Re: Excerpt on SPAM from Edupage, 11 February 1997

At 03:25 PM 2/12/97 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote:

>Having said this, the flaw remains that "junk mail" is "free" to the
>sender. This is a flaw in the ontology of e-mail, and needs to be fixed.
>Digital postage is one approach.

I decided long ago (okay, well, many months ago) that the "solution" is to 
invent a mechanism to allow spammers/advertisers to include a small amount 
of ecash as a gift with every spam.  I figure that if USnail junk-mailers 
are willing to pay $0.32 for postage and probably $0.50 for production, 
printing, and labelling costs, all for no guarantees of results, they should 
even more happy to pay, say, 10 cents to each recipient.  At that rate, an average 
person would probably receive enough "spam" to  pay for his Internet 
account, quite analogous to the way advertiser-supported TV is presented to 
the public for no explicit charge.




Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com

jim bell wrote:
> 
> At 03:25 PM 2/12/97 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote:

<Some deleted>

> even more happy to pay, say, 10 cents to each recipient.  At that rate, an average
> person would probably receive enough "spam" to  pay for his Internet
> account, quite analogous to the way advertiser-supported TV is presented to
> the public for no explicit charge.

	Yes, but why does monetary compensation make it then O.K.?  I'd rather
pay for my Internet access, then be bombarded by spam, no matter what
they paid me!  I think the best soln. is the one that is currently in
place for phone calls - they can call once, but if I tell them not to
call me again and they do, I can then begin legal action against them. 
I pay more per month for my phone service than my Internet service (
although in NY, *everything* is more expensive. ), and junk phone calls
are way more intrusive then spam.

> 
> Jim Bell
> jimbell@pacifier.com

-pete

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