I never spoke of free, I spoke of pricing model.
And it is not "as much as I like for free", but charging me by the packet, email, web site visited or any other similar model has not worked yet and is I think a dead concept when you know how the Internet works. And then you have the Internet tax, bobbing up every couple of months...
----- Original Message -----
From: "mathew" <meta at pobox.com>
To: "Anti-Spam Research Group - IRTF" <asrg at irtf.org>
Sent: Friday, 14 November, 2008 12:31:43 PM (GMT+1200) Auto-Detected
Subject: Re: [Asrg] Email Postage (was Re: FeedBack loops)
On Nov 13, 2008, at 16:30, Franck Martin wrote:
> I have to stop you here. This is a real bad idea
>
> The Internet is not the telephone or postal system. Telcos loved
> this pricing model, but time have changed, get over it ;)
Who said anything about telcos?
The "you can use as much as you like for free" model has been tried
many times. The "recipient pays the costs, sending is free" model has
been tried too. They've failed every time. Can you think of a single
counterexample? If not, why do you think e-mail should magically be
exempt from the normal observed laws of economics?
There's a reason why the postal service stopped charging the recipient
the entire cost of mail service. There's a reason why we don't all
have toll-free phone numbers. There's a reason why the Cambridge
"green bike" scheme failed, why we have environmental pollution
controls, why we have legally decided "water rights", and why there
are controls on fishing. It doesn't matter that fish are nothing like
postage stamps; the fundamental problem is the same.