Celebrating Spam's Ten-Year Anniversary

khalua writes "Netcraft has a story that 10 years ago today, the first widely recognized spam was sent by... oh the irony...a law firm. Hate to see what a beast it grows into when it's 20." Reader prostoalex writes "Ever wonder why spam is so prevalent and who buys all those revolutionary products sold at unbelievable prices? Direct Marketing Association estimates $11.7 billion was spent on goods and services pitched via unsolicited e-mail. The average buy was $155, which exceeds the average of $114 that opt-in e-mail generated. It's worth noting that US e-commerce sales in general generated $50 billion total last year, however, the data was presented by a different researcher."

Comments

Seems to me...

[Chess_the_cat]

that if that many people are buying items pitched to them in unsolicited e-mails, then it's not really 'unwanted' is it? If no one was buying this junk then I would understand the call to ban it outright but as it stands, we just need to figure out how to keep it away from the people who don't want these e-mails. A free market and free speech go hand in hand and soliciting through e-mail is one example of that. I'm not prepared to take food out of someone's mouth without a good reason. Here's an article where Gates advocates paying for each e-mail. Seems like a good solution to me.