Bulk e-mail fees near as spam filters fail
By Scott Morrison in San Francisco
Published: February 16 2004 19:09, Financial Times - full article here.
US internet service providers are coming round to the idea that they may have to start levying "postage" fees on those who send out huge amounts of commercial e-mail, because anti-spam filters have failed to keep down the growth of junk e-mail.
The idea of fee-based e-mail is controversial among internet libertarians and groups such as the Direct Marketing Association, the politically powerful lobbying group that comprises 4,700 companies, many of which use e-mail to advertise to customers.
But advocates of a fee-based system for bulk e-mail believe it would help distinguish between legitimate e-mail from respectable corporations and offensive spam from shady operators who presumably could not afford to send tens of millions of messages a day.
Proponents of e-mail payment systems argue that corporations that have adopted online marketing are concerned that up to 20 per cent of their e-mails are not getting past spam filters.
Another concern is that rapid growth in legitimate bulk e-mail could further stress network capacity and place huge financial burdens on ISPs and corporations that carry and receive the messages.
These groups have already been forced to hire technicians, deploy filters and bolster network capacity to cope with the flood of spam.
Estimates suggest that spam costs US companies and ISPs about $10bn-$20bn (€7.8bn-€15.6bn, £5.3bn-£10.6bn) a year in direct costs and lost productivity.
Yahoo!, one of the top US internet service providers, said it was evaluating technology from Goodmail, a Silicon Valley start-up that is developing a 1-cent "stamp" system for bulk e-mail.
Meanwhile rivals Earthlink, America Online and Microsoft's MSN are all weighing alternative measures.
"Payments could and probably should happen at some point. We certainly don't want to charge people for individual e-mail," said Robert Sanders, chief systems architect at Earthlink.
"We need to find a way to distinguish between individual e-mails and commercial e-mails."
Bill Gates of Microsoft has taken up the cause as well, predicting last month that new technologies including payment systems could virtually eradicate spam within two years.
ISPs also want to develop an internet-wide identity verification system that would help ISPs and users distinguish between legitimate e-mails from "trusted" sources and offensive junk e-mail from spammers who try to hide their identities.
Filters have reduced the amount of spam reaching individuals, but the volume of junk e-mail on the internet continues to rise, and now accounts for about 65 per cent of all e-mail traffic.
A US anti-spam law enacted at the start of this year appears to have had no effect on the growth of junk e-mail.