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June 23, 2003 |
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About Town Dave Uphoff |
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Spam is ruining the Internet
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All good things must come to an end may have to be applied to the Internet as we know it today. The Internet was
borne out of a brilliant idea by a group of scientist who wanted to communicate with each other and exchange
their writings and documents in an efficient and timely manner. The Internet is a marvel because it was not planned
by a central committee that decided how to make it work. Rather it evolved through trial and error and through
the actions of many people and companies operating independently to arrive at the Internet we know today. In
short, it was capitalism and entrepreneurship at its best.
Unfortunately, the same freedom and unrestricted action that created the Internet is also the same force that allows rogue behavior and threatens to ruin the Internet for everyone. I am referring to the relentess and ubiquitous spam that dominates our email everyday. Spam is the unwanted email sent out by unscrupulous advertisers by the millions to unsuspecting and unwilling recipients each day. It seems that the volume of spam email has increased enormously in the last two months. I get at least 60 unwanted spam emails each day. The emails hawk Viagra, loans, porno sites, prescription drugs, and that miserable creep from Nigeria who keeps wanting to share the $50 million dollars he is taking out of the country. I have even been getting emails from companies who want to help me send out my own spam. Besides being a nuisance to Internet users, spam is also a burden to Internet service providers who must process all of those spam emails. The volume of spam is burying the computers at the ISP's. Last week Microsoft sued a bunch of spam mailers in an attempt to stop the abuse of the Internet with unwanted email. |
With the increasing popularity of the Internet it appears that firms who used to send junk mail through the
postal service are now using the Internet to make their pitch. It is not hard to understand this when you realize
that it costs virtually nothing to send out thousands of emails over the Internet compared to sending advertisements
through the mail at 10 or 15 cents a copy. Apparently, the advertising works because even if
only 100 people out of a million respond, that is 100 more than if the advertisers did not use email. As long as email
is free there is no limit to how many emails an advertiser can send.
One way to discourage spam or unwanted email is to charge for each advertisement sent. This would be a very unpopular move since it would penalize those who use email properly. In addition, it would get the government involved in collecting another fee which is the last thing we want. One of the reasons the Internet has evolved so well and so efficiently is because it isn't a government program bogged down by bureaucracy and lobbyists. There are no easy answers to the control of spam on the Internet. As long as there is no charge for email, advertisers will continue to flood the internet with their ads and solicitations. I wish that all of the Internet service providers like AOL, Earthlink, Maxiis, etc. could get together and charge for email sent as advertisement. They could use their own judgment as to what constitutes spam. In a capitalistic society it is necessary to suffer the abuses that arise from having no controls or limitations on the marketplace. That is the price we pay in order to allow a remarkable enterprise like the Internet to exist in the first place. |
