Wirt writes:
> There is a backbone to the internet.

I believe that the current architecture of the Internet makes tax collection
on email virtually impossible.  There is *no* central authority, and there
is no small set of points that email messages are passed through that can be
used to collect tax information.

Email is typically sent point-to-point with no intervening hops.  There are
no "backbone" systems involved apart from those routers that relay packets.
Since the packets for a given connection may travel though multiple routes
and entirely different networks, and they may be encrypted, there's really
no way this can ever work.

At the network level you can only see connections to a particular port like
the SMTP port, but since multiple messages can be passed per connection,
there's no way to correlate this to number of messages, not to mention
identifying rejected messages, multiple delivery attempts, relays, etc.

Making all email senders or recipients responsible for this tax collection
process obviously won't work either.

To charge for email, you would have to outlaw private communication and
require that all messages get routed through a central authority like the US
Postal Service, which nobody's going to want to do.

Other problems include of course the international issues and the fact that
the Internet currently has no standard mechanism for authentication or
prevention of spoofed origination addresses either at the network level or
at the email application level.

Sorry, but it's just not happening.

G.

* To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
* etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *