From: Benoît Mussche (benoit.mussche@pandora.be)
Date: Mon Jul 14 2003 - 19:31:05 MDT
On Monday 14 July 2003 23:49, Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
> On Monday 14 July 2003 22:38, Steve Davies wrote:
>>> Am I just being simple but isn't a simple solution to charge for sending
>> > emails? Quite a modest charge would make spam unprofitable (unless the
>
>> Eeeeuw, are you on drugs ? That would be the greatest victory for spammers
>> ever: hit our essential liberty to communicate freely as much as we want
>> for a nominal fee.
>
>
> Exactly how do spammers "win" this way?
Spammers cripple our freedom to communicate (at least if you don't hide your
address from the web/usenet and aren't using a good spam filter) by ruining
it for their own selfish purpose. I am pretty confident that spammers are the
bad guys in this case and that i am not fooling myself in believing deleting
all spam is for the good of the tribe. By charging the number of emails sent,
you cripple our ability to communicate as well, thus are going the spammers
way. We already pay a fixed fee for our Internet connection. Most
subscription have a user quota (eg, mine is 10GB over last 30 days with max.
15% upload), which leaves me virtually inifinite numbers of mail i may send
to communicate with friends and contacts, for the same monthly fee. Only
transfer of large data amounts may be extra charged, which i understand.
However text communication is bandwidth sparing and should in no way be
overcharged. The more i communicate over email the less costy each email is,
other net services aside. My academic interests are duely served by this
wonderful technology. If my ISP starts to charge even one extra eurocent per
mail i'll be reluctant and feel less free to send emails to anyone. It would
be the end. OTOH making the other end pay with free passes for your friends
is no good idea either because it could kill new virtual relationship in the
bud.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Jul 14 2003 - 19:40:24 MDT