We need an email tax

[sarf]

Market failure has been much in the news of late, but one notable breakdown has attracted little attention: spam. Some 200bn junk emails are sent daily. More than 40bn come from the US and Canada, and about 6bn from Britain. Estimates vary, but the best guess is that more than 90 per cent of all email is spam.

What causes this stupefying supply for which there is no apparent demand? The answer is simple: sending an email is free. Yet billions of junk messages take a toll in complex and haphazard spam filters, productivity losses and misuse of increasingly crowded bandwidth. Spam is used to spread viruses and sell fake or fraudulent goods. Moreover, there is an increasing risk that spam will make legitimate email a form of second-class post.

Internet service providers (ISPs) have proposed price mechanisms to control it, but users objected. The time has come for a public sector remedy: a tax, perhaps no more than 2p, or 3c, on every email sent.

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/a...s.php?id=10764

[David]

The problem lies with fact that email is an insecure protocol, which is a problem that is easily fixed, only if there is a will to do that (I suspect that there is not) Spam benefits everyone except for the end user.

We don't need a tax IMO - neither would the enforcement of such be possible.

[CyberSmurf]

I'm assuming that the thread title is a joke.


Spammers would not be paying taxes, only non-spammers would end up paying the tax.
It could even result in you paying taxes on the spam that you receive.

[rabarberski]

There was a similar suggestion by Microsoft/Bil Gates a couple of years back. But, if I remember correctly, instead of money the proposed tax was to be payed by in server time, i.e. sending an email would cost a couple of extra (milli?)seconds. For normal email, that would be no problem (who cares if mail arrives 5 seconds later?), but for automated bulk emailing the total time would add up to hours or days...

[FMRocks]

Originally Posted by CyberSmurf

Spammers would not be paying taxes, only non-spammers would end up paying the tax.
It could even result in you paying taxes on the spam that you receive.

Bingo. We have heard this "charge for every email sent" thing before. It will not work, it will be counterproductive, and it's a bad idea. Spam can in fact be reduced if users are a bit careful, take a pro-active approach to reporting the junk mail they do receive, and if law enforcements gets more serious about prosecuting spammers when they are caught and making examples of them.

[rabarberski]

Originally Posted by FMRocks

Spam can in fact be reduced if users are a bit careful, take a pro-active approach to reporting the junk mail they do receive

Which means never, since you can't control that...

[robert@fm]

http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/emailtax.html

I agree with CyberSmurf that this thread appears to have been posted about a month late.

[hadaso]

Originally Posted by rabarberski

There was a similar suggestion by Microsoft/Bil Gates ...the proposed tax was to be payed by in server time,...

Isn't this what MS does with every new product? (use more computing power to do the same job )

Placing a tax on each email message sent (collected automatically by the delivery mechanism) is probably not feasible because the protocols don't support this and they rely on cooperation of all parties. There is however a way to set a tax on spam that seems to work: A new anti-spam clause in Israel's "Communications act" that sets a fine of about $250 on every single spam message received with no need to prove damages (with the party benefiting from the received ad liable, that is the one whose product is advertised) seems to have stopped local spam almost completely on the day it went into force (December 1, 2008). Local spam went down to almost none on that day, and I received very litle local spam since then on addresses that received a regular flow of this kind of spam before.

[Aimlink]

I don't see how this would work. MANY SMTP servers are not ISP or EMail provider run. They're run privately, on private machines in the homes of spammers. They're run as trojans on the machines of unknowing end users. The tax system wouldn't work at all.

[FMRocks]

Originally Posted by FMRocks

Spam can in fact be reduced if users are a bit careful, take a pro-active approach to reporting the junk mail they do receive,

Originally Posted by rabarberski

Which means never, since you can't control that...

I was referring to the reduction of the spam received by any given individual when I talked about personal behavior - and on an individual level, that is entirely under one's control. There is something to be said for people taking a little personal responsibility and using common sense when it comes to their own Inboxes.

[rabarberski]

Originally Posted by FMRocks

I was referring to the reduction of the spam received by any given individual when I talked about personal behavior - and on an individual level, that is entirely under one's control. There is something to be said for people taking a little personal responsibility and using common sense when it comes to their own Inboxes.

I perfectly understood what you meant, and I fully agree about people taking responsibility. However, I've learned that some people just don't care, and never will, or don't want to take responsibility. And I am claiming that you can not change that behavior for the signification majority (i.e. that one that makes spam worthwhile)

[Aimlink]

Originally Posted by rabarberski

I perfectly understood what you meant, and I fully agree about people taking responsibility. However, I've learned that some people just don't care, and never will, or don't want to take responsibility. And I am claiming that you can not change that behavior for the signification majority (i.e. that one that makes spam worthwhile)

I used to report spam and long ago gave up on it while concentrating efforts on a good spam filtering system. GMail's is astonishingly good at filtering out the spam that I receive without any false positives. My contribution is to filter and not give the spammers a hoot of evidence that I'm opening their spam and reading it.

Unfortunately I do know individuals personally, who open these messages on occasion, especially those that have gotten past their mail provider's spam filtering mechanism. This one user motivates the spammer and you only need a few thousand catches among several million spam and it's probably worth their while.

Is the reporting genuinely making a difference???

[nooby]

There is however a way to set a tax on spam that seems to work: A new anti-spam clause in Israel's "Communications act" that sets a fine of about $250 on every single spam message received with no need to prove damages (with the party benefiting from the received ad liable, that is the one whose product is advertised) seems to have stopped local spam almost completely on the day it went into force (December 1, 2008). Local spam went down to almost none on that day, and I received very little local spam since then on addresses that received a regular flow of this kind of spam before.

So instead of taxing the spammer one could tax the company that sell the product the spam is about.

[Aimlink]

Originally Posted by nooby

So instead of taxing the spammer one could tax the company that sell the product the spam is about.

I'm not really getting spammed by companies but by individuals promising me big body parts and/or a good time.

[King Of Email]

Email taxes? I'll never pay it even if a government were stupid and/or greedy enough to attempt to impose them. First, because I already pay for sending email by the virtue of my paying a pretty penny for internet service whether I use it heavily or hardly at all. Second, I'll simply go to a provider that will not comply with insane email taxation schemes. Third, taxing the sending and receiving of email will kill email commerce, not bolster or improve it. Fourth, it isn't the government's damned business how much email I send or don't send since they aren't footing the bill, I am. Fifth, with the explosion of text messaging and utilities like Twitter, etc, regular old fashioned email as the main means of instantaneous digital communication, has dwindled somewhat and is no longer the dominant powerhouse it once was. Taxing it now would be silly as doing so would only encourage other forms of untaxed communications to flourish. While taxing emails may seem to be the stuff of conspiracy rumors and the like, given the current state of power mad, money hungry governments, and greedy, corrupt politicians, such an insane scheme is something I wouldn't put past them. Finally, this whole argument about email users hogging and clogging precious bandwidth is ridiculous. Spammers are criminals whereas average users are victims. To penalize the good to punish the bad is in and of itself criminal and stupid. Also, since all taxpayers, at least in the US, involuntarily fund internet connectivity programs and expansion projects with their taxes and subscriber fees already, any ISP that chimes in with idiots who want to levy additional taxes on internet usage and email will see their subscribers vote with their feet and give their so-called political representatives an earful. Using the excuse of spam and spammers to exact taxes and fees and/or control and spy on internet users isn't going to fly with me nor is it going to improve email commerce, only further damage and diminish it. Spam can be fought quite adequately at the server level if a sponsoring provider gives a damn enough to do it and also isn't in bed with the spammers or his commercial partners.