That tired old proposal, to combat spam by charging an email tax, has surfaced again, this time thanks to Tim Bray. This is such a bad solution I cannot criticize it enough. Why? because it kills free publications such as OLDaily. Bray says, "That means that some formerly-free list subscriptions are now going to cost you a penny a message. Deal with it; it’s the price of killing spam." Unacceptable. If all you can get online is commercial content, then the only message you will read is a commercial message. It would cost me $600 a month to send out OLDaily under this plan. Sure, maybe my costs would be underwritten, but a lot of content unpopular to governments and commerce would simply be wiped off the net. What's worse, it wouldn't even stop the spam, since advertisers are used to forking out cash to get their message across. This is not a recipe for killing spam, it's a recipe for killing the free (as in freedom) internet, and it must be stopped at all costs.
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