There has been a lot of talk lately in tech publications about the possibility of selling electronic “stamps” to be used for sending email. To that I say, “Are you fuckin’ high?” At a penny an email, that would mean that I would get charged $10-$50 a month, for a service that I already have and use for free; better yet, it’s a service that I should be entitled to, technologically speaking. The worst argument I’ve heard for this is “it will stop Spam” – bullshit. I get snail-mailboxes full of junk mail, at 37 cents a pop, or whatever the bulk rate is. I used to get tons of calls from telemarketers and they have to pay for the long distance charges. Did that stop them from calling me? No. It took a state level law to stop the calls. This is whole thing is simply a plan to line someone’s
pockets – probably government – and it disgusts me.
Oh and if you want to stop Spam? Go after the Spammers. Pass a real law – unlike CAN-SPAM, reads as “[You] Can Spam [Us]” – and don’t fuck the end user simply because they use an email account. It’s just disgusting.
I believe the idea of the electronic stamps isn’t simply to force all users to pay to send email.
It’s to force bulk mailers to have to pay a fee to have any kind of guarantee that they’ll be able to bypass ISP email filters and ensure delivery of mail.
End users can ‘whitelist’ each other and ensure that all personal or business email is received witout cost. The electronic stamp would be to allow legitimate businesses the ability to send bulk mail without being filtered.
That doesn’t stop the end user from creating a filter that blocks all mail that has an electronic stamp attached, however. Thus putting the bulk mailers back where they started.
Exactly… what’s worse is that the Spam that is getting through my filter is either complete jibberish OR blank. What the hell is the point of that?!