postage fees on email

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentSe...=1012571727088

US internet service providers are coming round to the idea that they may have to start levying "postage" fees on those who send out huge amounts of commercial e-mail, because anti-spam filters have failed to keep down the growth of junk e-mail.


The idea of fee-based e-mail is controversial among internet libertarians and groups such as the Direct Marketing Association, the politically powerful lobbying group that comprises 4,700 companies, many of which use e-mail to advertise to customers.

But advocates of a fee-based system for bulk e-mail believe it would help distinguish between legitimate e-mail from respectable corporations and offensive spam from shady operators who presumably could not afford to send tens of millions of messages a day.

Proponents of e-mail payment systems argue that corporations that have adopted online marketing are concerned that up to 20 per cent of their e-mails are not getting past spam filters.

Another concern is that rapid growth in legitimate bulk e-mail could further stress network capacity and place huge financial burdens on ISPs and corporations that carry and receive the messages.

These groups have already been forced to hire technicians, deploy filters and bolster network capacity to cope with the flood of spam.

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the real hard core spamers operating from floating servers in S.E. asia will not be affected by this at all.

here's the key element in this whole thing:

"Proponents of e-mail payment systems argue that corporations that have adopted online marketing are concerned that up to 20 per cent of their e-mails are not getting past spam filters."

so with legislation like this spammers who pay-up must be allowed freedom from commercial spam filtering and this will be protected by law. well that’s what i see anyway

Yahoo is thinking about charging bulk emailers 1 cent a letter...bet that’s going to keep spam out of yahoo mailboxs.

this would open up whole new vistas to commercial albeit legitimate bulk emailers

and they call this fighting spam!

write your reps in government and tell them what you think of the Direct Marketing Association. these guys are a powerful lobbying group but they don’t elect anyone. if the politicians don’t get re-elected all the perks stop. either that or you can like it when it comes to pass

kill it before it grows