Posted on: Sunday, March 7, 2004

Anti-spam crusaders propose methods of 'charging' to send e-mail

By Anick Jesdanun
Associated Press

NEW YORK — If the U.S. Postal Service delivered mail for free, our mailboxes would surely run over with more credit card offers, sweepstakes entries and supermarket fliers.

That's why we get so much junk e-mail: It's essentially free to send. So Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates, among others, is suggesting we start buying e-mail "stamps."

Many Internet analysts worry, though, that turning e-mail into an economic commodity would undermine its value in democratizing communication.

At perhaps a penny or less per item, e-mail postage wouldn't significantly dent the pocketbooks of people who send only a few messages a day. Not so for spammers who mail millions at a time.

Although postage proposals have been in limited discussion for years — a team at Microsoft Research has been at it since 2001 — Gates gave the idea a lift in January at the World Economic Forum.

Details came recently as part of Microsoft's anti-spam strategy. Instead of paying a penny, the sender would "buy" postage by devoting maybe 10 seconds of computing time to solving a math puzzle, as proof of the sender's good faith.

Time is money, and spammers presumably would have to buy many more machines to solve enough puzzles.

The open-source software Hashcash takes a similar approach, and has been incorporated into other spam-fighting tools.

Meanwhile, Goodmail Systems Inc. has been in touch with e-mail providers about using cash. Goodmail envisions charging bulk mailers a penny a message to bypass spam filters. That all sounds good for curbing spam, but what if it kills the e-mail you want as well?

Also, what of the communities tied together through e-mail — cancer survivors sharing tips on coping; parents coordinating soccer schedules? Those pennies add up.

"It detracts from your ability to speak and to state your opinions to large groups of people," said David Farber, a veteran technologist who runs a mailing list with 20,000 subscribers. "It changes the whole complexion of the Net."

Goodmail chief executive Richard Gingras said individuals might get to send a limited number for free, while mailing lists and nonprofits might get price breaks.

Vint Cerf, one of the Internet's founding fathers, said spammers are bound to exploit any free allotments. "The spammers will probably just keep changing their mailbox names," Cerf said. "I continue to be impressed by the agility of spammers."

And who gets the payments? How do you build and pay for a system to track all this?

Also, it'll be tough to persuade people to pay for something they are used to getting for free.

Critics of postage see more promise in other approaches, including technology to better verify senders and lawsuits to drive big spammers out of business.

"Back in the early '90s, there were e-mail systems that charged you 10 cents a message," said John Levine, an anti-spam advocate. "And they are all dead."