MarketPlace: Will E-Postage Help Stamp Out Spam?
Washington Post: There's No Spam Like American Spam
NYT: Gates Backs E-Mail Stamp in War on Spam

A company called Goodmail may just have figured out how to actually thwart spammers: charge money to send email. Sounds like wishful thinking? Well, Microsoft, Yahoo and Amazon are actually taking the idea fairly seriously.

The basic premise is that mass emailers would have to pay a penny per message for their emails to clear across large ISPs that opt into the system. The penny would be split between the ISPs and Goodmail, which would use an encryption algorithm to validate the messages. Goodmail would, presumably, verify that all the senders are good guys not pushing penis pills and the other scams. Individuals sending emails to their friends and family would not be affected. But who knows what would happen if you try to CC 20 friends about a party, or colleagues about a work event.

Sounds good to me, except that small newsletter operators (e.g., MarketingWonk) may have to figure out how to make their lists profitable, or sending to a list of a few thousand may suddenly be more expensive than they'd bargained for. It will be a good way to separate the wheat from the chaff, and fast, though. I bet that legit marketers would also get more thoughtful about their email marketing programs in a hurry, making sure what they're sending out is actually working for them, when they take an extra $10 CPM into the equation.