Spam Control? June, 2006

Why SPAM will always be with us.

Reason 1: It’s the ultimate psychographics tool for research, both private and government .

What words or comments in an email
   causes you to open it? Is there a pattern
   or compulsion in your preference?
   Professional researchers are anxious to justify government grants and find out. And in doing so, they are building terabytes of.

personal information about all of us. Will this information be used only in the aggregate, do you suppose? Or will there more likely be personal files for every Internet user?

Reason 2: The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) wants to protect the direct marketing list business.

When Congress addressed the SPAM problem in May of 2003, the DMA lobbied to prevent upholding the generally accepted definition of SPAM as “unsolicited bulk email.”

Of course, that is exactly what it is.

Nevertheless Congress blinked. And, following DMA’s recommendation, they redefined SPAM as “unwanted email.” Which, of course, will force more government interaction. It requires that Internet users submit unwanted email to a “do not mail list” to be run by--who else?--the DMA.

And so friends, there will be more government bureaucracy and more “spam protection” software for sale. We may even see a “SPAM czar crowned to combat all those porn sites who’ll continue to email from around the globe. All leading to even more confusion and crowded email boxes for the foreseeable future.

What’s new? The consumer and legitimate businesses loose again. It seems that Big Brother wants to make sure we remain dependent on his all seeing influence as long as possible . -- J.D. Kinney