First Convicted Spammer Gets 9 Years

[Rubber Duck]

It seems to me that the idea of charging per outgoing email is not too far away. Microsoft for one, supports it.

I would be in favour of an email tax. Lets face it everything in life is taxed. The internet needs to be policed and regulated and therefore some governmental tax is justified. If we all paid 0.1c per email, for most of us it would not add up to anything substantial, but it would soon impact on anyone sending large amounts of spam.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[Beachie]

I would be in favour of an email tax. Lets face it everything in life is taxed. The internet needs to be policed and regulated and therefore some governmental tax is justified. If we all paid 0.1c per email, for most of us it would not add up to anything substantial, but it would soon impact on anyone sending large amounts of spam.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

You want the US government policing your personal communications? And you want to pay them for the priviledge?

 

[www.FedPrimeRate.com]

The real price of spam is all the legitimate emails that get lost in the flood of junk...

I couldn't agree more. In fact, one of my web hosting clients wanted to fire me yesterday because he thought I wasn't responding to his support emails. Turns out my emails were getting nabbed by his spam filter. I can only assume that this sort of thing happens A LOT.

AmCy

I would be in favour of an email tax...

Sorry but a tax on email is a very bad idea. There's nothing like a tax to stunt economic growth, and as an Internet business person I can communicate that the whole .COM "bubble bursting" phenomenon of the late 90's was bad enough. A tax would hurt everybody, especially the small to medium Internet players.

AmCy

 

[seeker]

the tax idea will most likely nevr happen.

anyhow, to whom would I pay the tax?
To the US government, or to some company, or will you be paying Greece when sending me email???

it is not feasible.

 

[domaintalk]

LOL Dwrixon As you said tax per emails , for example a person sends 500 emails per day including business, friends and everything and he will have to pay tax per email?
Its like throwing the money into the river.

Plus emails are from all countries and not more then few governments would agree to impose taxes.

And about spams , if a company spams or so it gets a bad name and the person doesnt likes to go to the site again because he doesnt likes it.

I agree beachie, for example a hosting company gets sold and it emails as a bulk of 100-200 clients about the change, most of the emails wont go through and will be in the junk because it will be an mass sending of emails and the email systems have an quantity like allow at once 30-50 emails to go through.

My 2 cents.

Regards
VP

 

[Rubber Duck]

You want the US government policing your personal communications? And you want to pay them for the priviledge?

Email is already being monitored by the likes of the CIA and FBI, so there would be nothing new there. It is likely that a levy would reduce the amount malicious traffic and would therefore reduce the need for intrusive monitoring.


The idea would be for the sender to pay a very small levy. Most people send less than 100 emails a week, so the average cost would be very small. It would result in a huge saving for me as I have to filter out a huge amounts of junk which cost me an awful lot of time.

I am both a small business man and a domain name speculator, I total disagree with comments from others that this would damage small businesses. Spamming certainly isn't small business and it switches people off from online marketing in general, so is therefore highly damaging.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[www.FedPrimeRate.com]

the tax idea will most likely nevr happen.

anyhow, to whom would I pay the tax?
To the US government, or to some company, or will you be paying Greece when sending me email???

it is not feasible.

The government, in theory, can tax your ISP, or your web host, or your email provider (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) Your ISP or web host would then have to charge you more for accessing the 'Net and hosting your domains, and those free email websites would either start charging , or they would implement some new and annoying feautures that would compensate them for their increased cost (an example would be displaying huge banner ads that you would have to view for 10 seconds or so before you can read or send each and every email message.)

AmCy

 

[Rubber Duck]

the tax idea will most likely nevr happen.

anyhow, to whom would I pay the tax?
To the US government, or to some company, or will you be paying Greece when sending me email???

it is not feasible.

The tax would have to be collected by service providers, generally ISP or email agents. The issue of to whom it is paid is an interesting one. Perhaps we could alll contribute to a UN fund used to promote Internet Development in the third world. Such a move would do, a huge amount to reduce the commercial disadvantages that the countries face and would provide impetus to the global economy.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[seeker]

which government???
I dont see any constitutional rights here in (most) of Europe for such a tax.
also, lets say they tax me to send an email, should the receiving part be taxed to 'import' the email?
What If I go through a Caribean proxy/server, will there be an off shore tax free email haven?
it simply cant work.

 

[www.FedPrimeRate.com]

UN fund...

Forget about the UN. The UN is an extraordinarily inefficient organization. The UN is a country club for diplomats and their ilk.

I'm not a Bolton conservative (I'm quite the progressive, actually); I just know about the UN.

AmCy

 

[Rubber Duck]

The government, in theory, can tax your ISP, or your web host, or your email provider (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) Your ISP or web host would then have to charge you more for accessing the 'Net and hosting your domains, and those free email websites would either start charging , or they would implement some new and annoying feautures that would compensate them for their increased cost (an example would be displaying huge banner ads that you would have to view for 10 seconds or so before you can read or send each and every email message.)

AmCy

From my experience these free web mail services are the root cause of many of the problems. Most conmen use such address due to the lack of traceability. I actually use a web based service to POP my email through domains, but I suscribe for that service. Personally, I think it is good value.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[www.FedPrimeRate.com]

What If I go through a Caribean proxy/server...

Doesn't matter. The email system that eventaully send out your message can be taxed.

AmCy

 

[Rubber Duck]

which government???
I dont see any constitutional rights here in (most) of Europe for such a tax.
also, lets say they tax me to send an email, should the receiving part be taxed to 'import' the email?
What If I go through a Caribean proxy/server, will there be an off shore tax free email haven?
it simply cant work.

Well, it is due to the international scope of the problem that I proposed an international body the UN, it seemed preferable to ICANN.

Incidentally, ICANN impose a charge on all domain registrations, so where is the constitutional protecton there?

Spam is often sent from offshore Havens so these need to addressed as part of any solution. Shouldn't be too difficult to figure out how much each country of service provider should be collecting. If they don't cough up then cut their connection.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[Beachie]

The bottom line is that in the unlikely event that a a tax were somehow imposed, people would simply bypass the existing SMTP RFC821 protocol (not necessarily a bad thing), create a new protocol and thus avoid the tax. Someone would stick a few SMTP<->NewProtocol gateway servers in untaxable jurisdictions like Tadjikistan to allow for legacy addressing..

 

[Rubber Duck]

The bottom line is that in the unlikely event that a a tax were somehow imposed, people would simply bypass the existing SMTP RFC821 protocol (not necessarily a bad thing), create a new protocol and thus avoid the tax. Someone would stick a few SMTP<->NewProtocol gateway servers in untaxable jurisdictions like Tadjikistan to allow for legacy addressing..

I am afraid this is a bit too technical for me, but I fail to see why any levy would be limited to a given protocol.

I don't believe that there are any untaxable jurisdictions as services could be suspended for those that act outside the system. If the poorest countries were net beneficaries, there would be no reason for them not to co-operate.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

 

[Beachie]

I am afraid this is a bit too technical for me, but I fail to see why any levy would be limited to a given protocol.

I don't believe that there are any untaxable jurisdictions as services could be suspended for those that act outside the system. If the poorest countries were net beneficaries, there would be no reason for them not to co-operate.

Best Regards
Dave Wrixon

The concept is relatively simple - to be able to tax an email, "they" must know that an email has been sent. The SMTP protocal is basically just an agreed-upon language which the servers speak when trying to deliver your mail. Think of it like taxing the English language $1 per word. Everyone would start speaking French.

Firstly, with the vast matrix of connectivity that is the internet, there is no central point at which all emails travel through. Unless "they" could force everyone to upgrade their mail servers (running any number of different mail systems on any number of different Operating Systems) to include some sort of taxing system, there is no way they could even tell if you'd sent an email. Who would provide the tech support for such a rollout? How would they prevent modification to the tax software by those of us with a hex-editor and a couple of hours up our sleeve?

Secondly, there is no "they" - contrary to popular belief the US doesn't own the internet. Every country can do what they please, irrespective of what Microsoft, the US and the UN want. Sure, some Western countries would play along, but the spammers can move to (or at least host from) any of the majority of countries who wouldn't.

Thirdly, if they implement the tax system add-on to everyone's email servers, we'd just write another protocol. I guarantee within 24 hours there would be a secondary system for mail delivery. Then "they" would have to force everyone to install a taxing system on that..

 

[seeker]

excellent point beachie.
this whole tax thing is as close to happening as the download your mind to a computer thingy

P.S.
regarding taxing your SIP.
this is already being donw. When you subscribe to an ISP, there is usually a tax involved for ALL services.
They can not single out smtp/pop per message.

 

[Beachie]

this whole tax thing is as close to happening as the download your mind to a computer thingy

I actually *need* that mind backup thingy! :shy:

 

[fab]

Well what is NDP gonna get?

 

[brp]

He probably isnt anywhere near as big a hacker as those guys. This is just a bug he exploited. But would be interesting to see what happens.