P2P Blocking

Spam Be Damned

I enjoyed reading Mike Lee's column "Spam Rules" (Dec. 9, 2003).

Customers deserve at least some of the blame for the proliferation of spam. If you don't like spam, don't buy anything from a spam e-mail. If everyone followed this rule, spam wouldn't exist. Buyers of the products it promotes give spammers income and incentive to generate even more junk e-mail.

The spam situation is similar to illegal drug dealing in that demand is a huge part of the problem. But at least the drug buyers are held accountable. The same can't be said of spam customers.I've seen studies showing how much time the average Internet user wastes on spam. It lowers employee productivity, which forces businesses to raise prices to pay for more workers or lost time.

Another adverse effect is the potential loss of valuable communication. Since I get tons of e-mail each day--95 percent of it spam--hundreds of messages are dumped in the quarantine folder by my antispam program and are eventually deleted. Unless I take the time to sift through those e-mails, I could lose important messages. It's like the post office losing vital letters and bill payments in the deluge of junk mail.

President Bush recently signed into law the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 to limit the distribution of unsolicited e-mail, but effective enforcement remains to be seen. I fear that if we don't get a handle on spam, many will lose faith in e-mail altogether and stop using it. That would be a shame--it's been such an efficient means of communicating.
Darrin Lingle
President/Senior Developer
BlackBoard Software (d/b/a Lingle Tech)
[email protected]

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