by Luke Nihlen
Daily Lobo
Who knew that being a geek would put me in contact with royalty?
Someone who claims he is the ex-prince of Nigeria has e-mailed me at least once a month for years now. He has a little deal going that he wants to involve some of my money in. You might have received an e-mail from him, too, along with ads for illegal prescription drugs, pornography and a whole lot of other junk e-mails we call spam.
Microsoft Research and Development is talking about a proposal that will supposedly eliminate or greatly reduce the spam each of us receives daily. The idea is to charge the sender a small amount of money, say under a penny, or make them wait for a short delay, perhaps 10 seconds, when they send an e-mail.
The thinking behind it is that the average e-mail user won't be affected by such a trivial penalty. However the spammer, who sends upward of a million e-mails a day to turn profits, would be put out of business.
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Needless to say, there has been a lot of debate about this on the Net. Opponents note there are solicited mass e-mails that actually serve the forces of good, such as online cancer survivor support groups, which would be crippled by this requirement.
Another cause for concern is that the details of Microsoft's proposal involve, in part, standards and software that they hold the patents to. This makes the adoption of the proposal problematic for those of us who hold a different perspective on computing than Microsoft.
This brings us to the pop quiz question - who owns the Internet? Hint: It's not Al Gore, the poor guy. The answer is you. You own the Internet. There you go. Don't say I never gave you anything.
It's true. Up until this point, all the standards for communication on the Internet have been public property, or open source.
If somehow our lawmakers were persuaded to put the proposal into motion, it would indicate a historic paradigm shift for the Internet. It wouldn't be the first time there was technology on the Net that wasn't universally understood, but e-mail is so widespread and international that such a change would rock the Net to its very foundation.
The Net is the most flexible communications tool ever devised. It is still in the earliest parts of self-discovery, and new uses of the Internet are explored every day. Remember when you didn't even know what an instant message was? One of the primary factors for this rapid innovation and growth has been the exemplary cooperation between government, academic, corporate, military and private organizations to keep the Net open and democratically governed.
Also, the Internet has given birth to global cooperative projects like Linux, which are such a success, companies like Microsoft are running scared. We have all benefited from this new knowledge. E-mail and the Web have changed the way work gets done for millions of people. Up until this point, the idea of e-mail has been public property, and speech on the Net has always been free.
Sure spam is a significant problem on the Internet today, but that's part of the responsibility of free speech - having to tolerate a bunch of people that you don't really want to listen to. Besides, spammers would just find a different, equally annoying profession if they weren't making money doing what they do.
The debate will rage on, and no one can really tell the future of the Net. That's OK. I just came to hand out crowns. After all, I'm in the company of royalty. We are all kings and queens on the Internet.
