Basically any law that doesn't restrict all mail to opt-in only is totally worthless. CAN-SPAM indeed--a law so people can send spam.
Look at it this way: say, generously, that the average e-mail is 50K (it's not--more like 8K). To use one fully paid example of what it costs to actually transmit that much data, I get 192GB of transfer from my webhost for $15. that works out to 0.0004 CENTS a message. Even a charge of .01 cent per message would be 25 (realistically, over 100) times more expensive to send than it's "actual" cost. If the milicent payment was the same as the actual cost, or even double it, it wouldn't significantly increase the cost to spammers--to work, it has to be orders of magnitude higher.
This low cost of sending e-mails is what allows organizations (say, my underfunded university) to send out on-demand messages to thousands of students and employees, or political groups to mail thousands of opt-in members, without worrying about undue cost.
Most importantly, these systems would probably be totally useless, because the current "next big thing" in spamming is using virus/trojan/spyware programs to hijack home computers and, instead of setting up the zombie computer as a mail server, just use their ISP's server. Not only is this harder to blacklist, but of course with a micropayment system the one footing the bill would be the idiot with the unprotected computer--he/she would get it fixed pretty quick, but the spammer'd be off finding a new victim anyway.
How about we just have summary executions for anyone convicted of sending anything but opt-in bulk e-mail? I jest, but that'd probably cause at least a few of the scumbags to think twice.
Aah, but this explains exactly what the issue with pay-to-email systems: to work they, BY DEFINITION, have to cost more than the actual cost of trasmitting the message.clayjohanson said:
Look at it this way: say, generously, that the average e-mail is 50K (it's not--more like 8K). To use one fully paid example of what it costs to actually transmit that much data, I get 192GB of transfer from my webhost for $15. that works out to 0.0004 CENTS a message. Even a charge of .01 cent per message would be 25 (realistically, over 100) times more expensive to send than it's "actual" cost. If the milicent payment was the same as the actual cost, or even double it, it wouldn't significantly increase the cost to spammers--to work, it has to be orders of magnitude higher.
This low cost of sending e-mails is what allows organizations (say, my underfunded university) to send out on-demand messages to thousands of students and employees, or political groups to mail thousands of opt-in members, without worrying about undue cost.
Most importantly, these systems would probably be totally useless, because the current "next big thing" in spamming is using virus/trojan/spyware programs to hijack home computers and, instead of setting up the zombie computer as a mail server, just use their ISP's server. Not only is this harder to blacklist, but of course with a micropayment system the one footing the bill would be the idiot with the unprotected computer--he/she would get it fixed pretty quick, but the spammer'd be off finding a new victim anyway.
How about we just have summary executions for anyone convicted of sending anything but opt-in bulk e-mail? I jest, but that'd probably cause at least a few of the scumbags to think twice.