Date: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 7:52 AM
From: mcloki ([email protected])
Subject: Spam So Bad the Spammers Balk
I am writing in response to the article "Spam So Bad the Spammers Balk," Oct. 22, 2002.
A quick solution to stop e-mail spam: charge people for every e-mail they send.
Make all e-mail have a 1 cent per K service fee. If you send a 3K file to your mom she would electronically receive 3 cents (minus a small 1 cent fee for your ISP). There should be no discounts. That's the important part – the receiver of the e-mail must receive the e-cash. Before your ISP accepted the e-mail to forward on to their customer they would make sure the money was there. No payment – no spam delivery.
Over the course of time, e-mails between friends would cancel out, but spam mail would supply the viewers of these spams with currency. A whole Internet economy would start to be built because every person would now have cash to spend on whatever they wanted. With enough spam the Internet could almost be free of charge.
Would this stop spam? Not really – it may even increase it. But it would cost them $4.00 to send me that 400K porn spam.
Please, please, dear God, send me that spam. One thousand more spam e-mails and I can buy that Apple TI I've had my eye on. I could be rich within days.
