"Forrest W. Christian" wrote:
Anyone who thinks that government can pass a law and this will go away is hopelessly naieve.
Uh, thanks. The government has all kinds of property protection laws. My mail spool is my property. Do the math.
The spammers will go overseas.
Are they marketing products and goods sold domestically? Who cares where the spam came from if the numbskull is domestic?
The first option is a traditional "If you send me email and I don't know you, I'll bounce the message and you have to reply with a specially formatted mail message in order to get your mail through".
Whitelists are just another form of "no trespassing" property protection.
The pay-per-message system I proposed was an outgrowth of the "certificated" option.
First, nobody wants to pay $.02 to email grandma. They will pick up the phone instead. Second, nobody will send any emails that they don't have to, period. This will just drive Internet users away because of the cost rather than being driven away because of spam. Laws are a necessary first step and will have the most positive effect. Micropayments won't be needed if the right laws are passed. Given the history, the biggest problem with the legal approach is that congress will pass a bad law instead of the one they need to, which is to extend the TCPA to include spam. -- Eric A. Hall http://www.ehsco.com/ Internet Core Protocols http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/coreprot/