What if International Charities set up an email service that charged say 1c per email and this charge went directly to say UNESCO or Red Crescent/Cross or some equally deserving international charity.
When I sign up I email all my contacts and inform them that I wish to participate in this charitable campaign and that as and from a certain future date my spam filter will only accept emails if they come via one of these Certified Charitable email providers.
I can't think of any of my contacts that would object to paying 1c per email or who would not signup.
Companies and commercial concerns would soon follow suit because it would be good for business and they would reap the benefit of ridding their systems of the bloody nuisance that spam has become.
Eventually most civic minded users would move over to one of these providers.
Spammers would then be confined to spamming an ever shrinking pool of users that have not signed up to the Charity pay system.
This is just an idea, I can't see any technical reason why it could not work and it would prove such a win win situation for legitimate users as opposed to abusers of the internet email system.
What do you think?
Fergus