Various Internet analysts have come to an interesting conclusion on how to handle spam e-mail: start charging people a one cent per e-mail. Goodmail Systems Inc., a company specializing in spam filtration, has been working with various e-mail providers to implement a penny-an-e-mail charge for bulk-mailers to avoid having their messages tossed into the trash automatically.
Bill Gates suggested at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January a different kind of charge. People sending e-mail messages would have to solve a 10 second math puzzle before their e-mail went through. Microsoft has also been researching postage proposals since 2001.
However, pay per e-mail proposals have several disadvantages. Although designed to hinder spammers who send out millions of messages at a time, charging people a penny per e-mail will also hurt people with a good reason to e-mail many people at the same time. Mailing lists for parents and members of a Pop Warner football team or for people sharing and discussing common interests might not be able to afford to send e-mails to the dozens, hundreds or thousands of people on those lists if each e-mail cost one cent.
Charging for e-mail could create a situation where only those who can afford it can send messages, sucking out the freedom of expression that free e-mail services provide their subscribers. Free e-mail is an important democratic tool in today’s high-tech society, and charging for it could destroy its effectiveness. The penny charge, while trivial to American consumers, could also slow the growth of technology in Third World countries with weaker currency than the United States.
Besides limiting free speech, charging for e-mail might not even slow the spammers down. They haven’t been stopped by previous state and federal legislation targeted at stopping illegal commercial e-mails. Allowing people a limited number of free e-mails and discounted rates to mailing lists and nonprofit organizations could give mass e-mailers a loophole to take advantage of.
“The spammers will probably just keep changing their mailbox names,” said Vint Cerf, senior vice president of Technology Strategy for MCI and one of the original designers of the Internet’s structure, in an AP story. “I continue to be impressed by the agility of spammers.”
Other methods of blocking illegal commercial messages, like technology to verify e-mail senders as legitimate and lawsuits against the more problemsome spammers, need to be further developed to combat spam. Otherwise, today’s e-mail services could face the same fate as older e-mail systems, that charged money per message – they all shut down.
