Ban Spam! - Will's Ban Spam Talking Points

by Will Fastie, October 5, 2004 (Revised October 13, 2004; edited April 18, 2007)

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Write (on paper, do not email) to your state and federal elected officials asking them to permanently ban spam. Some "talking points" you may find helpful are below. Why write on paper? Because your elected officials, for some inexplicable reason, have reduced or eliminated their use of public email.

A common objection to the outright ban of spam of is that the First Amendment rights of the advertiser will be infringed. This was resolved without issue for facsimile many years ago for the simple reason that the advertiser may not express himself and charge you for the privilege. In any case, I think the First Amendment was designed to protect individuals, not businesses.

Update, 5 Oct 04: Yesterday the Supreme Court refused to overturn the 10th Circuit Court's decision against telemarketers claiming that the Do Not Call legislation infringed their First Amendment rights.

Update, 18 Apr 07: My congressman sent me a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report that is an overview of spam issues. The PDF can be found here. If this report is what our elected officials use to make their decision on spam, the problem won't be solved.

Here are my talking points.

· The recipient pays for spam, not the sender.

For me, this is the most important point. Here is a table showing who pays for delivery of advertising and whether unsolicited advertising using the various media is legal or not:

Source	Who Pays?	Legal?	Fair?	Notes
Postal Mail	Sender	Yes	Yes
Telephone	Recipient	No	Maybe	Do Not Call; politicians & charities exempt
Internet/Email	Recipient	Yes	No	It's the only loophole left
Facsimile	Recipient	No	Yes

As a recipient, I pay for delivery of telemarketing and electronic advertising. Why is the sender is entitled to use services for which I pay? This was resolved many years ago for the first form of electronic delivery, facsimile. It has been partially resolved for the telephone (Do Not Call).

· The recipient has no control over spam.

The recipient of unsolicited email has no recourse. CAN-SPAM prevents an individual from taking any action, a serious flaw in the law because it eliminates the powerful threat of class action suits. Attempts to stop the flow of such email either do not work because the return address is bogus or encourage more SPAM because any response confirms that an email address is valid.

· Spam is a time waster, a drag on productivity.

It takes quite a bit of time to deal with junk email. Even with automated detection, which the spammers regularly defeat, much junk must be removed manually. This may be only a few minutes a day, but it’s every day of every week for almost every email recipient in the United States.

· Spam can be dangerous.

Email can contain computer worms and viruses. Such email poses as unsolicited email, luring the victim with enticing subject lines or promises. This has been the cause of many digital infections and epidemics. Banning SPAM would help to reduce this very serious problem by putting email system operators on the hook for allowing such dangerous messages to pass through their systems. Currently, email system operators have little or no incentive to do anything about email that passes through their systems.

· Defense against spam is costly.

American businesses are spending billions of dollars to buy defense mechanisms against unsolicited and dangerous email. This money is taken away from business profit (thus reducing corporate income tax receipts), dividends (thus reducing the value of investments), and product and business development (thus retarding the economy). Individuals are spending their hard-earned dollars to defend themselves.