
We need an email tax - robg
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10764
======
moshez
Time for the form letter!

Your post advocates a

( ) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may
have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal
law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses (X) Mailing lists
and other legitimate email uses would be affected (X) No one will be able to
find the guy or collect the money ( ) It is defenseless against brute force
attacks ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it ( ) Microsoft will not put up with
it ( ) The police will not put up with it (X) Requires too much cooperation
from spammers (X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential
employers ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists (X)
Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it (X) Lack of centrally controlling authority
for email (X) Open relays in foreign countries ( ) Ease of searching tiny
alphanumeric address space of all email addresses ( ) Asshats (X)
Jurisdictional problems (X) Unpopularity of weird new taxes ( ) Public
reluctance to accept weird new forms of money ( ) Huge existing software
investment in SMTP ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack (
) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email (X) Armies of
worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes ( ) Eternal arms race involved
in all filtering approaches ( ) Extreme profitability of spam ( ) Joe jobs
and/or identity theft ( ) Technically illiterate politicians ( ) Extreme
stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers ( ) Dishonesty
on the part of spammers themselves ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by
client filtering ( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been
shown practical ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable (X) SMTP
headers should not be the subject of legislation ( ) Blacklists suck ( )
Whitelists suck ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being
censored ( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card
fraud ( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks (X)
Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually (X) Sending email should be
free ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? ( ) Incompatiblity
with open source or open source licenses ( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to
solve the problem ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome ( ) I
don't want the government reading my email ( ) Killing them that way is not
slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work. (X) This is a stupid idea,
and you're a stupid person for suggesting it. ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going
to find out where you live and burn your house down!

~~~
tomjen
NO. The poster is an idiot, but there is no excuse for using that thoughtless
form letter.

~~~
iigs
I hold precisely the opposite opinion. (How's that for HN-sanctioned "YOU'RE
WRONG!"?)

The poster is doubtful "an idiot" for posting something that is a serious
attempt at solving spam. Sure the idea won't work, but if coming up with a
successful solution to fighting absolutely every spam message was so simple we
would already have been solved, no?

Secondly, the form letter offers a terse list of not only the pitfalls of this
particular approach, but a checklist of other things to consider when
responding with "well ok what if I change $something?".

Thirdly, it's a subtle nudge saying "lots of people have already thought about
this stuff, why not have a looksee at other work in the area and learn from
people that have gone before you", without calling them out and getting all
nasty.

Finally, levity isn't a misfeature.

Good day, ( ) sir / ( ) ma'am.

------
limmeau
Uninformed? Apparently. Ridiculous? Yes. But nonetheless, these ideas are
dangerous because they may sound plausible to internet-printing politicians.

Also, a tax on email would mean that using an unlicensed mail server in a
foreign country is tax evasion which must be banned.

------
RiderOfGiraffes
How does this interact with the expectation that much spam is sent from
networks of zombies? The "From" field is missing or wrong. Who gets taxed?

Seems to me the author doesn't actually know how spam these days is being
generated.

~~~
splat
Perhaps it's cynical of me, but the real intent of a tax like this would be to
fill the public purse. "Reducing spam" would just be a flimsy excuse to get
the tax passed.

------
keefe
Wow, talk about missing the point... "A penny charge for every email would
stop spam, and fill the empty public purse" Email is just a damn protocol,
charge for it and people will use something else. Information is free, get
used to it.

------
nw
I strongly agree that email should be taxed. However... 3c per email is a bit
steep! The price should be just enough to upset the spammers' ROI calculation.
If, on average, 1 in 100,000 spam messages results in an average $50 sale, the
email tax needn't exceed $50 per 100,000 messages sent. That comes out to
0.0005c per message, which leaves plenty of change for that large caramel
macchiato.

