One Answer To Spam: Sell Your Interruption Time

An innovative solution to curb both spam e-mail and telemarketing. In short, the potential recipient of a message/call advertises the potential cost of contacting him uninvited. If the sender agrees to pay that cost, it acquires a token that it includes in the message/call and the message/call is accepted. The recipient decides to collect the fee or not, while recipients in a white list are not required to carry a token. The author, Scott Fahlman, also provides for a more detailed description — via Slashdot