Originally published 14 October 1996
Remember the Fuller brush man? The Avon lady? There was a time when a knock on the door might be the unwelcome intrusion of a salesperson into the privacy of our homes.
Door-to-door peddlers have pretty much become extinct, but in-your-face merchandising remains as American as apple pie. Most of the contents of the mailman’s bag is unwanted junk mail that goes directly from the mailbox to wastebasket. A phone call is as likely as not to be a telemarketer, especially if it comes just as you settle into the bathtub or sit down to dinner.
An unlisted number? That won’t stop the computers that make recorded sales pitches to randomly dialed households. The victims of these unwanted calls are not even allowed the pleasure of slamming down the phone on a human perpetrator.
Fax machines offered new opportunities for telemarketers. Congress made it unlawful to send unsolicited ads by fax, but the ads still come.
Now, those of us who use the Internet for work, pleasure, or research are deluged by junk e‑mail that clutters our electronic mailboxes and clogs already burdened channels of communication.
It has been only a few years since an enterprising lawyer outraged Netheads by placing the first ad in cyberspace. In those not-so-long-ago days the Net had a private feel to it, and users gloried in the net’s nonprofit purity. Today, cyberspace is awash in commerce and ads are ubiquitous.
The spam kings are in ascendancy. “Spamming” is Internet jargon for the mass posting of unsolicited ads in newsgroups or personal mailboxes.
I have a low profile on the Net. I’ve never visited a chat room, never contributed to a newsgroup. I don’t have a personal Web page or subscribe to America Online, CompuServe, or any other major access provider. I’ve given my e‑mail address only to a few friends. Nevertheless, the other day I received my first message from a block advertiser. His solicitation offered to remove me from their mailing list if I replied with a message that began with the word “remove.” I did so, appending a few choice epithets, and grinding my teeth that I should have to waste my time to avoid being spammed.
The next day, another message: “Sorry you were offended by our message — we’ll try to avoid sending such messages to this e‑mail address in the future.” Yeah, thanks. Another intrusion.
How, I wondered, did they get my address? A quick search of the net revealed that junk e‑mail is an immense and generally unwelcome problem.
One company advertising on the Net offers direct marketers a list of 20 million e‑mail addresses for $359. “By sending your message during periods of slow online use you can send over 100,000 ads for the price of 10 first class letters,” they promise.
Twenty million unwelcome intrusions into our lives.
Some Internet service providers, including some of the biggest, have promised to disconnect spammers who offend customers with unsolicited messages. America Online has gone to court to restrict an outfit called Cyber Promotions from sending junk e‑mail to AOL subscribers.
On the other side, a California spammer has asked the courts to guarantee his unrestricted right to hawk his wares on the Web. He says, “If people like me can’t use the Net to contact potential customers, the the real story is that the Net is not much use to businesses.”
Spamming violates traditional Internet etiquette, but it is not illegal. Perhaps it is time for Congress to do for e‑mail what they did for faxes: make it unlawful to place unsolicited messages in private corners of cyberspace.
It won’t be easy. It will be difficult to argue that Internet users should have protections that don’t apply to postal and telephone services.
Then there’s a larger philosophical issue. The Net may be the freest, most unregulated communication medium in the history of the planet. With the click of a keyboard, an average citizen can have access to works of art in the great museums of Europe or the recipe collection of a grandmother in Texas. Anyone with a computer and a modem can range the world, gather information, share opinions. I’ve seen personal Web pages by sixth graders that rival in graphic sophistication those of multinational corporations.
This is the sort of thing that governments don’t like. Governments like control. Regulation. Censorship. The sheer anarchy and global reach of the Internet fly in the face of those who distrust the wisdom of the common citizen. Ban junk e‑mail, and next will come government regulation of content, access, and extra-national links.
I cast my vote for keeping the government out of it. Let Internet service providers offer junk-mail screening for those who ask for it. Or customers can use software filters such as those employed by parents to keep Web porn from kids.
The junk e‑mail wars have just begun. The net is ringing with manifestos, spams, flames (nasty messages) and bombs (anonymous spams directed toward individual targets). The outcome of the wars will change the face of the net, and consequentially change the face of global electronic culture.
