Am I the only one who thinks that requiring stamps for sending email is a preposterous idea? I mean- we already pay (most of us anyway) for our internet service in some form or another. To add onto that a per email “stamp” cost would get quite prohibitive to those of us who use email in great volumes every day…but are not spamming.
The thought or argument that it would “help control spam” isn’t even a good enough reason to consider it. That is what mail filters are for. I find it absolutely ridiculous.
Amy,
I think it could be used in an effective manner. I haven’t thought out all of the details, but I think if you used a ‘credit’ based system where the postage was paid to the account holder it could be viable. It would be a “secured” e-mail program where a person could register his/her own existing e-mail account which would then be ranamed with an additional extension such as “.sec”. Then whenever someone sent the person an e-mail they would have to pay him 1 cent, to a paypal style account attached to the e-mail account. Heres the catch though: people could put each other on net 30 terms, use give and take credit, or extend fee waivers or debt forgiveness. So, for instance, Amy and Pete could set each other on Net 30, and when one e-mailed the other they acquire a 1 cent debt, but when they other responded they would pay with their ‘credit’ acquired from other, thereby cancelling out any charges. Meanwhile, a company like say Amazon, could after a customer places an order extend $1.00 worth of non-redeemable e-mail credit to their customer on the condition that the customer do the same, in effect allowing customer correspondance without giving out infinite amounts that could be used for spam. They could even cap credit amounts to say 2$ to prevent abuse. And with debt forgiveness a person could wipe out any ‘debt’ of his friends. In essense, this could stop spam while allowing free communication among friends and family. The only exception would be isolated instances like e-mailing someone on a forum or the like, but it would only be a penny, and chances are you would receive a few cents a month as well, from contact from strangers. The main issue I see if developement would cost money, so it would proabaly end up costing 10 or 15 dollars a year for the ‘credit card’. It could work though.
I still don’t like the idea of paying to use email. To me- the best part about email is the fact that it is free and (nearly) instantaneous. What is next? A per minute charge on IMing/chatting?
I really don’t see spamming as that big of an issue. I mean…if it isn’t from someone you know…just hit delete. It takes all of about three seconds.
Oh…and just out of curiousity…because my coworker and I were talking about it…do you think anyone ever really purchases products from spam?
If spam didn’t have a return rate, they wouldn’t do it.
The fact is that the rate is INCREDIBLY low… something like 0.01% (I made that number up). With that return rate they sell one prodcut out of 10,000 emails sent out. If they send out 100,000 emails, that’s 10 sales. If it’s a $50 purchase, we’re talking $500 — if the spam cost less than that to send, then it’s a net gain and, thus, people will do it.
One way to fix the problem, economically, is to charge for email — make the cost of SENDING the spam go up. I’d imagine that the cost would be “included” in your ISPs plan and you’d never see it as an end user. even a 1 cent charge per email would make the initial cost of 100,000 emails $1,000 — thus increasing the return rate necessary for spam to be profitable.
The other thing to consider here is that 60% of internet traffic is spam. (Actually heard that in class this morning) Think of how much faster the ‘net would be if 60% of the traffic disappeared! Spam doesn’t seem like a big deal if you’re filtering it or deleting it, but next time the internet is being slow, keep in mind that there’s a lot of spam flying around to get in your way.
See…now that is not something I considered before…and find interesting that 60% of the traffic is spam.
Still do you think that there is a way to keep it lowcost to no cost? I am most interested in Matt Jones theories…do you think that these could work?