[extropy-chat] E-mail tax may help stop spam

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

>From <a
href="http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/19/1357235">Slashdot</a>: The
Hon. Mark Dayton, Senator from Minnesota, is reportedly considering a "<a
href="http://www.startribune.com/stories/535/4220626.html">miniscule email
tax</a>" to counter the flood of spam. Thinking like an economist, he's
obviously hoping to make mass emailing unprofitable: "It's difficult to
prevent the use of spam when there's no cost associated with sending
thousands, tens of thousands or even millions of e-mails". It is interesting
to read the comments on Slashdot and the original Startribune article, which
recognizes that at the present growth rate of spam, email would become
completely unusable in five years. Dayton said legislators will keep looking
for the right balance between a low-cost service free from government
control and a system without annoyances like spam. "You can't say, `We want
it to be totally free and unrestricted and on the other hand we want it to
work smoothly and civilly,' " he said. "That's the dilemma we're all in."
I think this has an evident interest for all those who use email (these
days, nearly everyone in the western world) but also a more general interest
concerning the eternal debate on what the state should do, and what should
be left to the private sector. From a user point of view, I now have pay for
two spam filtering services, and would save money if sending spam were not
profitable. Of course, I would say other things if I were running a company
do develop spam filtering services.