Minnesota Senator Says Email Tax Might Reduce Spam 561
indros13 writes "The Hon. Mark Dayton, Senator from Minnesota, is reportedly considering a "miniscule email tax" to counter the flood of spam. Thinking like an economist, he's obviously hoping to make mass emailing unprofitable. 'You can't say, "We want it to be totally free and unrestricted and on the other hand we want it to work smoothly and civilly," he said.' No word on how all those lobbying groups that use mass emails will respond, but I'm sure there are a few emails on the way..." Politician weasel words are part of the package, though; Dayton says a tax is "just one of the tactics that should be considered, but I don't favor it at this time."
Government control = bad (Score:5, Insightful)
"Leave it alone," [Norquist] said. "If the government gets involved, they will mess it up."
Agreed. The point is that if "little" things like this are allow, then it's basically saying "Look, Verisign, commercializing the internet is the solution like you said!"
I likes my SpamAssassin, thanks
Re:Government control = bad (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly it should go to a once-a-year ice cream party for the whole Internet.
Re:Government control = bad (Score:2)
Re:Government control = bad (Score:3, Funny)
Shhh... then they'll impose a tax on ice cream parties!!
Re:Government control = bad (Score:3, Funny)
Sure, go clodbashing, you bigot.
Hey, if you were on as many painkillers as I am, you'd be laughing too.
Re:He could get this right... (Score:4, Insightful)
The Federal Government should stay out of it. With or without a tax, a new law would cost money. You'd need enforcement to ensure that the tax is paid (or, in your example, the Bayesian filter is installed), etc . .
In the end, the Feds would bungle every aspect of any attempted law (except maybe collecting the tax -- they're good at that).
Good intentions, bad implimentation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good intentions, bad implimentation (Score:2, Insightful)
Yet any technical solution is doomed to fail. Why? Spam is the problem it is because of open relays. Do you think you can get everyone to change into a new email protocol when you can
Re:Good intentions, bad implimentation (Score:3, Insightful)
Not necessarily. You can classify SPAM in a few ways:
An open relay is used to hand off sending millions of copies of the same email.
Dedicated Spammers have their own servers to do the work (bandwidth is cheap for them, too)
Unsolicited mail from "partners" of real companies that you have a business relationship with
Yes, open relays can be a bad thing as they escalate the number of emails that any one Spammer can send, but this can easily be circumve
Re:Kill the demand, not the spammer (Score:5, Funny)
Bugger that. Kill the damn spammer.
Re:Good intentions, bad implimentation (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, how in the name of the gods do you implement such a tax?
Do you tax intra-company email as well?
Do you tax email between different geographical branches of the same company?
What about instant messages? efax? VoIP?
Suppose people work around it by creating VPNs and just tunnel their email to members of the VPN by encrypted means.
Suppose you do file transfers rather than email--just have programs at each end that compile and de-compile the files into text messages, but while in transit they don't resemble email.
Methinks this whole idea is looney and it will take about a week for people to develop workarounds to completely avoid an "email tax". Leave it to a Member of Congress to destroy yet another productive sector of the economy with taxes. Grr.
Sorry I'd better go drink my coffee (kaffree actually)
-Yog
Re:Good intentions, bad implimentation (Score:3, Insightful)
Shit! You want to reinvent UUCP?!?
Seriously, I can't even imagine the tax bills for a newsfeed... since of course, the Tax Man (tm) will find a way to apply said tax to Usenet -- it does *resemble* email enough that it'd probably be covered, under any wording a congresscritter will come up with, but AOL's internal email w
Re:Good intentions, bad implimentation (Score:5, Insightful)
> implement such a tax?
By requiring ISPs to purchase licenses, keep records, and file reports, in the same way sales taxes are collected. The government would, of course, find other uses for those records and reports.
> Do you tax intra-company email as well?
Probably not, as long as it doesn't travel over the "public" Internet.
> Do you tax email between different geographical
> branches of the same company?
Probably, though there might be special licenses. "Legitimate" organizations would be allowed to apply for exemptions for mailing-lists. They would, of course, be required to keep records and file reports.
> What about instant messages? efax? VoIP?
A different set of taxes.
> Suppose people work around it by creating VPNs
> and just tunnel their email to members of the
> VPN by encrypted means.
Tax evasion is illegal.
> Methinks this whole idea is looney and it will
> take about a week for people to develop
> workarounds to completely avoid an "email tax".
Thereby justifying the creation of an enforcement bureaucracy with elaborate regulations. You don't think this is really about spam, do you?
Re:Good intentions, bad implimentation (Score:3, Interesting)
1. (given) SMTP+TLS+key management Internet standards
2. Draft a new RFC that establishes an identity system for email using (above)
3. USPS provides servers for (above) at a micro-payment fee
No one is forced to use this system, and it doesn't cost much (some basic fee to register and maintain your identity, and some much smaller fee to validate one, or perhaps a flat fee to have a "validation service"). However, what it does is creates a new "class" of email
Re:Good intentions...NOT (Score:3, Insightful)
I think they're just fishing for ways to boost revenue. Right on its face, this idea suffers the same problem that plagues many other legislative "solutions" - the only people that are really penalized are going to be the ones that have nothing to do with the problem itself. True to form, it's no different than Bashcroft talking about how the U.S. is going to fight Al-Qaeda and terrorism by spying on every American Citizen and trampling all over the Constitution. In other words, the problem, and the propose
Re:Good intentions, bad implimentation (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the industry as a whole would be *MUCH* better off looking for a technical solution rather than hoping for government intervention.
Ahhha, but what would force the industry to move forward together and adopt a "new" secure public key based electronic mail protocol?
Incompetent government intervention
Yeah baby, bring on the e-mail tax!!
No good intentions here... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Government control = bad (Score:5, Interesting)
I do not make a penny running my site and have to pay most of the cost of the server and the colocation and bandwidth out of my own pocket. Even if they charged one penny per email, I could not afford an extra $500/mo or $6000 per year just for the right to send out email notices to users. I couldn't even afford $50/mo or $600/year if we charged one tenth of a penny per message.
Besides, what about system notices? And who/how will the email fee be collected? And why not just support an alternate RFC to promote more secure email standards like secure SMTP?
Re:I could not afford (Score:3, Interesting)
Would the law apply overseas? I could see lots of people abandoning MSN, Hotmail, & Yahoo mail to use overseas mail services. Would they be able to tax you if you went to the off shore mail server and sent from your account there? What's to keep a spammer from doing the same thing?
I got my first e-mail account while overseas. It's still my primary account. The ISP is a small one so it isn'
Re:Government control = bad (Score:3, Funny)
Yeah. I was kinda thinking. "Hey , looks like someones proposing to make money of email.. where have I heard that before".
Email tax, get rich quick, whats the diference?
Re:Government control = bad (Score:4, Funny)
> I likes my SpamAssassin, thanks ;^)
Me too. I especially like how the last job I applied for on Monster.com got bounced by the HR person's inbox by SpamAssasin because it "looked like spam". Maybe I used too many buzzwords in my resume...
Spam has made it difficult to set up legitimate servers to send legitimate e-mail to their indended recipients...
Re:Government control = bad (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the flaws in the whole sender pays idea is that the cost of collecting any charge is vastly greater than the amounts people propose.
At this point well over half the resources of the telephone system are dedicated to billing. That equates to billions of dollars a year. There is no reason to believe that the problem is any easier on the Internet.
The most expensive
Remit the "tax" to the recipient (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want to make micropayments the vehicle to stem the tide of spam, go ahead, but let the recipient receive the payment.
Re:Government control = bad (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting how everyone who thinks there should be a tax on email thinks that the money should go to their organization or government.
"Leave it alone," [Norquist] said. "If the government gets involved, they will mess it up."
Agreed. The point is that if "little" things like this are allow, then it's basically saying "Look, Verisign, commercializing the internet is the solution like you said!"
I likes my SpamAssassin, thanks ;^)
Agreed. I read this as "Minnesota elects dumbasses as Senators." Or alte
Haha! (Score:2)
World-wide or what?
Why should we all suffer just because some people are to dumb to install a SPAM filter, use Mozilla or do something else useful.
Just sitting there and crying "Argh, somebody do something against that SPAM" won't help. They just will limit your freedom as a result. Again.
Re:Haha! (Score:5, Interesting)
The funny thing that these moron legislators don't understand is, if they could collect the tax on mass e-mailing then they could just as likely just outlaw sending UCE entirely and hold the people doing it responsible. The problem is it's nearly impossible to pinpoint who is sending all this garbage. Why would they pay the e-mail tax when they're already conducting fraud?
Re:Haha! (Score:2, Insightful)
World-wide or what?
Any local, state, or even federal tax would be absolutely useless, other than as a revenue tool. A nationwide (U.S.) tax on email may slow or stop U.S. spammers (provided they are using U.S. ISPs, etc.), but in effect it would just "outsource" spamming to other countries that did not have a tax.
If there were a world-wide tax, it would probably work to at least reduce spam, but you and I both know that there will always be a hold-out country somewhere that would make the whole idea u
Re:Haha! (Score:2)
Spam filters don't solve the problem of the massive amounts of bandwidth that these leeches suck up with their unwanted advertising.
<nitpick>SPAM is a trademark of the Hormel corporation, unsolicited bulk email is spam (lower case)</nitpick>
This won't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This won't work. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This won't work. (Score:2)
Re:This won't work. (Score:2)
Re:This won't work. (Score:3, Interesting)
There is nothing at all in the mechanisms of sending e-mail to prevent the volume of spam from increasing another 10- or hundred-fold over the next year. Spam volumes under present conditions will only stop increasing when every spammer is spamming at maximum velocity... that's their incentive and it's a vicious cycle a
Re:This won't work. (Score:4, Funny)
Ever notice there's a return address? Slap a label over your address that says 'return to sender' and drop it off in a mailbox. Imagine their mailroom problems if just 10% were returned. Usually junk mail's not worth the effort since it can just be tossed in the recycling bin, but why should my landfill fill up with these CDs and their cases? Send them back and let AOL deal with it.
Tax on talking (Score:2)
The real world (Score:2)
I guess once you get a critical mass of people used to paying for email, and it's accepted as "what happens", then it won't be an issue, but getting to that happy stage is another ball-game.
Not sure if ISP's would be in favour or not. The market pressure applies to them the most directly of all. On the other hand, i
Tax the whole world? (Score:5, Insightful)
outside the USA? Hold the emails in some large mail spooler at the border and send a bill to the people in the foreign countries? Christ , how do people
this dumb ever get elected? Oh
Re: (Score:2)
Was that self-realization? (Score:3, Insightful)
Want a politician who actually hears what people are saying to him and tries to problem-solve about it with a certain amount of candor? Here's your guy. ("Weasel words" are not usually h
The Solution Is Already In Place (Score:3, Interesting)
Spammers tailor the stream of bytes to get into other people's computers, bypassing various measures the owners have taken to keep them out. Does this sound like "computer cracking". That's because it is. Did you think that computer cracking is illegal? All together now: That's because it is.
Re:The Solution Is Already In Place (Score:2)
Why on earth should it not apply? Clearly, the reason spammers forge headers is to avoid being blocked off by their targets.
Also, there are plenty of other cracking methods used to evade filters -- munging of words commonly associated with spam, insertion of random junk to evade identical-message detection, and the like.
Economic incentive? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you want to make it unprofitable, sue the corporations that always wind up the object of the advertisement (Norton WhateverWorks always show up in my box 2-200 times per week). If they don't fund the spammers, some of their incentive dries up.
Anyone caught co-opting another CPU to turn it into a proxy should be prosecuted and sent to prison. The ROI on that taxpayer money would be much better than putting some teenage file-sharer in prison!
Re:Economic incentive? (Score:2)
If you want to make it unprofitable, sue the corporations that always wind up the object of the advertisement (Norton WhateverWorks always show up in my box 2-200 times per week). If they don't fund the spammers, some of their incentive dries up.
That works, if what the spammer advertises is in fact a genuine product. If I recall, the "Norton WhateverWorks" spams are for bootleg copies of the product.
A stronger solutions is needed (Score:2, Funny)
I guess the problem with Mr. Dayton's approach is, it doesn't go far enough. You can't very well force everyone to c
Re:A stronger solutions is needed (Score:2)
"FROM:MR. GW BUSH
DEAR FRIEND,
I AM MR. GW BUSH SON OF FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH OF USA..."
(lameness filter my ass)
Oh geeze, not again (Score:2)
Whenever this issue comes up on TV, it's obvious that the people talking about it have no clue. Last weekend there was a show in which the pundits were either "for" or "against" -- "taxing the Internet", and of course they weren't specific. I don't know about you, but when I pay for my ISP at home, it's taxed. These days, things I've bought (from say, Amazon.com) are taxed. I had the distinct impression that not only didn't the peo
Re:Oh geeze, not again (Score:4, Insightful)
Even from a strictly legal point of view, the US government can't tax e-mail sent out from the country -- export duties are expressly forbidden by the Constitution.
Just what we need to burnish America's international image: an anti-spam policy that specifically exempts Americans who spam furriners.
Tax on who? (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides that, it's all just data. You can't tax some packets and not others - people will just develop new protocols to avoid the taxes. Unfortunately you have to understand the technology to make sensible rules governing its use.
I'v already got bayesian filtering, (Score:3, Insightful)
Same thing as with drug, gun, and sex ed. If the vast majority of people weren't so damn irresponsable and stupid then they'd be able to handle either not using drugs or using them responsabily (not only does this apply to marajuana, but also the likes of prozak), certain guns wouldn't need to be outlawed because some dumbfuck would press the trigger by accident and off his entire family. And finally, our kids would not only know where and when sex is ok, but why it is ok and how to make love responsabily.
Either way, if he passes a e-mail tax law, I'll just setup something else that isn't spammable like a VPN between my house and my family members that transmits txt documents into a local folder. Mabye that way the idiots who use the system won't open up sobig viruses and help to make virus problems worse.
What is e-mail ? (Score:2, Insightful)
What, excatly speaking, is e-mail ? If it's defined as "messages delivered by the SMTP protocol", all one needs to do to avoid the tax is to invent a new protocol (or use instant messaging, for example). If it's defined as "messages delivered by computers", then it would kill Slashdot, for starters...
In any case, it would be the end of free email lists. Probably newsgroups too, since they would be the next logical step.
Of course, all this is assuming such a tax can actually be enforced, which is unlikel
so the next outlook virus..... (Score:5, Insightful)
on a more serious note, is there a legal definition of what is spam? i consider anything about M$ Windows based products to be spam because i use a Mac, but i am sure to somebody it may be useful information.
Tax evasion (Score:4, Insightful)
Spammers are already using viruses and hacked accounts to send the email. They won't be paying the tax the victim will.
BadIdea (Score:2)
1. Who collects the taxes? Are collecting the fees going to fall on the backs of ISP's, on consumers or on anyone who operates a mail server?
2. Will other countries co-operate? Say someone in Germany wants to send e-mails to America. Problem! The e-mail tax must be paid! If it is waived for foreign senders, then all you'd get is a tax and massive offshore spamming operations. Think of the
Oh that's a GRAND idea.... (Score:2)
Geez... Even if his plan works, how does he propose to tax email originating outside US borders?
What's next? A Internet Stamp issued by uspo.gov? I'll bet the post office just loves that idea!
Schmuck.
Give control (and the money) to the recipient (Score:2)
If the recipient values their time, they can demand $3/email. If the recipient values doesn't value their time or wants to maximize payments from spammers, they can deman
are they getting into the isp business? (Score:2)
i'm sure there's no politicians reading
No, no, a thousand times no (Score:2)
It's also difficult to promote the free interchange of ideas when there is a fee associated with it. Email is one of the true great equalizers of the Internet. Anyone, anywhere with access to a computer can send an email. At the library, school, a kiosk in the mall.
You can't say, `We want it to be totally free and unrestricted and on the other hand we want it
Small problem with that (Score:2)
The snag is that "???" is actually a known entity - "Implement a robust micro-payment system". That's a concept that seems about as nebulous as SCO's claims about Linux and I doubt it's going to happen anytime soon.
On the other tinfoil hat, if you require ISPs to monitor the amount of email being sent and bill accordingly, then the obvious way to go would be to force all email through a central server farm at the ISP. Wouldn't th
Time for some OSS innovation? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never understood why this isn't something that the OSS community hasn't tried to tackle.
For business purposes, I want an email system that:
1) Is Spam free.
2) Is secure.
3) Is failsafe - i.e. if the recipient doesn't receive the message, I want to know about it.
Surely from a technical perspective, this isn't that difficult?
Why can't the OSS mail clients agree on a standard for doing this. I don't see why it shouldn't be possible, for instance, to have two mail boxes (or whatever you want to call them) for a single email address - one for "secure emails", and the other for the rest. The secure email box would only recieve emails that were from an approved address.
This could be a great way for OSS software to creep into organisations - I could tell my clients, for instance, hey, if you use Thunderbird, we can email each other more securely/without spam/in a failsafe manner. The network effects of this kind of promotion for OSS could be fantastic.
This looks like an opportunity that's going to waste for the OSS community. Come on guys, or people will start saying we don't innovate!
Re:Time for some OSS innovation? (Score:2)
If the increase in spam continues, sooner or later many businesses will request a better system/protocol/communication platform than SMTP.
Re:Time for some OSS innovation? (Score:2)
Accept to the secure mailbox only e-mail signed with a signature for which the identity chain has been verified.
Find some spam still coming in, in a signed form? Distrust the weak link in the identity chain, and you're done.
Easier said than done, eh?
Ah, yes. The typical OSS fanatics answer. "You can already to that! All you have to do is install snorbort on your flangewatsit, and use the command line to set the niddle flag. It's easy!"
I sometime
Re:Time for some OSS innovation? (Score:2)
you can already do that(use a spesific, non standard email) if you don't want email spam. with free or properiaty software.
the problem is that most of the time people _do_ want to receive normal old fashioned email.
No taxation without deliveration! (Score:2, Interesting)
(Checks computer specs) Nope, nothing about it being government property or a marketing channel. However, if someone said that skipping commercials is theft, someone will say this. (But I really had to go to the washroom, honest!)
To defend my senator (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, there are already some wingnut posts on this story, so I feel the need to set the record straight:
This is not just a case of RTFA, it's a case of RTFP (post). Fortunately the post quotes Dayton as saying Dayton says a tax is "just one of the tactics that should be considered, but I don't favor it at this time.".
It's just an idea folks. Obviously we all know it isn't workable, but at least these guys are thinking about the issue in general.
There probably isn't a legislative solution, and I think Mark Dayton is open minded enough to reach that conclusion and then say it publicly. Of course, I don't think it would get as much coverage as this story, because here's a Democrat trying to raise taxes! For shame!
Tax remittance (Score:2)
In order to facilitate our accounting records, please fill out the attached Form 80179 per email you send out. You have several means of submitting these forms:
Note that if you choose the third option, you will need to submit a Form 80180 declaring that email as being Form 80179 exempt.
Yours truly,
Uncle Sam
Then, promptly three hours later:
Dear Taxpayer,
Due to the infinite number of emails we have been receiving, we have decided tha
Speaking as an ISP sysadmin ... (Score:2)
That is all.
How will this work? (Score:2)
Therefore an overseas spammer will be in precisely the posit
Re:How will this work? (Score:2)
This would effectively kill SMTP as we know it. Only commercial entities and grandparents would still be sending tradidtional email. I'm damn sure not going to give the gub'ment a penny a piece to tell my friends some trivial joke..
On the bright side, what would replace it would most likely be better.. Be it IM, P2P, VPN, or whatever combination of those and other tech
What about the regular mail costs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Great idea (Score:2)
In order to pay the tax or tariff (for foreign email), you'd have to have a virtual "tax stamp" that identifies the server to the taxing authority. Email spam would disappear overnight.
Do Nigerians pay Taxes in the US? (Score:2, Interesting)
If not? Will George W. Bush invade Nigeria because of eMail-Terrorism?
NoSuchGuy
taxes won't (Score:3, Insightful)
if the government want's to do something, let them prosecute. most spammers live in the us and canada. in almost all the spamm i've ever seen their is enough fraud and misrepresentation in each email to at least bring charges in civil court with current laws.
A better way (Score:2)
Re:A better way (Score:2)
I actually have a proposal for a "reasonable sentence" [angelfire.com] for spammers.
Seriously though, I second and third and fourth the oft-repeated idea that the only way to go after these pricks is to follow the money. Sca^H^Hpammers are small-time pseudo-crooks; they're not doing anything illegal, but if you ban what they're doing now, you'd find them working as disreputable used-car salesmen or the likes thereof.
Spam has a goal; that goal is getting money out of the recipient's pockets. There is always someone at
Will it Work ? (Score:2, Insightful)
applicable in so many different areas... (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously, how could this ever be implemented? Who's going to track who sends how many emails, and to where? Furthermore, the logical spaces of the Internet don't correspond very well (at this time) to physical spaces in the world. Do you have to pay export taxes if you're emailing someone overseas? Do you have to pay import taxes to receive an overseas email? Will it cost more to email someone "further
Spammers already break the law (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem of spam is already a problem of laws going unenforced against an entrenched criminal element. While spamming itself may not be explicitly illegal, the act of spamming is not separable from acts which are illegal, such as fraud, conversion, and theft of services. Many (including some spammers) are under the misapprehension that because these laws go unenforced, spam is thereby legal. Indeed, the problem of enforcement is so bad that blatantly destructive acts such as denial-of-service attacks against anti-spam services have gone utterly uninvestigated by law enforcement. (This may be changing.) [spamhaus.org]
It is utterly unnecessary to create further laws which penalize ordinary Net users, in an effort to stop spammers. Indeed, such laws simply aggravate the problem already posed by spam: increasing the bother, inconvenience, and expense of using and operating the mail system. In effect, such laws would help the spammers destroy email.
If this were possible, it wouldn't be needed (Score:4, Interesting)
A better Minnesota solution (Score:3, Funny)
California could explore this option too.
Tax Shelters (Score:2)
Do we really need to play this game?
It might work, in a roundabout way.. (Score:2)
Take Dayton at his word: he rambles (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, the point is that this is more "Hey, this might be an idea, or whatever, I really don't know," than it is "I have this secret plot I want to enact, but I'll throw you off the trail by claiming I'm unsure about it."
Slippery Slope (Score:2)
What a brilliant solution for stopping spammers. Now pull the other leg, please.
possible scenario (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, there would be implementation issues and privacy concerns, problems, etc., but if this were in place I can't help but think it would make a positive difference. And before I get slammed by everyone, I realize there are all kinds of problems with legislating spam behavior in this country. The most obvious of which is the spammer's ability to simply relocate their operation outside the U.S. border where U.S. laws will have a much more difficult time taking effect.
Keep in mind that I'm not trying to invent the solution in this post, so don't take it like I'm defending the silver bullet to the problem of spamming, or go on a crusade to prove why I'm wrong. I just think this is an interesting idea. There are problems with every other spam prevention idea, evidenced by the continued (and growing) presence of spam for the majority of people (ie, not just computer geeks; spam reduction has to work for people like our grandparents and non-nerdy friends, and it will have to be transparent for it to work).
I think the email tax seems like one of the least shitty solutions out there. Anyone else have other, not-so-shitty solutions to spam?
No politics-whoring on this one? (Score:2)
Btw, I hear you can get those on ebay. It truly *does* have everything!
cannot be implemented (Score:2)
A much better initiative would be some kind of electronic cash micropayment system, perhaps run by the US Postal Service. Then, the recipients themselves could require a micropayment stamp for any mail they are going to read (a few cents, maybe).
Mailing lists... (Score:4, Insightful)
And if you work as user support for a small company, replying by email? Suddenly costs of operating rapidly rise. You operate a free web forum, where people subscribe and an automated reply sends them their password, and optionally get email notifications on changes in threads they watch. Your forum can't be free anymore.
I can think of a dozen other legitimate uses for sending bulk amounts of emails. Even with $0.01/email, with one email a day for some 500 users, that makes $150/month. Can easily kill any free service.
What exactly is an email? (Score:3, Interesting)
What happens with email from outside of the taxing jurisdiction? Does the receiver pay? (That would be cool. I could just 'drive' across the border and mail bomb people I don't like. POW! right in the checkbook!)
I used to think "sender pays" would kill spam, too (Score:3, Interesting)
...and then I realised it would kill mailing lists, too.
Then again, it might be made to work if, instead of the government taxing every outgoing mail spool, ISPs charged other ISPs for the privilege of sending mail to their users. That is, when fred@aol.com sends a mail to jim@hotmail.com, AOL has to pay Hotmail 1/10 cent, or however much the "tax" is set at. These charges would be aggregated, so there would be one monthly bill instead of trillions of nano-payments. Your ISP subscription could include, say, 1000 free emails per month, or 12,000 per year.
I would expect that for normal email traffic, the amount flowing in each direction would be about equal. When someone starts spamming, though, their ISP is slapped with large invoices. If the ISP has any sense, they pass those invoices on to the spammer. If the invoices aren't paid, the ISP that sent them refuses any traffic from those IP blocks.
For spam that comes through open relays or proxies, invoice whoever runs the open machine, and let them worry about where it really came from. If they can find the spammer and recover the cost from him, great. If not, they'll have learned a valuable lesson about not leaving an unsecured box on the open Internet.
A scheme that requires all (or many) ISPs to change their behaviour would be difficult to get working, but easier than one that requires all (or many) email users to change. The biggest problem I foresee is that it's notoriously hard to extract money from a spammer. Still, if ISPs who are currently spam-friendly know that selling connectivity to a spammer will cost them a large amount of money, they might be more careful about whom they sign up.
Spammers don't use their own email boxes... (Score:3, Insightful)
Somebody buy 'm a clue.
Enforce the fraud laws, not TAXES! (Score:3, Insightful)
First we'll have the $0.00001 per email tax. It will fail, but we're told its failing because enforcement doesn't work when you don't know where the SMTP servers are. Which means that we'll have a law requiring SMTP server registration, enforced by the IRS and your ISP.
Forget to pay your SMTP tax when setting up your new box? Good news! The IRS can now search your hard disk (gotta know how much untaxed mail you sent) and then file tax liens against your bank account and your home.
When these don't work, we'll be told that the tax rate isn't high enough. So they'll raise it. And keep raising it. And then someone will figure out that it's a great way to put PCs in poor neighborhoods or some other "worthy" project.
Have I mentioned Ashcroft's take on SMTP registration?
Enforce the fraud laws. Arrest the people behind SPAM products. Ensnare the spammers as part of the conspiracy. That will solve the problem. Everything else just takes away our rights AND or money.
News from AD 2010 (Score:3, Insightful)
Attorney general for life John Ashcroft commented "too late, assholes. In twenty oh three you let the camel get his nose in the tent, and now he's screwing your wife."
Interesting, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously, the computer SENDING the email pays the tax. But this means that some form of compliance checking will have to be put into place. Which means a change to the email protocols. But, other countries may not comply. Of course, running an email service for sending may simply be declared illegal, forcing all emails through a centralized point. This solution also has its problems. I guess the tax revenue collected could be used to run the central email servers.
Ratboy
OK, here's the study (Score:4, Insightful)
An email is a message in a well known format composed a sequence of TCP/IP packets, usually but not always sent via a port 25 socket on an SMTP server, and usually but not always retrieved from a POP3 or IMAP server.
As the expressed intent is not to to punish recipients, the notion of taxing retrieval of emails is dismissed out of hand. Only the sending and relaying will be considered.
An SMTP server can be configured to handle email from anybody (an open relay) either deliberately or through incompetence or malice. Some SMTP server can be configured to require authorisation before handling email. Some SMTP servers are configured to only accept or send email to certain domains. Some SMTP servers are hidden (successfully or otherwise) on non-standard ports, behind firewalls, or are only accessible via (e.g.) SSH encrpyted connections. Some SMTP servers handle email only for a specific organisation, or for a specific machine.
SMTP servers are freely available for most computer platforms. Most linux distributions, for example, come with one or more SMTP servers as standard, there are several free SMTP servers avaiable for Windows, many email viruses contain their own SMTP servers to propagate themselves, or a simple SMTP server can be written in a few dozen lines of code or script.
Anyone connected to the internet anywhere in the world can set up an SMTP server and provide services to anyone they like. This may be against the acceptable use policy of their internet service provider (ISP), and their ISP may try to prevent it by technical means such as blocking the well known SMTP port 25, but there are ways to disguise the traffic or bypass these restrictions, including relaying to open SMTP servers on non standard ports and/or using SSH tunnels. Spammers can set up their own SMTP servers rather than using their ISP's servers, or can find and use open SMTP relays based anywhere in the world.
There is no practical way to oblige or enforce taxation on the administrator of an email server. Large US based ISPs could conceivably be taxed, but spammers commonly use open relays or their own SMTP servers. These can be based anywhere in the world. How will US legislation enforce taxation in Russia, for example? As a futher issue, at what level does email attract taxation? When it is being sent anywhere in the world? When it is being sent within the US? When it is sent from outside the US to servers inside the US? When it is sent within a subset of the internet, like a corporate or academic network, which can comprise tens of thousands of users? At the individual machine level?
Email is relayed across SMTP servers. In theory, it would be possible to tax the receiving SMTP servers of US based, large corporate ISPs and have them bill the sender. In practice, ISPs would be unable to collect this, and would in any case have to have accounts for every possible sender. This would lead to them either: rejecting email from the vast majority of non-US ISPs and being rejected in turn, effectively cutting the US off from the email network; or more likely, passing the costs on to the US based individual recipient either directly or indirectly.
In summary, Senator Dayton, the only practical way to keep the internet safe for Americans is to wall off part of it and declare a Fortress USA.
Any ISP who wanted to do that could do it right now. AOL could do it tomorrow. They have, for example, repeatedly experimented with rejecting email that appears to come from SMTP servers that don't appear to match the registered SMTP servers (well, their IP addresses) for the apparent sender's domain name. The reason why I repeat "apparent" is that these factors can be faked by malicious spammers, but that they catch out many legitimate senders, to the point where this policy has been unenforcable.
Thank you, Senator Dayton, for your interest in these matters, and for taking the time to suggest a superficial knee jerk solution that would wreck the internet as we know it beyond repair. I suggest that you sack whatever idiot nephew you employ as a researcher and take some actual advice on this issue before you do some real damage.
Unnecessary coupling. "Fee" shouldn't imply "Tax" (Score:4, Interesting)
But, also clear is that a government mandated tax would be absolutely the wrong way to impose this cost.
If a citizen wants to setup his email client so that all messages from strangers are deleted unless accompanied by a $5.00 paypal donation, that's his business! "Pay for email" can be implemented without government help. If we ever get a functioning micropayment system so that transactions of less than $0.05 can be cheaply exchanged, then it's quite probable that big ISPs (starting with AOL) will let their users elect to block all non-whitelisted emails unless the sender paid a minor fee to compensate for time wasted reading.
If the question is: "Should email require a stamp-like payment?", the answer is maybe.
But "Should the government tax email?", no.
If consumers decide that per-email fees are a fair price for eliminating spam, then private enterprise can provide it without state meddling. Pay-email poses technical and administrative challenges, so it might not ever really work- but sticking the IRS in there would just strengthen the obstacles.
related idea: fee payable to recipient (Score:3, Interesting)
Imagine an e-mail system in which the sender of an e-mail would have to pay the recipient a fee specified by the recipient. The e-mail simply would not show up in the recipient's inbox unless the fee is paid.
You would be able to provide "keys" to regular correspondents, legitimate mailing lists, etc., that would allow them to reach your inbox without paying a fee. The keys would be revokable, in case they are abused or fall into the wrong hands.
It would be an expected courtesy, but not enforced, that legitimate e-mail that pays a fee would have the fee refunded once the recipient recognizes the mail as legitimate.
Now, if you're actively seeking e-mails from unknown senders -- for example, if you advertise a product or service and tell people to e-mail you for more information -- then you probably wouldn't charge a fee to reach your inbox. If you're a more typical user, you would set a small fee, probably just a few cents, so as not to deter legitimate mail.
A spammer, assuming he doesn't have keys to millions of inboxes, would need to pay tens of thousands of dollars in order to reach them all, assuming they each require a payment of a few cents.
This would not only deter spam but also compensate its victims. However, it would have little effect on legitimate e-mail.
Re:Anything to get more money (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it does. In China and Japan, at least.
Re:Anything to get more money (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Anything to get more money (Score:3, Informative)
That's 100% backwards. Japan doesn't try to reduce childbirth, and has no worries about overpopulation. It's got a birthrate of much less than 2 kids per family, and the government is terrified. (They're fearful that the future won't have enough citizens to tax- a problem the US might face in the 2ks as well).
That low rate is apparently the natural consequence of wealthy people in constricted space; nobody wants their kids to live on smaller lots than th
First the email tax (Score:4, Interesting)
Between this story and the story of third world countries wanting the UN to "control" the Internet because IANA is too US-centric, I really get the idea that government-control types really have no clue what the Internet is. If you "regulate" the Internet with taxes, restrictions, etc, another network will rise to take it's place. The main feature of the Internet is relative anarchy (also called freedom). Are there rules on the net? Of course! It's called "consensus"! Deal with it.