--- From: "Jane Black" <jane_blackat_private> To: <declanat_private> Subject: Spam -- the inevitable result of capitalism? Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 11:26:18 -0400 Organization: BusinessWeek Online Hi Declan, I'm getting good feedback on this story, which is part of BusinessWeek's latest look at the Web and society. Thought it might be of interest to Politech readers... <snip> In a sense, spam may be too much of a good thing. True, plenty of junk communication existed pre-Internet, but there were -- and still are -- accompanying costs. Telemarketers have to pay the phone company to interrupt you during dinner, and organizations you have no interest in supporting have to pay the post office to send their solicitations. But spam costs almost nothing to reach hundreds of millions of people. So, here's the question for technologists, economists, and legislators: Is there such a thing as communication that's too cheap? </snip> http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2003/tc20030610_1670_tc104 .htm The rest of the report is here: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/tc_special/03social.htm Cheers Jane Black ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jun 12 2003 - 00:15:42 PDT