Should people have to buy electronic stamps to send e-mail?

Some Internet experts have long suggested that the rising tide of junk e-mail, or spam, would turn into a trickle if senders had to pay even as little as a penny for each message they sent. Such an amount might be minor for legitimate commerce and communications, but it could destroy businesses that send a million offers in hopes that 10 people will respond. The idea has been dismissed both as impractical and against the free spirit of the Internet.

Now, though, the idea of e-mail postage is getting a second look from the owners of the two largest e-mail systems in the world: Microsoft and Yahoo. Ten days ago, Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that spam would not be a problem in two years, in part because of systems that would require people to pay money to send e-mail. Yahoo, meanwhile, is quietly evaluating an e-mail postage plan being developed by Goodmail, a Silicon Valley start-up company.

"The fundamental problem with spam is there is not enough friction in sending e-mail," said Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's manager for communications products. The company is intrigued by the idea of postage, Garlinghouse said, because it would force mailers to send only those offers a significant number of people might accept. "All of a sudden, spammers can't behave without regard for the Internet providers' or end users' interests," he said.

Yea bull poopie. They just want to make more money. Microsoft and yahoo that is. Its a big faqing scam.

Can't wait for this poopie to pass. Instead of paying $70 a month for pos 3mbits per sec./ 256kbits per sec and only get max 2mbps/196kbps. We are going to start paying that plus a little more say $75 a month plus a cent for each e-mail we send or they just add it on to our monthly bill...

:( Whole faqing thing is a scam and if it passes. And they then charege for every single e-mail I'm going to join the hackers in taking the internet down. lol

I don't think it's a terrible idea if implementd correctly and with the sole intent to cut down on spam. If they proce it low like 1 cent or 1/2 cent per email and ISP's build in a set number of "free" messages per month...lets say 6000 - thats about 200 per day and bill you for excess on a monthly basis based upon either the total per month or the average per day. I know I don't send 200 emails per day even when I do have lots of recipients. For a spammer to be viable it has to be like thousands per day. Assuming 1000 pere day that is an overage of 24000 x 1 cent = $240.00 and that is only assuming the small 1000 per day rate which is probably more like 10,000 per day.

And while this would cut into the freedom that the internet provides, there needs to be a way to stop spam and this might be it ...Maybe you guys send out more email than I do, but it wouldn't cost me a thing with these assumptions.

On the other hand, if we could just find a way to positively identify spammers and send big Sicilians to thier houses to make them an offer they can't refuse then this problem would be stopped more to my satisfaction.

Note that I don't want to see email postage ever, I am just looking at it through other pints of view and it could be half way viable to them.

If they can't figure out now who is sending all the spam, how is the $.01 idea going to do it. Hell it's likely they will just use one of our credit cards to pay for it.

I use a Yahoo email account and I will not pay. Spam don't really bother me. I select the bulk/spam folder and hit delete one time. Everything in that bulk/spam folder gets deleted without me even looking at it. If Yahoo is worried about bandwidth, don't send me anything they already have tagged to be put in my bulk/spam folder. Any of the spam that gets by the spam filter I tag spam and with one click it's reported to Yahoo and deleted from my email folder, so easy.