the spammers to stuff our inboxes.

    They (MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Earthlink, Comcast, etc) do not want to stop spam, they only wish to get rich off of it.

  • The guy in the middle. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 16, 2004 @10:17PM (#8300583)
    But advocates of a fee-based system for bulk e-mail believe it would help distinguish between legitimate e-mail from respectable corporations and offensive spam from shady operators who presumably could not afford to send tens of millions of messages a day.

    Okay, but what about the guys who are NOT corporations and are NOT shady operators? What about guys like me who run small to medium internet sites with less than 100,000 registered members on which their entire SERVICE is based on communication through email? (Registration notifications, password reminders, auction notices, etc)?

    This is going to drive spammers under ground even further (or out of the company) and put the big corporations in the power-seat. And it's going to leave the honest guy trying to make a living (or run his hobby) who does no harm to anyone, right out of "business".

    This is a worse idea than the Tarriff-22/CARP thing they tried in 2002/2003, where they wanted to tax EVERYONE who broadcasts music in any form, per listener, whether or not the person had direct permission of the artist and whether or not the artist had anythign to do with the music associations - and then distribute that tax to the top few dozen artists.

    In other words, if Mr. McSmallBand records a CD for free and gives it to you with permission to play it on your online radio station, you have to pay a fee for every person who listens to that song to the government association and that association redstributes it to the top RIAA recording artists, even though they have NOTHING to do with it and the artist that you played isn't even a member of them or signed by anyone.

    This is EXACTLY the same and JUST as bad, if not worse. This WILL DRIVE ME OUT OF MY HOBBY... And I have never harmed ANYONE and I DO NOT SPAM ANYONE. This is fucked up and I'm seriously pissed off.
    • This is a worse idea than the Tarriff-22/CARP thing they tried in 2002/2003, where they wanted to tax EVERYONE who broadcasts music in any form, per listener, whether or not the person had direct permission of the artist and whether or not the artist had anythign to do with the music associations - and then distribute that tax to the top few dozen artists.

      Taxes are the market-killer.
    • Dude.... even with 100,000 users you won't be sending out more than 1000 emails a day unless you are sending out emails for things which could be done more effectively on your website. Even if you have a newsletter that goes out to everyone... you could offset it by 7 days a week so that you'd only be sending out 14,300 a day...

      Is a newsletter worth it if they do tax you? Your users wouldn't mind going to your website to see the same info... if not, they'd be willing to pay $1 a month for a newletter subs
  • How many people are outraged by spam and telemarketers, but wouldn't bat an eyelash to getting junk mail? There's an obvious difference, the cost of sending is placed upon the advertiser, rather than the recipient when it comes to US postal, it's also far less intrusive.

    Let's face it though, if it's not bills, what else comes in your snail mail inbox? More and more people are using email to replace snail mail, even during the Iraq conflict, email and phone were used to convey messages to friends and fami
    • I for one am much more annoyed with junk mail than spam. Of course I seem to hardly get any spam or virus mail either.
      Spam is a lot easier to separate out than junk mail which is always disguised as a credit card statement or bill.
      Spam never gives you paper cuts.
      Spam is often more amusing.
      On the other hand, junk mail never sets off autoresponder loops.
  • Then there's the rest of us.

    That says it all.
  • Seems to me that every anti-spam scheme suffers from one basic problem, that spammers increasingly rely on hijacked broadband computers to spew their bile. The "legitimate" spammers, those who actually use their own computers and net connection, will have to pay, those who use hijacked computers won't, and ordinary people who have no idea their computer has been hijacked, and have no idea how to prevent it, will be the real victims.

    Sure it's fun to think of all those lusers finally getting a clue in the f

  • Pay-to-email is clueless (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JuggleGeek ( 665620 ) on Tuesday February 17, 2004 @12:37AM (#8301732)
    I am not a writer. I am not Bill Gates. I am not an 3l1t3 hak0r. I am not a rich man. I am not a marketer, a salesmen, or the widowed wife of an ex-African King. I?m just a long haired hippy who uses his computer a lot. And I realized a long time ago that email spam was going to be a problem. It has (so far) essentially ruined newsgroups. But I?ve never thought that the spammers would win. The more ?effective? they are (from their point of view) the more people they piss off. And since people want email ? a cheap effective means of communication ? then people will eventually fight back when the scum tries to ruin it. That?s starting to happen.

    And email will be saved ? unless the ?good guys? mess it up. Microsoft (and I?m no MS basher) wants to make a little bit ? just a tiny bit ? off of every email sent. And that will cause a huge change in how email is used. Does the NYTimes send you email every day? Slashdot? Rueters? The Florida Fowl Fanciers Association? (OK, I made that one up?.) Are you on any technical email lists? (Many programming lists have 50-100 messages a day, or more, to the list, and the list goes to 1,000?s of people.) These are free now. They won?t be if the ?solution? to spam involves the people who run these paying 1/4 cent per email. Either they will pass those costs on to the people who want the mail ? or they will fold, unable to pay the additional costs.

    In the meantime, those of you who want to send 20-30 emails a month, all to friends, will pay higher prices.

    But that?s if MS gets their way. I don?t think that will happen.

    In order for the pay-to-send model to work, you have to have something that doesn?t happen now. As things stand, when you send an email, it is incredibly easy to put any email address you want in the ?From? field. I can send an email from bill.gates@microsoft.com or president@whitehouse.gov without any trouble. And email programs can?t tell that those are, obviously, forgeries.

    If you can?t tell who sent the mail, you can?t charge them for sending it.

    If you can tell who sent the mail, then verifying that they aren?t lying to you in the header of the email is easy.

    If you throw away all mail that doesn?t have legitimate, verifiable headers, then most of the spam goes away ? and filtering for legitimate messages, as well as filing complaints about illegitimate messages ? gets easy.

    The pay-per-email systsems that get talked about all require the same verification. So lets do that first. If, after we can verify who the mail came from, it still seems to be needed to charge for mail, then we can start charging for email then . In the meantime, the goal of any geek that cares about spam should be to verify that the mail that claims to be from XXX is really from XXX, not ABC.

    One system that I know is working on this is SPF. Sender Permitted From. I?m not convinced that this is the final solution. I am convinced that they are going the right direction.

  • The ISPs are looking at any and all possibilities. This is one of them, and the one that is probably only being pushed by management.

    The one that is most likely to get implemented the fastest is SPF. It is already deployed in numerous places, and participating is as easy as putting a TXT record in your domain name. It's so simple AOL is doing it!

    But Microsoft's Caller ID and Yahoo's Domain Keys are probably also going to get implemented in 2004.

    I know at my major retailer, we are 100% going to deploy SPF
  • Now this is fsck-ing crazy - the ISP-s pay for the infrastructure and surely it will be federal gov't that will benefit from this so-called tax. And what with Europe, Asia, etc.? If they don't accept US rules will they be blocked or F-16 sent?

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