What can be done about spam?

Lately, I'm getting a lot more than before, and almost all of it is pushing transparent ruses and/or pornography.  Neither interests me very much, though at least with pornography I would know what I'm looking for and would stand a fair chance of getting it, whereas most of the other offers appear to be rip-offs, pure and simple.  Is there ANYBODY who would respond to an come-on like "Hi, I'm trying to give away a million dollars, and it's YOURS if you just call 1-900-GET-SCRUD?"

The spams tend to say either, "This is a one-time mailing, so there's no way you can write us to request being taken off a list," or, "If you wish to be removed from our list, send e-mail to Stop@TheCrap.com."  In the latter case, my experience is that responding is usually a waste of time, as the address is likely phony, and results in yet another irritating e-mail when it bounces.  More spam from the same source will almost certainly follow, whether one protests or not.

What a pain!  What to do?

Some people change addresses frequently, thus presenting a moving target to spammers.  Lists tend to evolve fairly sluggishly, so this is an effective technique for staying largely spam-free.  Unfortunately, it comes at a terrible price (to my way of thinking): forsaking a permanent address at which people can always reach me.  I use my own domain name, through which I can always re-forward mail to whatever particular Internet Service Provider I'm using at the moment.  My hope is to use the same e-mail address for life.  What a drag it is to think of the mountains of spam I may have to wade through along the way!

The U.S. government, of course, wants to stick its nose into the internet (and everything else under the sun) by any means possible, and so makes a big show of wanting to "help."  A government "solution" would inevitably take the form of a prohibition, for example, "It shall be illegal to send someone e-mail unless blah blah blah (e-mail originating from elected officials will be exempt)."  Such a law would be easily circumvented by the tricks we see today: providing phony return addresses, and hiding behind overseas ISPs that do as they please.  And we'd have yet another war on [something that might be bad, sometimes], with attendant tax increases.

As usual, the marketplace can do a much better job of solving the problem.

One possible solution: new software in the hands of ISPs through which each one of us sets a postage required of anyone who wishes to send us e-mail.  I might set mine to five cents, for example.  Then my ISP is instructed to bounce any mail that comes from anyone not willing to be billed five cents for reaching me, or from anyone who has not signed onto the new protocol by which this exchange takes place (including advancing funds up front if the receiving ISP is not familiar with the sender).  Such a protocol has yet to be written, as far as I know, but would not be difficult in principle.

How many mass mailers would be willing to spend a nickel per pop?  A lot fewer, I daresay, than are willing to spew out millions of copies of spam for free today.  And anyone who DID go up against the increased cost would likely be doing careful targeting of his audience, which has the benefit that when I receive unsolicited e-mail, it's a lot more likely to be of actual interest to me.  I have no objection to getting an teaser about a product that excites me, and wading through one or two dud e-mails per day would sure beat dealing with a dozen or more!

Such a protocol could also include a means by which particular senders could be assigned different postage rates from the default, down to and including nothing.  Then my friends and I won't bill each other, whereas people I particularly dislike can be given a high price for the privilege of reaching me ("Can you BELIEVE it??  He wants two dollars postage!").

Doing all the bookkeeping for such a system would require resources, and any ISP would take some kind of surcharge for being involved.  The surcharge might be rather high at first, but should fall nicely as competition and software improvements evolve over time.  I wouldn't object to paying an extra $5 or $10 per month to sign on.  That's about what I pay today for extra telephone call screening, and it's well worth the price.

Since I'm a computer programmer by profession, I should acknowledge the potential conflict of interest inherent in making this proposal.  As it happens, this kind of software is far from my particular areas of expertise, though I wouldn't mind being involved in writing it.

These ideas have been put forth before.  They're pretty much obvious, in fact.  But, since they haven't yet come into reality, there aren't enough of us squawking!  BellSouth, are you interested?  If you need a high-priced consultant, I'm available.