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"Spam, spam, spam, spam. Spam, spam, spam, spam...." You heard the song from
the Monty Pyton show. I like eating Spam. But do I like to read Spam? Most people lump
all "junk" email messages under the catch-all heading of "spam." What is Spam in the
Internet environment?
UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL EMAIL (UCE)
Most people have received "Unsolicited Commercial Email" (UCE) which
can be commonly called bulk-email spam. There are various people who really, really, really hate
and despise bulk-email spam. Some so much so that they are left off bulk-email lists
because those folks are known for "violently" retaliating against
bulk-email spammers with email bombs. Then there are others who don't
care and merely delete the spam email from their inbox. Then there are
the ISPs, network backbones, email providers, and others who see
bulk-email spam as a technical annoying nuisance or plague that they wish
would just go away. Bulk-email spam are duplicate copies of commercial
email messages sent to multiple users that use up bandwidth and take up
disk space that ISPs, network backbones, email providers, and others have to pay for. Millions of
copies of the same message can take up an extraordinary amount of space on a harddrive. Multiply
that by millions more of other spam messages and you should get the idea as the amount
spam email transmitted and have to be stored on harddrives all over the Internet. All of that spam
causes added expenses in both terms of time and money that are passed on to the paying users
like you and me.
Note that the difference between spam email and junk mail sent by U.S. Mail
is that spam email costs are on the recipient and not on the sender while the
cost of mailing out junk mail by U.S. Mail is on the sender who has to pay for
the envelope, paper, and stamps.
In a recent LinkExchange newsletter, one user noted a cost to recipients of
spam email is TIME. That user noted in one session that he deleted 1800 spam email
messages from his Netscape email trash folder. He said it took him 15 unattended
minutes to delete all of those spam messages. "That is over and above the
30-45 minutes it probably took me to move the original messages from the
inbox to the trash. This is without reading a single word of such e-mails,
or trying to trace their origin. Clearly, anyone who claims that there is
no cost to the recipient does not have a leg to stand on."
If you are tempted to send out bulk-email spam,
beware of the hazards involved and decide for yourself if you want to
send out bulk-email spam to the world. I would say: Don't Send Spam. Spam is illegal in some states if you are asked to
stop sending the spam but continue to send the spam to people who complain.
There have been a bunch of recent civil court cases where plaintiffs in those cases are using
a very clever theories to get back at offending email spammers: fraudulent
use of a domain name, fraudulent use of network services and equipment; and violation
of a service agreement or contract. These are not free speech cases. The free speech
argument has been shot down in these court cases. Keep in mind that commercial free
speech which is what spam mail would come under, has a lesser status than political free speech.
In recent news, it was reported that the owner of the flower.com
domain sued an email-spammer for using the flower.com domain name in the
return email address of the spam mail. This caused bounced mail and replies
to be sent to the flower.com mail server causing a terrible load on that
server. Juno recently sued a bulk-email spammer in a multi-million
dollar lawsuit where apparently a Juno user was illegitimately using the
Juno email service to send out spam mail. The bulk-email spammer essentially
hijacked the Juno servers to send out the bulk-email spam. Hijacking an
email server to send out bulk-email spam based on fraud or violation of contract
is illegal. AOL was also in the news for winning multi-million dollar cases against
email spammers who sent spam mail to AOL users.
If you are thinking about using bulk-email spam to promote your business, your website,
or other venture, THINK SERIOUSLY before you send out any bulk-email spam. You
should look to see if there is any "anti-spam" clause in your service agreement with
your ISP or email provider. There are "stealth" bulk-email spam
programs that supposedly strip out identifying header information out of
messages, but ISPs and email providers could probably still determine who is
sending out hundreds, thousands, millions of copies of the same message by looking
at access logs to see who is online at certain times and sending out email at particular times.
If you are a spammer, you can still be found when someone poses to buy whatever
it is that you are advertising in your spam.
FREE SPEECH AND COMMERCIAL EMAIL
Email Spam is not necessarily protected by Free Speech rights. This argument has
been shot down by the courts over and over again. U.S. courts have
consistently rejected this argument in the Cyber Promotions cases.
The right to free speech is the right to say what you want. However,
you can't force anybody to hear or read whatever you are saying.
Spam email is usually in the context of business or commercial advertising
which has a lesser status than political speech. A bulk-email spammer may try to
make a free speech argument for his or her bulk unsolicited commercial email messages, but
don't expect a bulk-email spammer's free speech argument to be successful
in a fight against an ISP where the spammer illegitimately used the ISP's
email facilities in violation of the typical service agreement that the
spammer as a ISP user has with the ISP. The service agreement determines what happens in this
situation. The ISP is not the government providing the user with a
public forum for presenting one's views, particularly with regard to
commercial speech. So the ISP can terminate the bulk-email spammer's
account because the spammer is in violation of contract.
OPT-IN BULK COMMERCIAL EMAIL
What is a more legitimate and less risky way of doing bulk email that is purely for commercial solicitations
and other typical "junk mail" sales offers? There is opt-in bulk email where you obtain lists of email
addresses of people who say they want to receive email information about certain topics.
When these people signed up for a service of one sort or another, they were
given a option as to whether they want to receive or not receive commercial
email. They were advised that their email address would be provided to
others unless they checked off a box to say they did not wish to receive
any such mailings. And then there are businesses that are in the Opt-In email
business, such as PostMaster Direct, where they actually ask people for their
email addresses and other information for the sending out of commercial product
and service information to those people who want to receive the opt-in email.
This is different from the argument that if people send you email messages, you can
gather up the email addresses from those messages and then later "reply" with
whatever you want. It would seem that if you "reply" en mass, that is, you "reply" at any time with
multiple copies of a blatant unsolicitied commercial email message to all of those people who
personally sent you email, then you spammed all of those people. There are people out there who
use this argument as a basis for sending out multiple copies of "personal" spam messages.
This multiple personal commercial "reply" situation could be considered at least rude in not complying
with what would be polite email etiquette. If you are sending out at least several hundred copies
of a commercial message, then you must be in the bulk-email spam category.
Ruel.Net does not support Spam,
except the SPAM you eat from a can
Click here to check out the
Official SPAM (in the can) Fan Club
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