Bill Gates Pushing for Charging for Emails

[Luthien]

Unbelievable, I have not heard that subject brought up in some time on prime time news. Now Bill Gates already a rich SOB wants to charge people for emails. If that happens expect the cost to sky rocket by greedy bastards from whatever it starts at just like mail postage to inordinate sums. Obvious ploy they use is to say it will stop spam which is totally false. Hackers will hijack email accounts spamming their crap just like they hijack peoples ebay and paypal accounts by the thousands every day. LOL what a fking joke. Big business is going to ruin the internet most of us grew up with by taxation and the charging of fees for things we use freely today. Imagine duty tax on emails, web pages, links, pictures, downloading of files, posting in threads like anands, oh and dont forget taxes on top of taxes just like with your phone lines but specifically for internet connections so they can tax your ass off. Now, that will put a big dent in the free trade of information. You may say they cant do that the internet is the WWW but oh they sure as hell can if they can do it to email. Imagine the cost this will create for online businesses.

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Ugh....McFly.....hello? This is the hardware isle. Software and Off Topic are a few rows down.

AnandTech Moderator

 

[ElFenix]

who is collecting the fee?

 

[Luthien]

I only caught the end of it so I dont know the answer to that. I assume the Government or it will be up to the service providers. If up to service providers IMO it wont take long before colusion between them sets a standard fee.

 

[rmrf]

set up your own mail server.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: rmrf
set up your own mail server.

No sh!t man. If they start charging, I'm putting my mail server online ASAP!

 

[InlineFive]

Link at CNN.

I hope they don't charge for our own mail servers then.

-Por

 

[Tab]

I could see it solving the problem of spam, however its a poor solution.

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: Tabb
I could see it solving the problem of spam, however its a poor solution.

So many people would (hopefully) protest that it wouldn't happen. This sort of thing has been suggested before and it always failed.

-Por

 

[AWhackWhiteBoy]

where the hell did you hear this from? Tech TV? M$ wants to merely step in and create a tracking system, an add-on to the pop3 standards to allow companies and ISPs to keep tabs on excessive spamming.

 

[jfall]

There is no way in hell this would solve the problem of spam. I don't know why people are so concerned over spam anyways, I have my own domain with mail that I don't advertise, and use a hotmail account e-mail for anything that requires me to fill an e-mail.. I rarely ever see a spam message

 

[Derango]

Originally posted by: Luthien
I assume the Government or it will be up to the service providers..

What government? The internet is international. There isn't one government that can collect a fee. A lot of spam comes from sources outside the US. The only thing this would do is kill e-mail. Guess we don't have to worry about spam then, huh?

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: jfall
There is no way in hell this would solve the problem of spam.

Sure it would, it's a great way to stop it. If there's some marginal charge for email, then all of a sudden the concept of spamming breaks, since the profits earned no longer offset the costs.

 

[WobbleWobble]

Spammers will find a way to bypass the charge by sending it through some unlucky user's account. That's what I invision happenening.

 

[InlineFive]

Originally posted by: WobbleWobble
Spammers will find a way to bypass the charge by sending it through some unlucky user's account. That's what I invision happenening.

Behold the newest generation of SpyWare.

-Por

 

[AWhackWhiteBoy]

a simple addition of a tracking header in the e-mail will force people to be tracked and trace e-mails to certain accounts. limit those accounts and you will curb spam in a big way.

 

[FreshPrince]

require reverse lookup...it's a sure way to cut down spam!

btw, can't a brutha make a lil money?

 

[cowdog]

I am pushing for Bill Gates to pay me everytime I send an email from a system running a Windows OS.