It's Legal if we get a Percentage

It's amazing at how many illegal things you can do as long as the right people make money on it.

Take pyramid schemes for example. They are illegal. However, if you can run a pyramid scheme that can make a lot of money, it's ok. Why? Because the maximum fine the government can give out on that is one million dollars each year. So if your pyramid scheme makes 10 million per year, you simply give the government their 10% cut and keep going. A certain door to door vacuum cleaner company does business this way and has for years.

Now sending out spam is also illegal, but AOL and some others want to have a paid email system that will send unwanted emails to it's users, as long as they get paid.



In other words we will filter out all spam, except those that pay us. Then it's not spam, it's paid email access. So all you successful spammers who are actually making money rejoice, just pay AOL their cut on the spam and you are now legitimate.

Esther Dyson is an advocate for paid email, but then this is the same Esther Dyson that, when associated with ICANN, ignored what individual users wanted as far as the Internet is concerned in favor of what the big corporations wanted.

Esther follows the money. If Esther is for paid email, then she will be making money from the spam. Count on it. She has a plan.

The Rest of The Story

More things that just piss me off