You already have that in some ways: Its called a blacklist. And Type 1 spammers can sue the blacklist for anti-trust violations. But the other problem is that charging for email (and I take you to mean charging everyone a some fee, like a nickle for every message, so that bulk mailers would pay more) would raise issues of gouging and price fixing and unfair competition, and anti-trust issues. A large company can't fix different prices for the same commodity service, to different customers. --Dean On Tue, 27 May 2003, J. Noel Chiappa wrote: > > From: Dean Anderson <dean@av8.com> > > > Shannon's theorem still stands. > > ... > > In terms of spam, this means that it is impossible to construct a > > protocol that cannot be abused > > ... > > No protocol can ever be constructed that is spam-free. > > ... > > All abusers are the customer of some ISP, somewhere. There are no > > outsiders. The spammers are in fact authorized users of some ISP that > > are authorized to send email. They remain authorized to send email > > until they lose service with that ISP. > > Which is precisely why I say that the solution to spam is to charge for > email. It avoids the whole question of defining what is and is not spam. > > More specifically, change the email protocol so that when email arrives from > an entity which is not on the "email from these entities is free" list, the > email is rejected unless is accompanied by a payment for $X (where X is set > by a knob on the machine). > > (And yes, I know there are issues with relays, etc.) > > If all spam arrives with a $1 bill, I'd be happy to let spammers send me as > much spam as they want. > > Noel > >