On Mon, 10 Aug 1998, Trei, Peter wrote:
Once everyone has an government registered email address, it will be a simple matter to forbid the use of uncontrolled email addresses (for either sending or receiving) at least within the US. It's to be expected that government agencies will refuse to send to any other address.
I don't know how easy this would be. The Govt would be going up against some pretty heavy businesses if they wanted to eliminate all but their own email addresses. I can see them pushing a standard by only acknowledgeing "postal" addresses, and probably pushing some kind of cost, since for obvious reasons, these email addresses would have to be managed by the govts own servers. I predict that the idea will go through, the USPS will consider charging people based on the space their incoming mail takes up, but change to a charge on outgoing mail after everyone raises a stink. Then, some clever person will push a bill through congress forcing all commercial email to be sent from a postal email address, forcing spammers to pay a bulk rate and provide both a physical and internet return address. -Caj