Fax: Technology That Refuses to Die Under Attack

securitas writes "The BBC Magazine's Paul Rubens reports on the ever-growing popularity of the fax machine, despite the widespread availability of e-mail and digital document/photo scanners. Why is fax still so popular? Partly because it is a mature technology that has legal weight and because of the emergence of Internet and Web e-mail-to-fax and fax-to-e-mail gateways, not to mention the relative lack of spam faxes. But that is changing. The New York Times Technology's Lisa Napoli reports that Infoseek founder Steve Kirsch is waging a battle against purveyors of illegal junk faxes (IHT) like Fax.com, which Kirsch has sued for $2.2 trillion, detailed at junkfax.org. Also joining the fight are lawyer and Telephone Consumer Protection Act co-author Gerard Waldron - he won $2.25 million from Fax.com. Finally consumer advocate Robert Braver's junkfaxes.org has 36 lawsuits pending against the junk fax industry. More evidence that spammers are among the lowest forms of life on Earth."

Comments

Re:Fax on and on

[zakezuke]

I trully don't understand the difficulty...

I own a HP PSC 950, and a friends folks just got given a new dell with that free all and one printer.

In exchange for their old tube amp, I offered to get them online. The amp isn't worth that much but they didn't need much help. They needed someone to show them how to make coppies.

"press black copy for a black one.. color copy for a color one.... system must be on, it'll take a sec, youc an watch the blinking lights".

I took it one step further and showed the the scan button.

"Press scan.. it'll have a pop up, pull down what you want to do with it... fax / e-mail / save... and go with it".

Given that these are people who would own a tube amp they remember buying new in the 50's.... and they managed to figure out how to scan something to e-mail on their new Dell.... there is NO excuse for using fax.

Now if they would actually update fax machines to faster then 14.4... I would say... if you're dialup... might as well use the fax... they they are not, so fax can bite me.