Will certified e-mail stop spam? (was: unsubscribing... etc)

[Peter]

> Let me start by saying that I haven't been actively following this thread so I
> may be very misinformed, but you're last paragraph really struct a chord with
> me, particularly this sentence: "This would prod 'innocent ignorers' into
> action."  Now, I don't know if you are talking about charging business servers,
> who should be taking appropriate action to ensure they're not part of the
> problem or actual home users (Mom and Pop), but I'm under the impression that
> it is the latter.  THIS WILL NEVER HAPPEN.  I can just imagine the outrage of
> people who are already frustrated by computers having to pay an additional
> charge to be on the internet when, I think, a lot of these people are on the
> internet only because they feel they have to be.  They are already upset about
> paying for something they don't fully understand.

Anybody who sends email that gets returned as spam, beyond a certain 
small quota that takes care of temporary misconfigurations, should be 
charged in escrow, by his own ISP. If the email is not returned as spam, 
say within a week, the fee is waived. Mailing lists request and receive 
special permission. Anybody who sends spam using that ISP pays through 
the nose. Anybody whose computer was zombied gets a scary bill and the 
alternative of terminating the account or immediately sanitizing the 
computer and maybe paying a reduced fee for the inconvenience caused. 
The ISPs will be only too glad to oblige. Any spammer on their network 
would be charged to the tune of $20,000 per month. This would be good, 
because other ISPs who would receive the spam could sue them, and they 
would need the money for legal costs...

Peter
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