The Spam King
If you haven’t read the interview PC World did with Scott Richter, the Spam King, you can find it at http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,116807,00.asp. Give it a read. It’s a good example of how someone can practice self-delusion and rationalization when it lines their pockets. In this case, it’s with your money.
If someone sends you a piece of direct mail, it costs them Postal Service fees. It’s true the direct mailers don’t bear all the costs since we all share in the costs of the USPS; in some ways, we help pay for those guys to run a business. Spammers or e-mail marketers , or whatever else they wish to call themselves, take money from you much more directly. Each month, you pay for the Internet access and for the e-mail servers they use to run their businesses and clog your e-mail box. The transport costs lie largely with you and not them, and that disproportionate costing is what makes the whole thing both objectionable and insidious. It’s objectionable because it is an abuse of an open system, and it’s insidious because it is raising the costs in time and money we all pay to use e-mail. Many experts think e-mail as we know it today will not survive because of these guys, and that’s a bad thing.
I could take hours to discuss how spamming, whether over e-mail or the telephone, is a sign and result of codependent behavior. It displays a total lack of boundaries and disrespect for the consumer. But many sick behaviors are excused by our society when we start calling it “marketing”. Marketing is, is it not, too often an attempt to con or manipulate the consumer for the sole purpose of getting them to spend their money on the product you are selling. Claims that the consumer opted in don’t mean much when the consumer isn’t even aware it happened; confusion and obfuscation are common tools of this trade. It’s dishonesty no matter how else you try to paint it.
In the interview, Richter points out how he’s working with spam filtering companies to help them develop spam-fighting technologies. There’s even the implication he’ll make money from it. His function, then, is the same as the virus writer’s. He’s generated the disease that forces the spending of more money to find the cure. In the medical business, such a practice would be illegal and send people to jail; on the Internet, it makes people rich. No matter how you look at it, the analogy to cancer holds; and in the end, the effect on the Internet may be just as deadly as cancer often is to its own host.
If someone sends you a piece of direct mail, it costs them Postal Service fees. It’s true the direct mailers don’t bear all the costs since we all share in the costs of the USPS; in some ways, we help pay for those guys to run a business. Spammers or e-mail marketers , or whatever else they wish to call themselves, take money from you much more directly. Each month, you pay for the Internet access and for the e-mail servers they use to run their businesses and clog your e-mail box. The transport costs lie largely with you and not them, and that disproportionate costing is what makes the whole thing both objectionable and insidious. It’s objectionable because it is an abuse of an open system, and it’s insidious because it is raising the costs in time and money we all pay to use e-mail. Many experts think e-mail as we know it today will not survive because of these guys, and that’s a bad thing.
I could take hours to discuss how spamming, whether over e-mail or the telephone, is a sign and result of codependent behavior. It displays a total lack of boundaries and disrespect for the consumer. But many sick behaviors are excused by our society when we start calling it “marketing”. Marketing is, is it not, too often an attempt to con or manipulate the consumer for the sole purpose of getting them to spend their money on the product you are selling. Claims that the consumer opted in don’t mean much when the consumer isn’t even aware it happened; confusion and obfuscation are common tools of this trade. It’s dishonesty no matter how else you try to paint it.
In the interview, Richter points out how he’s working with spam filtering companies to help them develop spam-fighting technologies. There’s even the implication he’ll make money from it. His function, then, is the same as the virus writer’s. He’s generated the disease that forces the spending of more money to find the cure. In the medical business, such a practice would be illegal and send people to jail; on the Internet, it makes people rich. No matter how you look at it, the analogy to cancer holds; and in the end, the effect on the Internet may be just as deadly as cancer often is to its own host.
posted by Andy Foster at
2:41 PM
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