Charging for Smoke Signals. (October 13th, 2003)

I share Liz's concerns regarding the 'tiny cost per message' email proposal, though perhaps from a slightly different perspective.

Sure, we want to combat SPAM. I agree. But I disagree with what I perceive as everyone's misguided ideas on handling Spam. I have my own ideas on handling SPAM, and the idea is something that we geeks tend to minimize like a window we wish to ignore.

The idea derives from basic internet marketing. If you want results for your site - don't depend on the internet to give results to you. You need flyers. You need billboards. You need business cards and a trustworthy smile.

Raising the cost of email beyond 0 doesn't help the situation. But finding the culprits - the businesses behind the SPAM - that's the answer. To collect money... they need to receive it. Punish those that receive it - and SPAM goes away.

Perhaps there are people in the industry that don't want SPAM to go away, and are dancing around the problem? The solution is blatantly obvious to anyone who dedicates 2.5 neurons to the problem for 0.25 milliseconds. Or less.

But what about the digital divide? As Liz points out, people without credit cards will be out of the loop - widening what I term as the technofiscal divide. So this whole Micropayment concept with regard to emails is something that I consider American-centric, and as such, sophomoric.

There's a world outside that hasn't been inducted into the Club of the Internet. There's a majority of the world's population that don't have access to the internet. And you want to charge for email?

Hand me some wood and some water with a nice blanket. I'll send smoke signals, and hit anyone over the head with some firewood who tries to charge me for every puff of smoke.

Here's an open slap at all these people who want to charge for email. Remember when they charged for email access by the hour (they still do it in Trinidad for the non-elite)? Now it's unlimited access for a cost per month.

You want to control SPAM? Stop pussyfooting around the solution. Get laws in every country on the books to deal with companies that use SPAM. Not these cheesy $5K fines. No. Hit them so hard that you can pierce the corporate veil. But if people really wanted to solve SPAM, it would have been solved already.

The answer is NOT in technology, the answer is in society. Society is governed by ethics which become laws when people act unethically, laws are enforced for the sake of society, and society moves on.

Sorry, I am at the end of my patience with the se folks overengineering solutions for getting rid of SPAM. It's so bloody simple...