DKG has at various points talked about projects designed to “fix” email (which is fundamentally broken by spam) that would charge a penny a message. The idea is that when you start adding a nominal cost per message, spam becomes a wee bit more costly. Some smarty pants out there have even floated an incredibly complex proposal for a bonded system, where it costs me a nickel to send you an email, and if you accept my email, I’ll get my nickel back. So I can spam you, but I have to pay for the privilege, while sending real mail is entirely free. Or costs a nickel sometimes, like when you write a nasty late night letter to someone you don’t like and they decided to keep your nickel to be spiteful.

Fundamentally, it sounds like a good idea. Or at least an interesting one. Logistically, it starts to fall apart quickly, but I’m more of an idea person so I’m still interested.

Since we rebuilt the NOSI site, kicked out a zillion spam accounts, and cleaned out seven zillion spam comments, we get about six new user acount per day on NOSI.net. Once a week, a real person requests an account, so I don’t want to just delete the account requests wholesale, I actually look at all of them. Or some of them. Michelle looks at some of them. Most of the requests are pure spam and they piss me off. I’ve been thinking that it is time to institute a nominal fee for drupal site accounts. We could keep the money for NOSI or just give it back if you don’t put seventeen links to various reduced price pharmaceuticals in your signature. According to my records, if we had a dollar for every account on the NOSI site, we’d be rich right about now. Would you pay a dollar to comment on the NOSI site?

(While we’re on the subject of me and my bright ideas, another great idea of mine is a variation on Andy Singer’s car alarm that fits comfortably around your neck and jolts you with an electric shock every time someone touches your precious vehicle. I am hoping the persuade someone to introduce a bill in the City Council that would require all car horns to sound exactly as loud inside your vehicle as outside. So Pepsi Truck Guy wants to say hello to Other Pepsi Truck Guy? Fine. And he can go deaf doing it. And every SUV with Jersey plates throwing a horn-hitting-tantrum in his rush to get to the next red light? I want him to wake the baby sleeping in the back seat. It might be easier if the NYPD could figure out how to enforce existing laws that do say your horn is for e-m-e-r-g-e-n-c-i-e-s and not general communication, but that will never happen. I haven’t actually gotten past my ow fantasy stage on this one. The car alarm folks have gotten a wee bit farther–there is actually technology that, while it doesn’t deliver electroshock therapy, does ring on your key chain instead of out in the street.)