[LINK] NYT/SMH: To beat spam, pay to send email

[Adam Todd]

>The days of sending emails for free may be numbered. The owners of the two 
>largest email systems in the world, Microsoft and Yahoo, are considering 
>ways of imposing a "postage" fee for emails.
>
>Internet experts have long suggested that the rising tide of junk email, 
>or spam, would turn into a trickle if senders had to pay even as little as 
>one cent for each message.

Um.  Haven't they heard that people pay by the byte to RECEIVE 
emails?  Haven't they heard that people pay ACCESS FEES?

I'm also more concerned about why paying for HOTMAIL and YAHOO addresses is 
going to stop or reduce spam.  I'm yet to find a SPAMER who legitimately 
uses a HOTMAIL or YAHOO address in their postings.  Normally they use a 
randomly derived name from a username and domain name in the list itself as 
the FROM address and then send it via some OPEN RELAY.

How exactly is this using YAHOO and HOTMAIL and hence, charging for SENDING 
messages of benefit?

Or does Microsoft intend charging people for sending email's through the 
USE of a HOTMAIL address, even if the message was NOT sent from their service?

Think of the poor people who will get multithousand dollar invoices form 
Microsoft simply because some spammer used their email address!