> Hmm... let's see, if a payment system could be introduced which does not
> create administrative overhead, what would be the postage for a 10KB
> e-mail message?
>
> At a server farm like Digiserve (see http://www.digiserve.com) you can
> transfer about 150MB of data for one dollar. So the price of the
> internet connection bandwidth which is required for sending a 10KB
> e-mail message is about US-$0.000067
>
> A similar amount of connection bandwidth is required at the receiving
> end, therefore "international priority" postage for the 10KB e-mail
> message should come to about US-$0.00013
Assuming these numbers are accurate, which I wouldn't doubt, do you
suppose that such charges would slow down a spammer at all? As I
understand it, they're probably paying at least 100 times that per e-mail
address. What's another hundredth of a cent to put your ad directly in
someone's e-mail box?
Furthermore, I can't imagine a situation any time soon where the
administrative overhead could be reasonable. Ideally, there will be a
time when online financial transactions can happen cheaply, but now it's
probably $0.25 to $1 per transaction for something like an online credit
card order.
I'm not saying necessarily that charging like this is a bad idea, but it
hardly seems worth it for what the actual cost is. corporations and ISPs
don't seem to mind paying the fractions of pennies for their customers to
use the Internet. I think the individuals *would* mind the hassle. I
know I get really annoyed when I have to sit down and write a check for
twelve cents... As it stands, the ISPs are, for the most part, getting
the bill. They pass their cost on to their customers, who pay a flat
monthly rate. It's easy, and everyone's reasonably happy. It's not clear
exactly who's paying what for who's services, but people are getting their
business done and having fun with the Internet too.
I agree wholeheartedly with you about conservation of bandwidth: there's
no excuse for wasting it, but there's a difference between wasting
bandwidth and utilizing bandwidth. Generally speaking, if the bandwith is
there it seems a shame not to do something with it, even if that something
is as trivial as a streaming video image of a fish tank.
-- Ken
