Comment Articles

Sticking stamps on spam

Tags:
Stamp,
Pay,
Fee,
Charge

David Coursey AnchorDesk

Published: 03 Feb 2004 12:45 GMT

News flash from Davos, Switzerland: the end of spam is near! And it's going to come, Bill Gates predicted at the World Economic Forum, because we're going to make it unprofitable to send. Taken another way: accepting unsolicited commerical email could become a small source of added income for us all.

"Two years from now, spam will be solved," Gates reportedly told a "select group" of the already select group that gathers each year in Switzerland to do what the rich and powerful do, which I think is plan to become even richer and more powerful (doubtless at our expense).

If Bill Gates has his way (as is so often the case), each of us would establish a price for accepting uninvited email. Thus a company sending an email campaign might have 50 cents at risk for each of a million emails being sent, or $500,000 total. I bet that would make someone think before pressing the "send" button.

Of course, people and companies in our contact lists would be able to send for free as might certain other entities. And, of course, we'd be free to not accept the money if the email was welcome.

We'd have to work out a whole etiquette for this. For example, would it be rude to collect the 50 cents from an old high school "friend" I didn't really want to hear from? Or will some of us set up toll-free email addresses, the same way we have toll-free telephone numbers? Would I ever read my toll-free inbox? Depends.

Let's say I want an address where readers can send me an email. Maybe that would be toll-free or perhaps I'd charge a nickel, just to stop some obvious spam. I'd promise you, dear reader, not to actually collect your nickel. If I did, I'd be a jerk.

Suppose, however, you're sending me a technical question. Perhaps the charge for that would be a buck or ten bucks -- but, for that, you'd get an answer. Maybe the collection system wouldn't let me take your money until I responded to you or until you indicated that my response was an OK solution to your problem.