2006-02-09
An immodest proposal:
On the news of AOL and Yahoo! planning to charge micropayments to let Spam get through, I have a proposal:
Pay me, instead.
I have neither an AOL or Yahoo! account, but I wouldn't be adverse to all properly signed and traceable spam make it to my inbox, where I could click a checkbox on each piece, a "report spam" button, and have those companies charged, say $0.10 per message. AOL and Yahoo! could bump that up with any figure they felt like, of course, and take their cut out of that. If Ticketmaster or Amazon wants to persist in sending me unsolicited emails, they can pay for the privilege. I could set up a little cottage industry in throwing away email, and I'd wager the spam numbers would drop precipitously. Plus, it'd give the spammers a great metric for how effective their marketing is.
Pay me, instead.
I have neither an AOL or Yahoo! account, but I wouldn't be adverse to all properly signed and traceable spam make it to my inbox, where I could click a checkbox on each piece, a "report spam" button, and have those companies charged, say $0.10 per message. AOL and Yahoo! could bump that up with any figure they felt like, of course, and take their cut out of that. If Ticketmaster or Amazon wants to persist in sending me unsolicited emails, they can pay for the privilege. I could set up a little cottage industry in throwing away email, and I'd wager the spam numbers would drop precipitously. Plus, it'd give the spammers a great metric for how effective their marketing is.