The principle that speech should be free doesn't mean that it should also be free.
Spam (with a small s) is now the accepted term for unsolicited (junk) mail received over the internet - the question is: «what can we do about it»? As almost everyone must now know the term emanates from the Monty Python sketch in which it is repeated ad nauseam by the waitress (Terry Jones) in a greasy spoon cafe, as well as a bunch of musical Vikings. Fortunately the makers of the meat product, Hormel Foods, LLC., have a sense of humour and have keenly exploited the marketing possibilities.
As far as the electronic variety of spam is concerned, web users round the world continue to be inundated. And it's getting worse (as if you didn't know). A recent survey, covering the last quarter of 2006, claimed that nearly 17 in every 20 emails were spam.
And the spammers are getting smarter. Often their main message is in an image embedded in innocuous text to get round spam checkers. Of course, as with all the other bad things on the internet- viruses, porn, freedom of speech, armies of white knights have arisen: sworn to protect the defenceless. A very lukewarm Bravo to them. Like all protracted conflicts, there can be no winners - only innocent victims; an arms race with both sides feeding off the man caught in the web. Obviously neither side has an interest in a simple and obvious solution.
Imagine for a moment that all phone calls were free. Yes I know some are - just bear with me. What would you expect sales and marketing people to do? - Buy automatic dialers and phone absolutely everyone with their latest unmissable offers. Of course they do it now - but they have to target their audience very carefully as the costs soon mount up and the returns don't.
What moderates the telephone spammers or indeed junk mailers is the cost of doing it versus the returns they get. If it cost, say, 1 US cent to send an email then 1 million emails would cost 10000 USD and most of the spams would stop through simple economics. It would cost you and me almost nothing as we don't send that many emails anyway. The money raised from genuine emails could be used to fund investigation into those spammers who evaded payment. This would provide employment for those currently in the email arms race. So everyone wins. Except the spammers.
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