Russ Hunt wrote:
>
>I was happy to see Kary's rant on anti-spam fanaticism.  I used to be
>one myself, till one day our local spam policeman said to me, "Well,
>Russ, is it really such a big problem?  Compare it to hard spam --
>junk mail -- which you actually have to pick up, take to the recycle
>bin, get to the recycyler, and which pollutes the environment as it's
>created and as it's destroyed.  With electronic junk mail, you hit
><delete> and that's it."

   Not quite so simple.  Junk snailmail is sent to us with postage
paid by the sender.  Yes, it clutters up the environment, but at least
it can be recycled into something useful which may, for society, make
up for the time I have to spend getting rid of it.
   Junk email is paid for by ME.  I pay an ISP.  I run power into my
computer.  I paid for the original mail program and all subsequent
upgrades to it.
   I do not wish to be flooded with junk mail at MY expense.  Let the
sender do it at HIS.    Long ago, I suggesgted that the cure for this
is that every listserv set up an advertgising rate for the
transmission of commercial, unsolicited traffic. The ratest should be
publicly posted -- e.g.  [log in to unmask] will
gladly re-distributed your email solicitations at the reasonable price
of $50,000 per subscriber.  Your invoice and a letter from our lawyers
will follow this re-distribution\.
   Spam is commercial.  Commercialism is the way to beat it.


--

    Jan George Frajkor                      _!_
 School of Journalism, Carleton Univ.      --!--
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