Oooh...Look.... A new Revenue stream...

[Tiger Shark]

"I think it's worth looking at some very, very small charge for every e-mail sent, so small that it would not be onerous for an individual or business that has regular (e-mail) use, but it would be a deterrent for those who are sending millions and even billions of these e-mails," said Senator Mark Dayton (D-Minnesota).

Full Story here

[BEGIN RANT]
The _only_ talent the majority of elected officials have is that of wringing yet more money out of us poor saps.......

Let's think about this for a second..... Who is going to collect the cash? How are they going to do it? If the IRS collects then they need to know what to collect..... So now every ISP has to collect totals data for every user and pass the users SSN to the IRS with a total for the email they sent...... Hrrrrumph...... I an not prepared to give my SSN to Hotmail!!!!! Then there is the cost of doing this incurred by the ISP...... They won't be eating it, so they will put up their prices..... So now Joe Schmoe is double "taxed"..... Once for sending an email and once for paying the ISP to help tax him......... Screw that!!!!!

Next point..... I have my own mailserver in my house..... Am I going to send the IRS the information they need..... Am I Hell!!!!!!!!!!!

Next point....... Who gets charged for the hijacked mailservers these people will start using, (and already do)?????? If my mailserver gets hijacked and they send a million emails out at 1c per email do I get billed $100,000...... I'd better bloody well not........ 'cos they'll be collecting over my dead body......

All these morons in government should stick to contemplating their belly-buttons and butt the hell outta technical matters that none of them have the intellect to comprehend!!!!!!
[END RANT.... THANK YOU FOR YOUR TIME]

[cross]

It is not possible, yet people still ponder over it.... I dont understand... There is nothing stopping me from setting up my own mail server somewhere (offshore) and letting people use it free of charge. Who's going to stop it? How can they tell how many mails have gone through my server? This has got to be the biggest load of crap I have heard of since the super DMCA.

[proactive]

, that's pretty funny! an impossible system to maintain!

Would it even be possible to create a system that could count every email sent by a user? I'm not sure... Maybe if the ISPs started filtering all outgoing data, looking for SMTP, POP3 and IMAP headers.... Nah, too complicated.

[Zonewalker]

one of the funniest things about this post is the justifiably righteous ire you've got Tiger especially this

If my mailserver gets hijacked and they send a million emails out at 1c per email do I get billed $100,000...... I'd better bloody well not........ 'cos they'll be collecting over my dead body......

I hope it's an impossible system to maintain - it does sound bloody difficult - but then I bet you they're going to have a damn good try at implementing it.

Anyone fancy setting up an internet haven paradise on some deserted island somewhere... we can tap into the lines going under the atlantic ocean

Z

[powertoad5000]

Obviously this senator has no idea of the logistics of such a tax. If he did, he would probably laugh at his own proposal. What about emails which you send from a server in another country, do they get taxed? Would this not be an elementary way of avoiding this tax? The simple fact is this tax could never work, and as Tiger Shark said, they should go back to navel gazing.

He promised to work with Congress on any spam legislation, and threw his own spam prevention idea into the mix. Scelson advocates all e-mail applications include a "no bulk e-mail" box for customers to check, bouncing bulk e-mail back to the sender.

"It costs no money on AOL's end and no money on our end," he said. It "costs no money and gives the power back to the people. I agree that there needs to be a solution, but just don't take the freedom away from the individual."

Talking of stupid, stupid ideas, here's another one (from the article). A 'no bulk-email' box? FFS, what spammer in their right mind is going to go 'gee you know this guy wouldn't appreciate this junk email, better not send it to him'?