Paying for e-mail may prove to be anti-spam tactic

NEW YORK – If the US Postal Service delivered mail for free, our mailboxes would surely runneth over with more credit card offers, sweepstakes entries and supermarket fliers.

That’s why we get so much junk e-mail: It’s essentially free to send. So Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates, among others, is now suggesting that we start buying “stamps” for e-mail.Many Internet analysts worry, though, that turning e-mail into an economic commodity would undermine its value in democratising communication.But let’s start with the math: At perhaps a penny or less per item, e-mail postage wouldn’t significantly dent the pocketbooks of people who send only a few messages a day.Not so for spammers who mail millions at a time.Though postage proposals have been in limited discussion for years – a team at Microsoft Research has been at it since 2001 – Gates gave the idea a lift in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.Details came last week as part of Microsoft’s anti-spam strategy.Instead of paying a penny, the sender would “buy” postage by devoting maybe 10 seconds of computing time to solving a math puzzle.The exercise would merely serve as proof of the sender’s good faith.Time is money, and spammers would presumably have to buy many more machines to solve enough puzzles.It all sounds good, but what if it kills the e-mail you want as well? Consider how simple and inexpensive it is today to e-mail a friend, relative or even a city-hall bureaucrat.It’s nice not to have to calculate whether greeting grandma is worth a cent.And who gets the payments? How do you build – and pay for – a system to track all this? How do you keep such a system from becoming a target for hacking and scams? Some proposals even allow recipients to set their own rates.A college student might accept e-mail with a one-cent stamp; a busy chief executive might demand a dollar.”In the regular marketplace, when you have something so fast and efficient that everyone wants it, the price goes up,” said Sonia Arrison of the Pacific Research Institute, a think tank that favours market-based approaches.To think the Internet can shatter class distinctions that exist offline is “living in Fantasyland”, Arrison said.Nonetheless, it’ll be tough to persuade people to pay – in cash or computing time that delays mail – for something they are used to getting for free.Critics of postage see more promise in other approaches, including technology to better verify e-mail senders and lawsuits to drive the big spammers out of business.- Nampa-APSo Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates, among others, is now suggesting that we start buying “stamps” for e-mail.Many Internet analysts worry, though, that turning e-mail into an economic commodity would undermine its value in democratising communication.But let’s start with the math: At perhaps a penny or less per item, e-mail postage wouldn’t significantly dent the pocketbooks of people who send only a few messages a day.Not so for spammers who mail millions at a time.Though postage proposals have been in limited discussion for years – a team at Microsoft Research has been at it since 2001 – Gates gave the idea a lift in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.Details came last week as part of Microsoft’s anti-spam strategy.Instead of paying a penny, the sender would “buy” postage by devoting maybe 10 seconds of computing time to solving a math puzzle.The exercise would merely serve as proof of the sender’s good faith.Time is money, and spammers would presumably have to buy many more machines to solve enough puzzles.It all sounds good, but what if it kills the e-mail you want as well? Consider how simple and inexpensive it is today to e-mail a friend, relative or even a city-hall bureaucrat.It’s nice not to have to calculate whether greeting grandma is worth a cent.And who gets the payments? How do you build – and pay for – a system to track all this? How do you keep such a system from becoming a target for hacking and scams? Some proposals even allow recipients to set their own rates.A college student might accept e-mail with a one-cent stamp; a busy chief executive might demand a dollar.”In the regular marketplace, when you have something so fast and efficient that everyone wants it, the price goes up,” said Sonia Arrison of the Pacific Research Institute, a think tank that favours market-based approaches.To think the Internet can shatter class distinctions that exist offline is “living in Fantasyland”, Arrison said.Nonetheless, it’ll be tough to persuade people to pay – in cash or computing time that delays mail – for something they are used to getting for free.Critics of postage see more promise in other approaches, including technology to better verify e-mail senders and lawsuits to drive the big spammers out of business.- Nampa-AP