The Spam Wars
The Spam Wars involve several parties- the Spammers, the Spammed, the Direct Marketers and the Lawyers. These characters would not look out of place in a John Grisham novel.
The Spammed
These are the people whose email inboxes are filled with emails on all manner of things- today's selection in my personal email account includes:
"nice . . . i got the car loan
Money for buck
Lose 32 pounds by February
/ADV/ Guarantee the best business opportunity on Net !
Get '250' business 'cards' for 'free'
Look,my beautiful girl friend
Buck, do a background investigation
Big Discounts on New Cars and Trucks!
Try samples of Godiva(R), Clairol(R), Keebler(R) & more
Get your credit back on Track!
How does a lazy college dropout make a living?"
These are a pretty good representation of the kinds of email that are sent by the spammers to the spammed each day- get rich quick, holidays and cars, free gifts, porn sites and other attempts to interest unknown people with life's universal interests- money, love and possessions. The Spammers try to personalize the subject field by using the name from the person's email address. The most annoying are probably the unclear ones such as "As requested".
What started it for me personally was the frustration and annoyance with unsolicited email. Who the hell are you to send me nonsense? When I got into AOL and started getting spam at work I expected it to be work related. This is incredibly annoying and I often respond with a 'Sod off you scum' reply to that email message. Unsolicited commercial email clearly works since at such a low cost point, the positive response rate required is so low.
Sometimes the Spammed get together to form pressure groups- Citizens Against Spam! Or similar to vent their frustrations as a collective group.
The Spammers
These are the people that send the emails. Some of them have nicknames such as 'Afterburner' and are libertarian and anti-government, others are simply budding entrepreneurs looking to exploit the low entry barriers of the new medium (and the naivety of some of its newer uses) for their own gain. They often live in trailer parks with their families and are tech geeks who exploit the latest technology to distribute their messages. They are a close knit community who exchange lists and tips between them. There are a lot of pretenders to the community but a few leaders account for the majority of the messages.
The Lawyers
There is a real economic cost to spam- the Internet Service Providers have to carry vast volumes of it and the Spammed have to sort through large loads of it. Spam reduces trust in email, the Internet and ecommerce they decry! Spamming is basically cost shifting and theft of service. The lawyers argue that you need to have a prior relationship with them and for them to have contacted you in the past for it to be OK to send email messages to them.
These are the people who when discussing the issue of spam with the public look at each other and nod in earnest when an idea is raised from the audience and take notes and look seriously at the questioner. They confer amongst themselves. They say 'Let me just add one other thought..'. They sweat the details- they try to present arcane boring details as interesting facts.
These depraved idiot lawyers exist who talk in minute detail about arcane nothingness. They go around from state to state- each state handles spam differently. What is their moral reason for doing this- the only two suits in the room. They are earnest policy wonkers with their arcane details, earnest delivery, smart dress and infinite complexity- using jargon like 'constructive notice', 'notice element', 'on the hill', 'derivative of Washington State', 'bleed in from the statute', 'meaningful enforcement', 'remedies', 'violation of law', 'viable plaintiff', 'aware of prosecutions', 'small claims court', 'violators of statute', 'meaningful remedies', 'liquidated damages remedy', 'unauthorized use' and 'trespass on personal property'.
No matter how infuriating the actions of the Spammers are, there is one involved party that earns more and cares less than the spammers- the Lawyers. The saving grace for the Lawyers is that they are flawed individuals who we can do less damage as lawyers than as politicians- as least they are kept busy and out of danger on matters of state legislation!
The Lawyers are the people who say that they are acting in the public interest but every instinct that you have observing them is that they are interested only in their own self-interest- it is rare to see so many people feeding at someone else's trough. You have to wonder how they can sink so low- what a waste of intelligence- they are dressed smartly, use jargon to obscure their depravity and yet are the absolute scum of the Earth.
The Direct Marketers
These are the supposedly legitimate users of the medium who are usually saddled by the government regulator with managing the industry. They are forced to pay for the opt-out lists and other tools and lecture the industry like a teacher lectures naughty school children about not signing up or checking the lists. They are trying to minimise the regulation and present a common and legitimate front for the industry. Whereas the lawyers want to legislate for the worst case scenario and keep themselves busy, the direct marketers want as little interference and regulation as possible. These policy advocates justify and base their existence on extremes. The Direct Marketers claim that the spam control codes are too complicated for both the consumers and the direct marketers.
The Summary
It's a tough world out there- everyone at all the ends of the spectrum and in-between is trying to make a living: some people think some practices are perfectly OK, others completely dishonest and some in the middle are dubious. I would rather be a spammer than a lawyer- its better to be an entrepreneur than an enforcer!
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Author: Simon Buckingham
What do you think?
- To make a comment to the author, send e-mail to simon@unorgan.com
