What about X400? Proven security etc the only thing thats reduced (or even killed it off completely) except for the military and other secure areas was the cost of maintaining it - and therein lies another solution.
I don't normally like to agree with his Gateness, but I think his idea of making it costly for spammers has some real merit.
For this to succeed though, legislation has to be enacted globally, making it impossible for the ISP's that provide spammers with connections, to evade any industry standard efforts to curb the activity. Then bringing in global charging that sees ordinary mortals and businesses to carry on legit marketing mail that you know you can safely opt out of, FOC. Spammers of course are a pain because of the millions of mails they generate and thats where the Gates idea does work except for the global co-operation element.
I don't think this is insurmountable and we must avoid the trap of setting ever more sophisticated technology solutions to fix something that works! In fact it works too well 'cos it's easy to use and abuse.


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