Speculation on Spam - Strategic perspective

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Some time back (when editor was still here), we discussed how spam would dominate your E-mail. Some speculated that it could not be stopped because spammers would simply move off-shore or find other loopholes. Sure, we cannot expect to stop such actions. But does that mean we should therefore make it easy? We can make it difficult to be irresponsible. We have done so in some media but have not tried to make spammers responsible for their actions.

At that time, I suggested that businesses paying the spammed for service - those who were obviously paying for spammers to promote their business - could he held responsible for promoting spam - being responsible for how their products are promoted. Even if a spammer was overseas, the domestic business could be held responsible for promoting that spam.

Furthermore, I suggested that by passing laws to permit little people to legally confront spammers, then little people would be empowered (libertarian philosophy) to attack the problems themselves. Once (mid 1990s) a king of spam was operating out of the Fort Washington Office Center. A local resident personally made the spammer's operation so difficult that he finally quit the spam business even after trying to operate out of an adjacent town to hide his operations. The spammer king acknowledges that he earned $millions from spamming after having been driven from the Fax advertising business by law. The Inky even showed how the spammer had a Better Business sticker only to have the Better Business Bureau remove that seal - because of the local resident's actions. Different ISPs such as Voicenet canceled the spammer's accounts. Voicenet ignored the problem until AOL saved all the spams, and returned them to Voicenet in one lump sum, crashing Voicenet's POP. Instead the spammer set up his own ISP. Games played on and on.

Empowering little people is not done more likely because spammers can purchase politicians. The money in spam is that good. So good that the national average is now 5 spams for every e-mail. Currently I have some e-mail accounts that receive 25-35 spams per day - except on weekends. Many e-mail sites have tried to lock down access to their SMTP computers because spammers were using their computers to send spam so that the spam was not traceable to spammers.

The Attorney General of NY has sued a formally Niagra Falls spammer for sending over 1/2 billion spams every year. The spammer had moved his operations into Canada. NY is not detered. CA has also gone after two major west coast spammers. These are but stopgap measures. Spam is still too profitable since it is basically protected by a Congress that wants the profits from legalized bribery - campaign contributions. People who buy politicians, big business, got spammers to stop using their fax machines to promote spam. Why can't the Internet have the same protection? Today, a master list is being developed to make telemarketers responsible. If you are on the list, they cannot call you - or be sued. Why do we not have the same rights to protect our Internet hardware that we - not the spammers - pay for?

The principals of advertising are well embedded in the American economy. One has the right to advertise - as long as one meets the obligations. Responsible advertisers pay for their media. Advertisers pay for your phone book, your TV and radio shows, part of mail delivery costs, taxes (billboards), newspapers, and even some internet sites. However those who would graffitti the landscape put up signs on other's property that read "Finally, Insurance at Low Cost", "Work at Home", or "Lose Weight". ("Work at Home" is listed as one of the biggest scams in America.) You see their crap as plastic sticky pads on pay phones, stuck on Wawa doorways, on newspaper boxes, and as plastic signs on telephone poles and street signs, etc. (Feel free to remove that crap immediately since no signs means no money for those criminal advertisers). Then there are the telemarketers, fax promoters, and spammers who would use YOUR equipment to promote their products.

Telemarketeers and fax advertisers are mostly stifled by law. We have or will have the right to prosecute them even when law enforcement will not. But those street side graffitti advertisers and spammers are protected by laws that make it difficult to prosecute the offenders. Anything and everything we do to make life difficult for scum advertisers means that other media can provide us with better service due to more advertisers. Making life difficult for spammers and graffitti advertisers (including disparaging those who response to those advertisements) makes a stronger American economy.

Those are the principals - the strategic overview. The next post will address the tactical aspects of one battlefield in a war on criminal advertisers - spam.