OT: Charge / tax per e-mail?

[Cipher7071]

When I came in today from round 1 of scooping snow from my driveway, I put on some soup and decided to watch a little TV with lunch. 'The McLaughlin Group' (political discussion) was on PBS. Somewhere toward the end of it, up came a picture of our old buddy Bill Gates advocating what...?

You guessed it: the very topic of this thread. It seems he is now advocating a 1 cent per e-mail fee as a solution to spam. The story said that about 58% of e-mail is spam, and Bill Gates seems to think that the problem will be solved in 2 years. He must see a buck in it for Microsoft somewhere.

Maybe that's what spawned the return of that urban legend. Just when I thought this thread was headed for the boneyard...

[ February 22, 2004, 17:23: Message edited by: Cipher7071 ]

[Parasite]

I read a Sci-Fi book that seemed to have a good idea. Everyone could set the price for recieving Email. You would pay that price to send email to that address. If someone sent a message to your $100 box, you would tend to pay attention. If they sent it too your 5 cent or 1 cent less so. You could then do a reply to cancel the fee. This still has some problems like address spoffing, money landering, ect, but it does seem to be a possible start.

Why let the goverment in, can't we be greedy too.

I don't remember the book name, but it was about a Beserker type device attacking earth every 5 years. Not a "Beserker" Beserker , but a planetoid machine like the Saber...n kind.