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If you are like me and try to stay current on recent events in
technology, you should have noticed that spam-related articles are
becoming more visible. Just last week, I noticed that USA Today even had
a story on the fight against spam. Moreover the media is now taking
polls to survey the impact on spam on America and other nations.
Businesses are being polled in order to establish more accurate
estimates on revenue loss and the cost of the administrative overhead
associated to fighting spam. Some estimates by USA Today indicate that
companies are willing and in many cases paying $12-24 each year per user
to combat spam.
So why can’t legislation be passed to eliminate spam altogether? You
already know the answer to that question. If you have a mailbox at your
domicile, then you have certainly received junk mail. Ever tried to get
all unsolicited mail at your home stopped? The same is true and even
worse for Internet messaging. For starters, we have very strict laws on
what can be sent via the US Postal Service. Sending pornography,
explosives, viruses, fraudulent advertisements and similar items will
land you in jail should you put a stamp and try to send these things via
snail mail. By contrast, sending fraudulent email is only against the
law in Virginia and only for recipients located in Virginia. Other
states are trying to pass similar laws, but the law only restricts
senders who hide their identity or send misleading messages. If every
state adopted a similar program, the volume of spam would be largely
unaffected.
Marketing firms and other companies have a legitimate right to market
and sell their goods and services. In fact, many of these companies are
trying work with the government and anti-spam groups in order to better
define unsolicited messages. If amazon.com or ebay sends you an
advertisement, should that be considered spam? Moreover, if someone
creates an anti-spam program that stops all inbound messages legitimate
vendors or online stores is that fair or right? Where exactly should the
line be drawn between spam and unsolicited messages? What rights to
marketing companies have in respect to sending advertisements?
Most of this discussion has been academic at this point, although the
battle over spam also contains strong emotional feelings as people are
becoming sick and tired of sifting through so much junk. To make matters
worse, many of the messages sent in bulk contain pornographic materials
and little to no attempts are made to restrict these bulk messages from
minors. Parents are hesitant to allow their children to access email for
fear that they will receive not only unsolicited messages, but
unsolicited porn. Moreover, adults in the office are faced with trying
to explain why they are receiving pornographic images in their email.
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