[xzins]

charge senders a fee to route their e-mail directly to a user's mailbox without first passing through junk mail filters

Is it just me, or does that sound like they make money by letting spammers get through to their customers?

[Psycho_Bunny]

attempts by the companies to weed out unsolicited ads, commonly called spam,

Is there anyone on the planet, who would have even a passing interest in this article, that wouldn't know what "spam" is?

Isn't this like saying, "Attempts by General Motors to weed out defects in their non-truck products, commonly called cars..."?

[MineralMan]

I'm not too happy about this. What it means is that companies will be able to buy their way into my inbox. As it is now, very little spam makes its way into it. Most gets dumped into a bulk mail folder.

That's what I want. I don't want companies to be able to pay a penny to get into my inbox.

[TommyDale]

This reminds me of the hoax email that goes around that says the government is going to charge a fee for each email we send. I could get through on the link...is this really a true story, or another hoax?

[Sarastro]

I don't think the point is to charge a penny for spammers to get into your in-box, but rather that most spammers wouldn't spend the penny, therefore the spam would dry up. The spammer now faces the following cost-benefit decision: if I send one or 1 million solicitations for, say, cheap Viagra, the cost is the same: nothing. If I send 1 million, I might get a couple orders, so I'll be ahead. However, if it would cost me $10 thousand to send the million messages, I'd need quite a lot of sales to break even. Therefore, most spam would go away. If 1¢ proved not to be enough of a deterrent, then 2¢ might be.