E-mail Tax > Why is everyone against this?

Why is everyone against this?

Well, think about it man. Lets say a hacker hacked into your email account and started sending emails. Guess who would be paying for those emails that are being sent. That's right you. That's what we're talking about here spammers using others accounts to do their damage. It wouldn't cost them anything, it would only cost legitimate businesses and users. That's what everyone is so upset about.

reply to Nightfall
Lemme see...spammers are stealing bandwidth from me and everyone else, so...Let's charge everyone more money!

Not only is the idea insulting, but it will fail for the same reason that spam is hard to stop in the first place...we are in a global society, and the spammers don't live in the US. Collecting taxes, regardless of who is responsible for that absurd bureaucracy, from those who are beyond the reach of US law will be impossible.
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Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored - Aldous Huxley

reply to Nightfall
Pay a penny to whom?

I'm running an email server. My pal Fred is running an email server. I post a message from my PC to my server. My server connects to Fred's server. Fred POPs the message from his server to his PC.

What is the mechanism by which payment is exacted, and to whom?

I am mostly against anything that says "only recognized authorities can operate service X". That is contrary to the networking ethos that I understand.

I also suspicious about whether "email" can be defined in a watertight manner.

Would it make any difference if I started running an entirely different protocol between Fred and I? How would you know whether it's email or not? It's only ones and zeroes.

reply to Nightfall
Incidentally, if you spin this so that large ISPs decide to charge a penny per email posted through their servers, then that probably answers my objections. However, would that solve the problem?

reply to Synon29
Hackers cause those kinds of problems today. Hacking into bank accounts and so on. I am not blind to security concerns. As I said, there isn't a system in place...but if you want an elimination of spam, this would be a possible solution.
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reply to dave

said by dave:

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Pay a penny to whom?

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reply to dave
I have no idea if it would solve the problem...

As I said before, it was just an idea.

You watch, the days of metered email WILL come, I bet. And so what? What's wrong with attaching a premium to bulk email? It sure would cramp the lifestyle of the Nigerian "help me get my money out of the country" idiots.
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I run some forums! Linux User's Forum and Powerlink User's Forum.

reply to Nightfall
What is wrong with it? Well I am on a food email list and I got around 20 emails a day from them. You multiply that times the number of members, then multiply that by 365 day in a year and then by whatever you want to charge per email. I am beginning to see a problem. List people run for hobbies, in their free time are going to start to cost alot more money to run.
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"Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." - Bennett Marco

reply to Nightfall

said by Nightfall:

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Look at the existing postal mail system we have here.

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reply to dave

said by dave:

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How would you know whether it's email or not? It's only ones and zeroes.

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