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Brad Templeton On Spam's Silver Anniversary
Brad Templeton writes "This Saturday marks the 25th anniversary of the first spam I was able to find, and one month ago was the 10th anniversary of the first time a USENET posting was called a spam and the birth of the term (at least beyond mudds)." Templeton was also cited in the American Scientist article featured last Sunday.
Actually, Spam, has been around for over 100 years...just check the spam museum!
Hormel was started in 1891...way more than 25 years...in fact, last year the 6 billionth can of spam was made!
The anti-salmon
of AOL blocking innocent mail servers just because they aren't on corporate IP blocks.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Yes!
...that this calls for birthday spankings.
Please insert your own "GNU/Spam" joke here.
"And this is my boy, Sherman. Speak, Sherman." "Hello." "Good boy."
* often refered to a 'dupe'
Cantor and Siegel, I believe, back in 1994 was the first USENET spam... meaning 9 years ago. or am I mistaken, and there was an even earlier example?
Spam was born in 1937. Originally called "Hormel Spiced Ham", the new "catchy" name was the result of a contest, the winner of which earned $100!
For more, see www.spam.com!
Are we really celebrating this? I suggest everyone red blooded person with an email account hunt these bastards down. I propose we shoot them in the knees and drag them through salt. Especially that first person.
Here's a great take on spam from a russian source:
http://newscentral.da.ru
And here's the first audio "jingle" for spam, dating back to 1937:
http://www.spam.com/assets/it/au/jingle.au
His story reminds me of how Abe Simpson (Grandpa Simpson) tells stories...
"I needed a new heel for my shoe. So, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. 'Give me five bees for a quarter', you'd say. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah...the important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war; the only thing you could get was those big yellow ones..."
Producer: NEXT!!
Ralph Wiggum: Chicken necks
What do you think Hormel thinks about this mess? All publicity is good publicity? I don't think so. I haven't bought a can of Spam for the last three years. Guess why.
I'll tell you their lawyers are constantly tearing their hair out, for not slapping Monty Python with a cease and desist, all those years ago. Now do you understand people like American Greetings? If they don't defend their trademarks, they might end up as the next Spam. What would you do if your trademark for the last hundred years, suddenly were smeared into oblivion by greedy net users all over the world?
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
More Spam! *sound of truck falling out of the sky*
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
You know the scary part about this, is that he probably got 20 extra people to show up and made a sale off of the first spam.
Spam is here because it works. Worked back then, works today. If it did not work, there would be no spam.
Linux O Muerte!
Read Richard Stallmans view on spam also mentioned in the article
He also predicts the first online dating service!!!!!
See. I Don't care about your Tradermark.
Somehow, somewhere along the way, the term was applied to unsolicited commercial email, and the original meaning was more or less forgotten. Besides, the practice of flooding peoples' inboxes doesn't really happen that way very much anymore.
I can see the fnords!
...we should be mourning that after 25 years, people are still allowed to send you unsolicited shite...
You don't buy meat (or something that closely resembles meat) because its a synonym to unsolicited email?
Would it be safe to guess you live in a house (or closet, or cave) with only doors too?
The parents of the original Usenet spam, a lawfirm promoting a "green card lottery" (and I thougt those were a new invention), wrote in their book about online advertising:
"From that day forward, the Internet never stopped discussing us... After lengthy deliberation, it was decided to call the practice 'spamming' in honor of a well-known skit by Monty Python's Flying Circus, the famous British comedy group. We were unfamiliar with the skit, but apparently it involved throwing lunch meat at a wall."
Humourless lawyers.. they'll be the first against the wall when we take the us.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
... For you might just Get It.
[Insert partial list of the 10 gazillions Internet dating services found by Yahoo alone].
I hope that unearthing this ancient post will not make RMS lose his aura of geekness. What, he wanted to get laid? With all that code to write? Sheesh... What was he, a business major?
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
Heres what Hormel has to say on the subject of spam.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
First, nothing begins if not opening
When I was 6 or 7, I'd go to other kids' birthday parties and often the kid with the birthday would get birthday spankings. I remember the "and one to grow on" and all that.
At the time, I wondered why I never got any birthday spankings. But now, it's like... what the hell was going on??? Spankings on your birthday!?
It's trademark was removed from Bayer by the Allies as part of the WW1 reparations against Germany. 10 points for knowing the other trademark that was taken ....
How many times have you filled in a "You must give us an email address" box with something like "fuckoff@spam.com" or similar?
Poor bloody mail admins at Hormel, their lives must be hell. And what about if they accidentally left an open relay?
Is he the same person who was the moderator of rec.humor.funny?
so that we can rid it of spam, pop up windows, flash, webpages with sound, javascript, kiddie porn, perverts in chat rooms, frames, animations, AOL. (I'm sure there are plenty more things that could be added to the list)
It's time for version 2 of the internet.
While the new legislation and things to come regarding the spam situation are great, I just wanted to point out that it's such an easy stance for a politician to take and it would be a lot more fulfilling to see our government focusing on more important things and leaving the spam to the sys/netadmins of the world to combat. I wonder what the situation would be if spammers had more of an "influence" in Washington or if our politicians had more to gain from the spam industry...
Amusing to discover that the earliest documented Spam message originated at cup.portal.com. That site was responsible for my first bout of Usenet addiction -- mercifully cut short when I acquired an obsessive stalker who took exception to my criticism of David Brin. The site was the only enterprise of a company called Portal Communications, which seemed to consist of one strange guy with a single Sun Workstation in an office in Cupertino. People who tried to visit him in meatspace were met with a locked door and shouted demands that they "go away".
For years I assumed that Portal simply went out of business. But it turns out they morphed into a software company that sold the billing software they originally developed for their "online service" business. They were in the news a few months ago, because so many of their execs have managed to cash out big, even though they've never turned a profit.
From the article
2) The amount of harm done by any of the cited "unfair" things the net has been used for is clearly very small. And if they have found any people any jobs, clearly they have done good. If I had a job to offer, I would offer it to my friends first. Is this "evil"? Must I advertise in a paper in every city in the US with population over 50,000 and then go to all of them to interview, all in the name of fairness? Some people, I am afraid, would think so. Such a great insistence on fairness would destort everyone's lives and do much more harm than good. So I state unashamedly that I am in favor of seeing jobs offered via whatever.
MIT has long been a supporter of spammers. Its time to call them on this.
10 points
Worth a read imho.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
1) shave beard
2) start first online dating service
i won't say which one he chose...
You can read the original spam email on Templeton's site. The list of addressees is like a directory of the early net, including addresses like KLEINROCK at USC-ISI and POSTEL@USC-ISIB. I wonder how many spam harvesters will find these addresses and try to send them mail, now that they've been posted to the web :).
You have the best job!
She sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.
The "spam" term came from MUDs (and BBS I guess) because "spamming" a MUD is to fill the screen when you chat. Just like on IRC or other chat services.
All Hail Discordia. Hail Eris. Fnord.
... I DO recall that the first email spam I got was an advertisement for an email spamming software package.
I remember thinking "Oh, oh! There goes email!"
And sure enough I had several ads within a couple weeks, and the volume has been ramping up ever since.
I saved it all for a while. But my disk filled up and the saved spam was the big disk-eater, so I dumped it. (Probably should have saved the first few for posterity...)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I stick to "none@nowhere.aq" myself. Lately some info-scummers have become smart enough to reject e-mail addresses containing obscenities. Pity about the people with real addresses that contain 'em too :)
You know the scary part about this, is that he probably got 20 extra people to show up and made a sale off of the first spam.
I note that the big gripe was that it was commercial speech on the ARPAnet, at a time when it was restricted to research projects. (This despite the fact that such a product announcement, intrusive as bulk eamil was, might actually have been consered "news" rather than a mere advertisement.)
Of course that changed with the legislation that got Al Gore his rep for "claiming to invent the Internet". What the bill he pushed did was open the Internet to commercial use. On one hand, it's a boon. On the other hand, advertising is a "commercial use", which makes it a bit tougher for companies charging for Internet access to argue that the behavior is improper. Thus "Al Gore legalized Spam".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
One of these was Scott Adams. Nowadays, every single paper in the U.S. seems to carry Dilbert. But when ClariNet picked up the strip, I don't think it appeared in more than a half-dozen papers. Of course, the geeks who read ClariNet were a prime audience for this kind of humor. Which resulted in a lot of buzz for the strip. Which resulted in Scott Adams hooking up with United Media. Who promptly pulled Dilbert from ClariNet!
Tha American Scientist article claims that the event that first popularized the term "spam" was the simultaneous posting by the Phoenix law firm of Canter & Siegel to 6,000 Usenet news groups of a message with the subject heading "Green Card Lottery - Final One?" (in April 1994). But Brad Templeton has a VERY different story if he is saying here that spam will be 25 years old next Saturday - not nine. ("The earliest documented junk e-mailing I've uncovered was sent May 3, 1978 -- 25 years ago this Saturday.") This thread confirms, mind you, that the first time a USENET posting got *named* a "spam" happened on March 31, 1993 - so ten years ago last month is maybe right aFTER AL;L
A bit OT, but at 9:15 pm Eastern there is a forum on Spam on CSPAN2. I'm not sure who the panelists are but I thought people here might be interested.
The Green Card Lawyer spam was indeed was caused the term to really take off, but it was in use before their posting. People pay attention to Canter & Siegel (instead of giving them the footnote of obscurity they deserve) because they had such bravado about it. Other early massive posters, including jj@portal.com and the Jesus is coming poster had turned tail and run when they faced criticism. C&S met it head on, and that got people really angry.
And thus the term really grew. But theirs was not the first spam, not the first to be called a spam, not even the first big spam. It was the first for a new level of anger.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
First, I needer a fuller explanation of the origin of the word "spam". I buy your explanation that it comes from the MUD community. But I still don't understand the connection between dataflooding and spiced meat. Are all MUD people Python fans?
Second, how does a Leading Computer Pioneer find time to hang out on Slashdot?
Not to mention a politician's arz! Just think, right before digital video becomes the norm, along with affordable brodband rates, every little citizen has state like powers and can run over ted turner and company. How much you want to bet Murdock and Turner along with every politician's realization that one cranky teenager could spell doom to his re-election, is behind this anti spam rush?
That was over a decade ago. I'm so old!
All there needs to be for spam to exist is people that think it works. It may be the spammer himself or someone paying for his "marketing services", but nothing else is needed. Sure, if it doesn't work they might get discouraged and quit - but then another idiot might come along.
I'm not saying that spam doesn't work - with so many morons out there, it's certainly possible. But arguing that it wouldn't exist if it didn't work is stupid.
Here's mine
The others you mentioned were more confined than Green Card. Also, Green Card was multiposted, not cross-posted.
However, we (the denizens of Usenet) did shut down Green Card's ISP-- within hours of the spam, if my memory of the night serves. (I can tell you which terminal of which terminal room I was at.) The ISP was deluged with complaints. They had to upgrade their mailserver, and I seem to recall them having to offload either bandwidth or mail, I forget which. That night, they were begging the Net to quit. They got the message.
I don't recall anything prior to Green Card with the same scope and response.
The ISP was indeed shut down, just from the load. This is not something to be proud of, the ISP was entirely innocent in all of this and suffered quite a bit. There was no reason for "them to get the message." They were the victims, not the perps. Especially then, before spam was common. Any ISP could have been victimized in this way. Later, a lot of sympathy came out for the ISP after people felt some guilt over what they had done to the ISP.
Sadly, we continue to blame the ISPs for the actions of their users when it comes to spam, but defend proudly their non-responsiblity when it comes to their users running filesharing tools, or putting up "offensive" websites etc.
The Jesus spam, and several of the earlier ones were also not crossposted. Check the links included in my history. I point to the original sources. What C&S did that was new was the sleaze of it, and the fact that while their ISP got wiped out (they just switched) they were unrecalcitrant, and even published their silly book.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
My biggest beef is with people who put emails you send up on the website with no thought to actually helping you avoid being crawled. For example - the perl maintainers. I posted an email from work to them pointing out a bug, they stuck it up on a website without removing my email address and some crawler got it and started sending me (at work) all sorts of spam.
I requested repeatidly that they either remove my email address or obfusicate the address - but they ignored my request every time.
In fact, it's still sitting there and one other page as I write this. Thankfully, I left the company two years ago so don't get the junk that probably still gets sent to it even now.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
In Australia...to solve the problem of underaged drinking, the govt brought in laws that not only the club owner was fined, but the bar person that served the drink was also fined (personally, up to $15k)...so, my thought is, if we say we can fine the ppl that send the spam, and we can fine the companies that hire the spammers...why don't ppl suggest fining the programmer that _wrote_ the software. It's a lot easier to pin down (not all programmers are going to move to an offshore haven to write the software), and I know, that I, as a programmer, would really think twice if someone hired me to write a spam program if I was looking down the barrel of a 50K fine...just my 2 cents worth :)
Yes, of course. The "got the message" line was left over from an edit and should have been deleted; I didn't mean to imply that the ISP deserved it or anything of the kind. Of course ISPs are often the biggest victims of spam, and (as recent actions show) are sometimes the ones most likely to fight it.
Regarding cross vs multiposting: I had an impression of a memory of Green Card angering me more than anything else I had seen, in a large part because of the multiposting. I didn't think that the "Jesus" spam had been multiposted, but I guess I was wrong.
I wonder why Green Card stands out so much more clearly in my memory than the "Jesus" spam. With GC, I recall clearly where I was, at which terminal, who else was in the room, and what they were doing. But the "Jesus" spam made much less of a dent in my memory. Not sure why, tho.
Is McDonalds in Hawaii still serving Spam for breakfast? That sounds like a good meal to start the day! (In Canada they added "heathy" greenie stuff to their menu. If I wanted healthy, I doubt I'd eat there to start with. Come to think of it, I don't.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Is he still looking for a GNU/girlfriend?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
There is a spammobile that goes to events giving out free spam! I got my picture taken with it when I was in Charlotte, NC
Click here to see the pic
I always use postmaster@real.com
:)
You could get away with using it for Realplayer until the latest few versions.
when was actual spam (the quasi-meat product) created/brought to market?
Just like driving a car:
(D) to go forward
(R) to go backward
I never bought it before.
But Hormel... they *get* the joke. And they're marketing it. So now I buy spam. The kids loved it fried up. The turkey spam isn't bad.
We bought it for Y2K for doomsday scenarios; bought about 2 weeks worth of spam because its not bad tasting, it has a lot of calories, and it keeps a long time.
We've gone through it because it tastes good.
And now we buy it all the time.
I think its cool.
Scene: A cafe. One table is occupied by a group of Vikings wearing horned helmets. Whenever the word "spam" is repeated, they begin singing and/or chanting. A man and his wife enter. The man is played by Eric Idle, the wife is played by Graham Chapman (in drag), and the waitress is played by Terry Jones, also in drag.
...spam spam spam egg and spam; spam spam spam spam spam spam baked beans spam spam spam...
...or Lobster Thermidor a Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam.
Man: You sit here, dear.
Wife: All right.
Man: Morning!
Waitress: Morning!
Man: Well, what've you got?
Waitress: Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam; spam bacon sausage and spam; spam egg spam spam bacon and spam; spam sausage spam spam bacon spam tomato and spam;
Vikings: Spam spam spam spam...
Waitress:
Vikings: Spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam!
Waitress:
Wife: Have you got anything without spam?
Waitress: Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Wife: I don't want ANY spam!
Man: Why can't she have egg bacon spam and sausage?
Wife: THAT'S got spam in it!
Man: Hasn't got as much spam in it as spam egg sausage and spam, has it?
Vikings: Spam spam spam spam... (Crescendo through next few lines...)
Wife: Could you do the egg bacon spam and sausage without the spam then?
Waitress: Urgghh!
Wife: What do you mean 'Urgghh'? I don't like spam!
Vikings: Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!
Waitress: Shut up!
Vikings: Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!
Waitress: Shut up! (Vikings stop) Bloody
Vikings! You can't have egg bacon spam and sausage without the spam.
Wife: I don't like spam!
Man: Sshh, dear, don't cause a fuss. I'll have your spam. I love it. I'm having spam spam spam spam spam spam spam beaked beans spam spam spam and spam!
Vikings: Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam!
Waitress: Shut up!! Baked beans are off.
Man: Well could I have her spam instead of the baked beans then?
Waitress: You mean spam spam spam spam spam spam... (but it is too late and the Vikings drown her words)
Vikings: (Singing elaborately...) Spam spam spam spam. Lovely spam! Wonderful spam! Spam spa-a-a-a-a-am spam spa-a-a-a-a-am spam. Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Lovely spam! Spam spam spam spam!
I had no idea Clarinet was dead. I just thought it was a temporary glitch at Giganews....
Brad Templeton has previously argued that unsolicited email falls under the free speech rights enumerated by the US Constitution, and that sending UBE/UCE is legal. He also stated, "The free speech rights on ONE SINGLE PERSON outweigh the speech-prohibition rights of 49,999,999 others."
Interestingly, about six years later, spam costs US businesses an estimated $9B per year, including costs for increased hardware and software to handle the load, and has been estimated by the EU to globally cost recipients 10B per year just to download it all, all for delivery of unsolicited (and usually unwanted) advertisements.
One wonders if Mr. Templeton still believes this is a free speech issue.
Cantor and Siegel, I believe, back in 1994 was the first USENET spam... meaning 9 years ago. or am I mistaken, and there was an even earlier example?
:)
The earliest instance I could find (on groups.google.com) of the infamous Cantor and Siegel Green Card Lottery spam was posted 7 Feb, 1994.
Sometime in the evening of 17 Jan, 1994, a chap by the name of Clarence Thomas sent out the "Global Alert For All: Jesus Coming Soon" message.
Then of course there was the Dave Rhodes "MAKE.MONEY.FAST" post. I couldn't find the earliest instance, but I found people complaining about it in 1993.
This anniversary of Spam is really not important. If someone wanted to be clever, they would go out and find the anniversary of the first Nigerian Bank Scam.
M
Does anyone know the story behind that skit - was it some sort of English/European regional joke, like the idiots with kerchiefs on their heads?
Seeing how spam is so big in Hawaii (because meat is pretty expensive, and pork is a polynesian favorite) an american remake of the skit would possibly be done with polynesian headhunters armed with warclubs.
"First you get the Linux, then you get the power, THEN you get the women"
You youngsters don't remember anything. RFC706 "On the Junk Mail Problem" was published in Nov 1975. Spam was already a problem only 4 years after RFC196, which was the original Mail Box Protocol which had no authentication.
If you would RTFArticle, you would know the answer to your question.
29 May 1864 mass sending of telegrams to members of parliament in London:
... and they weren't even registered dentists.
"Messrs Gabriel, dentists, Harley-street, Cavendish-square. Until October, Messrs Gabriel's professional attendance at 27, Harley-street will be 10 till 5".
Late June 1864 National Provincial Clothing Depot mass-telegraphs potential customers telling them that a 39/- suit is waiting for them at their premises (the suits were never ordered).
1875 5000 telegrams sent simultaneously by a furniture company: "20,000 bedsteads always available for purchase at our depot".
NPR did a spot on this on Friday.