I won't go into why. Let's skip to what. The why will provide itself.
Imagine that the advertising revolution is underway. You no longer are forced to see ads- on TV, on the internet, even in e-print- for things that simply don't interest you. Ads are subject to personalized feedback. Your current interests are respected. Branding-across-demographics is no longer necessary. You are now addressed as an individual. Meanwhile, your spam folder is still full of garbage. So let's clean it up, once and for all. Well, not exactly.
Imagine that every time anyone sent an email to someone they didn't already know, and who didn't already know them (the people in your address book), they had to pay a few pennies in postage. On email. Postage is charged at two points. Half is charged for the simple act of sending. Half is charged if the receiver opts to open the email. The reader can also opt to refund the charge. You like receiving monthly specials from REI? Don't change them for the privilege of sending them to you.
The first charge acts as a disincentive to fill the world's inboxes and spam folders with offensive, excessive amounts of garbage. Part of that change goes directly to the email recipient. You get a lot of spam? You also get a lot of pennies. Another, very small part goes to pay for the service.
The second charge is applied when you open the email. It is also a disincentive to the would-be spammer to send ineffective email. But it is also an incentive for the recipient to give that spam a change. Have a few seconds to spare? Why not earn a few cents checking out the ads you've been sent. The assumption, of course, is that if the recipient looks at the email, even for a second, the sender has recieved meaningful exposure. Certainly better than being lost in a spam folder, resented, mistrusted. Everyone knows you don't follow links in spam, right? (DON'T FOLLOW LINKS IN SPAM).
What happens if someone is sending you personal email for the first time? Well, they have the option of charging you postage, just like any spammer. However, if you respond directly to them at the email they used to send to you, they are automatically refunded. After that, you must actively choose to change them if you ever want to reverse the situation. Responding to them refunds the last several charges, or all charges in the past month, or week. Some length of time.
This would not replace spam filters. You would still be able to block unwanted email. You would never be forced to see something you didn't want to.
Why such a service wouldn't work.
Who could you trust to administer such a system? Even if they couldn't see your mail, they would have a record of what went where. If they were publically traded, they could be bought out and exploited. A private company would be just as susceptible. Even a government-regulated service would be subject to iffyness.
It would be impossible to send completely anonymous email. You would have to register your email with the service in order to get paid.
So, the service would need to be optional.
If you're a private individual that wants to be able to email anyone without a money trail attached, you'd be allowed to do so. As long as you "paid" with a captcha. The receiver wouldn't get paid any postage for the inconvenience of reading the email you sent them. And they'd know it. The email would be labeled as "anonymously sent" or "postage withheld." If it turned out to be a piece of traditional, obnoxious spam, it would still be subject to traditional filtering. The sender would have to solve a captcha for every piece of anonymous email.
It would still be possible to send millions of emails to millions of people you don't know. But you'd have to pay for the right to waste their time. And you'd have to pay the recipient directly. You'd have to think long and hard about whether it was worth the expense. Not just to send, but to be read. The quality and legitimacy of spam would rise accordingly. It would also become far, far less common.
It would still be possible to send anonymous email to anyone. You just couldn't do it quickly. And they'd know it was anonymous. They'd have the option of rejecting it for that reason, to even block it permanently.
Let's examine a common scenario. You receive an obnoxious forward from someone you don't know that well. Charge them. You take some of the money they earned from reading spam in their own inbox. They start to notice that they're losing money.
How do you administer the system? For web based email, it's done in server side software. For HDD-resident email software, it's a download.
Would anyone be exempt from being charged for sending mass emails? Would the government be able to send email for free? Perhaps.
Email is a currently a weak system. Spam is that weakness. Solve spam and the utility of email will be elevated. Marginally respectible companies willing to spend money on printing and posting junk mail will have a cost effective alternative. Trees will survive.
The system will involve an increase in web traffic. An extra two messages must be sent before an email can reach your inbox. One confirming that the sender can afford to send, one subtracting the postage. Potentially, afterwards, there would be another message. The total number of messages sent would multiply by four. But there would actually be a net gain in efficiency because spam volume would go down.
No comments:
Post a Comment