Klarinet Archive - Posting 000070.txt from 2006/02

From: o4rmondtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
Subj: [kl] Email 'postage'
Date: Mon, 06 Feb 2006 12:10:39 -0500

I suppose this question is mostly for Mark:

Yesterday's newspaper quoted the NY Times that AOL and Yahoo have
announced that they will begin to charge some senders of email 'postage'
soon --- perhaps 1/4 cent to 1 cent per email. Apparently only
"companies" will be charged (in the beginning) and apparently paying the
'postage' will accelerate delivery, but unpaid email will continue to be
delivered eventually.

For the moment, I'd like to put aside obvious issues such as: "Should a
mailing list which solicits an annual contribution and/or accepts paid
sponsors be classified as a 'company'?"

What I'd like to learn is:

Apparently AOL and Yahoo are attempting to justify their postage by
saying that it will fight spam. That is, spammers won't be able to
afford millions of emails when only 1 out of 500,000 results in a
'sale'. This causes me to ask: Do spammers _need_ an independent ISP
(and thereby ISPs can band together to impose postage)? Or can anyone
with enough money for a computer and a telephone connect to the Internet
if they have the technical savvy?

-------------------------------------------------------------------
THE WOODWIND.ORG ANNUAL DONATION DRIVE IS GOING ON NOW! VISIT
https://secure.donax-us.com/donation TO FIND OUT ALL THE FACTS!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Klarinet is a service of Woodwind.Org, Inc. http://www.woodwind.org