Is this the way to beat spam?

SENDING FREE E-MAILS over the Internet could soon be a privilege consigned to the trash.

Microsoft and Yahoo! are considering plans to charge users for each message sent through their webmail servers. The world's two biggest e-mail providers said the idea could help crack down on the growing problem of junk mail, or spam.

However, the proposal has angered Internet users, who consider it impractical and against the freedom of the Web. Industry experts have long said the amount of spam would plummet if senders had to pay as little as a penny for each message.

Goodmail, a new dotcom company in California, is already developing an e-mail postage plan. Yahoo! said it was intrigued by the idea and had not ruled it out.

Spokesman Brad Garlinghouse said the scheme would make spammers think twice before bombarding e-mail accounts.

He added: 'All of a sudden, spammers cannot behave without regard for Internet providers or end users.'

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates has already told a conference that pay-as-you-send e-mail systems would eliminate spam in as little as two years.

Microsoft said: 'We have made no specific announcements since the event but we are committed to helping protect e-mail as an essential communications tool.'

Although new laws were brought in two months ago to tackle unsolicited e-mails, more than half of messages sent - 8billion a day - are still junk and cost businesses billions of pounds to deal with them. Despite the benefits of reducing spam, webmail users are bound to object to paying.

David Farber, a US university lecturer who runs a mailing list on technology and policy, said: 'Damn if I will pay postage for my nice mailing list.'

Prof Farber, who has 30,000 people in his address book, added: 'I suspect the cost of postage will start out small and it will rapidly escalate.'

Ninety per cent of spam is sent by about 200 people, who can send up to 5million random messages a day.