waider | that'll be thirty cents, please

Hmm, maybe I need to give up reading c|net again: Is charging for email such a bad idea?. Well, yes, it is here, because you're not offering a solution to the biggest problem with the idea, which is "How Do You Charge For Email?" It's all well and good to tell me that if a spammer is charged 25¢ per email his business model goes out the window, but how does the spammer pay that money? With a stolen credit card? By hijacking, as is increasingly frequent, someone else's connection, so that the hijackee pays instead? How does this solve spam any better than faulty laws?

How about going after the money? Prosecute companies who knowingly use spammers to advertise, lower merchant credit limits on companies caught advertising with spam, cancel credit-card payments to spammers - I know AmEx can take up to three months to settle with the merchant, which is plenty time to investigate spam complaints. It's not that hard; sure, the spammer's hidden away in a cave in Florida, but the company name is right there on the spam. The charge usually levelled at this tactic is that, well, my competitor sends spam with my name on it, and I take the rap; I can't see how this stands up to even basic scrutiny, since if I've paid for a spamming run, there will be a paper trail pointing at me. If I haven't, sure, the competitor and the spammer both get away with it, but hey. It's at least worth a try.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I've gotten several spam ads that say "Please buy child pornography from our company. We also send spam, sell heroin, and maintain boarding for hostages."

I'm not exactly sure what's going on with those, but I suspect that this is just spammers retaliating against some domain that pissed them off. There's no way to insure that the advertisement is actually being placed under the direction of the company whose name appears in the advertising.

Er, did you not read the bit in the post where I mentioned exactly that scenario?

Why must there be a paper trail? It might be all at the spammer's end of things, and you admitted it's hard to find the spammer.

I guess "must" is pretty strong. In the current environment where all the attention is focussed on the spammers and not the people using the spammers' services, there's no incentive for the users to hide the money trail. So the chances are that if you get a spam for Bill's Business, Inc., and it's not a frame-up job, then there will be an entry in Bill's accounts saying, "Spamming Run: $300". If it was payed for in cash, you then lean on Bill. If it was paid for by traceable means, e.g. wire transfer, credit card, etc. then you follow the trail. If the trail goes outside your jurisdiction, you can always go back and lean on Bill.

Yes, it's imperfect. However, it's got a better chance of succeeding than simply charging people to use email at all.

Ooh! Ooh! Do 'challenge-response' next!

Didn't I do that before? You're just baiting me, aren't you? Curse you and your l33t guitar skillz!!!!!@@@

that'll be thirty cents, please

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