This arrived in my inbox this morning. It is, of course, from a list I have given permission to send me stuff (Peppers and Rogers)! I've Bccd the author of the entire article (of which this is a snippet) with my thoughts here. He may wish to subscribe and see what this list in the UK has to say "People are very serious about this and I fully expect that within a year companies will have to pay for using an ISP to send materials," says Sonia Arrison, research analyst for San Francisco-based think tank Pacific Research Institute. "Bill Gates said recently that the spam problem would be solved within two years. I think he's being conservative. Everything is pointing toward an economic solution because technology hasn't worked." So, if people pay to send email the problem of spam is said to be about to decrease. Is that really so? Currently an ISP will terminate a spammer's account after some provocation and with sufficient proof of spamming activities. But, if the spammer paid money to spam, what then? "I am so sorry, they have *paid* to send this email. We make a fortune out of them, so we will not be terminating them, thank you very much". That is a likely scenario. And that will not help data subjects and their rights. In fact all that will happen is that bad ISPs will protect bad spammers and make loads of money. So far the spam fighting groups that I monitor are ambivalent about it, but their attitudes are starting to harden against it Tim Trent - Consultant Direct: +44(0)1344 392644 Mobile:+44(0)7710 126618 email: [log in to unmask] Marketing Improvement Limited, Abbey House, Grenville Place, Bracknell, United Kingdom, RG12 1BP <http://www.marketingimprovement.com/> http://www.marketingimprovement.com This message is for the intended addressee's use only. It may contain confidential, proprietary or legally privileged information. No confidentiality or privilege is waived or lost by any mis-transmission. If you receive this message in error, please immediately delete it and all copies of it from your system, destroy any hard copies of it and notify the sender. You must not, directly or indirectly, use, disclose, distribute, print, or copy any part of this message if you are not the intended recipient. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the message states otherwise and the sender is authorised to state them to be the views of any such entity. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ All archives of messages are stored permanently and are available to the world wide web community at large at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/data-protection.html If you wish to leave this list please send the command leave data-protection to [log in to unmask] All user commands can be found at : - http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/help/commandref.htm (all commands go to [log in to unmask] not the list please) ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^