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[FYI] Bald Briefporto fuer e-Mails? MS und YAHOO sprechen sich dafuer aus.
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Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
The idea of e-mail postage gains currency
Saul Hansell NYT
Monday, February 2, 2004
Should people have to buy electronic stamps to send e-mail?
Some Internet experts have long suggested that the rising tide of
junk e-mail, or spam, would turn into a trickle if senders had to pay
even a penny for each message they sent. Such an amount might be
minor for legitimate commerce and communications, but it could
destroy businesses that send a million offers in hope that 10 people
will respond. The idea nonetheless has been dismissed both as
impractical and against the free spirit of the Internet.
Now, though, the idea of e-mail postage is getting a second look from
the owners of the two largest e-mail systems in the world, Microsoft
and Yahoo. Last month, Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman, told the
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that spam would not be a
problem in two years, in part because of systems that would require
people to pay money to send e-mail. Yahoo, meanwhile, is quietly
evaluating an e-mail postage plan being developed by Goodmail, a
Silicon Valley start-up.
"The fundamental problem with spam is there is not enough friction in
sending e-mail," said Yahoo's manager for communications products,
Brad Garlinghouse.
The company is intrigued by the idea of postage, Garlinghouse said,
because it would force mailers to send only those offers that a
significant number of people might buy.
"All of a sudden," Garlinghouse said, "spammers can't behave without
regard for the Internet providers' or end users' interests. "
Neither Yahoo nor Microsoft has made any commitment to charging
postage, in part because the idea still faces substantial opposition
among Internet users.
"Damn if I will pay postage for my nice list," said David Farber, a
computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who runs a
mailing list on technology and policy with 30,000 recipients. Farber
said electronic postage systems were likely to be too complex and
would charge noncommercial users who should be able to send e-mail
free.
"I suspect the cost of postage will start out small and it will
rapidly escalate," he said. In the meantime, the big Internet
providers, including Microsoft and Yahoo, in recent weeks have
renewed talks that stalled last year about creating technological
standards to help identify senders of legitimate e-mail. That way,
spammers would either have to identify themselves or run the risk
that users would discard all anonymous mail.
But for the big Internet access providers, or ISP's, the prospect of
e-mail postage creating a revenue stream that could help offset the
cost of their e-mail systems is undeniably attractive.
"Sending large volumes of e-mail involves costs that are paid for by
the ISP's and eventually by consumers," said Linda Beck, executive
vice president for operations at EarthLink. "Should there be some
sort of financial responsibility borne by the originators of these
large-volume programs? I think there should."
E-mail between private individuals, Beck added, should remain free.
Differentiating among classes of e-mail is one of the substantial
technical difficulties that e-mail postage proposals face. In
wrestling with this matter, academic researchers have proposed
complex stamp systems in which each e-mail recipient sets a price for
a message to enter his or her in-box. Gates talked at Davos about a
system that would allow users to waive charges for friends and
relatives.
Goodmail, founded by Daniel Dreymann, an Israeli entrepreneur, is
developing a system that it hopes will be easier to adopt. It
proposes that only high-volume mailers pay postage at first, at a
rate of a penny a message, with the money going to the e-mail
recipient's Internet access provider. The company suggests that the
Internet providers share the payments with their users, either
through rebates or by lowering monthly fees.
The Goodmail system is designed to work even if not all senders and
not all Internet providers participate. A mass e-mailer would sign up
with Goodmail, buying a block of stamps - actually an encrypted code
number - that it would insert into the header of each e-mail message.
If the recipient's Internet provider participates in the system, it
decrypts the stamp and submits it to Goodmail. Only then is the
sender's account charged a penny and the receiving ISP paid the
penny, minus a service fee by Goodmail for acting as a clearinghouse.
Senders do not pay for stamps that are not used, but they do pay
whether an e-mail recipient reads the message or not.
Under this plan, Internet providers would still accept incoming e-
mail without stamps. But that mail would be subject to the same sort
of spam filters in use now, which can at times divert legitimate
mail.
The Internet providers would deliver all stamped mail without any
filter. Goodmail does not require that stamped mail be requested by
the recipient, the so-called opt-in requirement of most other anti-
spam systems.
"The very notion that I have to get permission to send you a
marketing message doesn't make sense and is not good public policy,"
said Goodmail's chief executive, Richard Gingras.
Even so, Gingras said, Goodmail would require mailers to verify their
identities and to take people off their mailing lists if such a
request was made.
This kind of approach would require major policy changes by Internet
providers, which all ban unsolicited e-mail even if they have little
ability to block it.
In fact, some worry that big spammers will pay the postage.
Charles Stiles, manager of the postmaster department at America
Online, said he was concerned that such a system might restrict the
wrong mail.
"It is the spammers," he said, "who are the ones with the big
pockets."
The New York Times
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