INTERNET CLOGGED WITH SPAM (12-2003)

About 25 years ago or so, citizens' band, or CB, radios were in
their heyday. CB radios are two-way radios that permit two or
more people to communicate over a distance through the airwaves.
Walkie talkies are portable CB radios. 

The CB craze grew at such a phenomenal rate during the late 1960s
through mid-1970s that the FCC was compelled to increase the
number of channels offered from 23 to 40. Different communities,
or groups of people within communities, often had a "home
channel." Channel 9 was reserved for emergency transmissions, and
channel 19 was the de defacto truckers' channel.

Once upon a time, the FCC issued individual licenses to operate a
CB radio. Users had to apply for the permit and send the
government a license fee. In a few weeks, the FCC would send the
user his call letters.

But by the middle or late 1970s, the CB airwaves had become so
crowded that it was difficult to talk to someone down the block,
let alone in the next town. More and more hobbyists started
skipping the FCC licensing requirements, even though by then, the
permits were free. Nobody used call signs anymore, just their
"handles," or nicknames.

In an effort to boost their signals and talk out of state, some
hobbyists would erect large beam antennas connected to illegal
linear amplifiers. To the chagrin of their neighbors, this would
lead to a lot of television interference.

Although CB radio is still around, and some people are still
hobbyists, the primary users of them are truckers who like to
stay in touch with each other on the highway. The airwaves became
so filled with static that most hobbyists simply gave up.

I see a similar scenario happening with the Internet, especially
with e-mail. Unlike CB, e-mail has become a business necessity.
It is a fast and efficient means of global communication. More
similar to CB are the Internet chat rooms. These are where dozens
of users can gather to chat with each other by typing their
messages on the keyboard.

Like the CB phenomenon of the '60s and '70s, Internet chatting
and e-mailing have exploded in popularity over the last 10 years.
That, in itself, is not at all harmful to the medium. What is
very harmful, however, is the proliferation of unsolicited
commercial e-mail, or spam. 

With more and more people communicating via e-mail, unscrupulous
entrepreneurs have taken advantage of the opportunity to send out
millions upon millions of unwanted advertisements. This spam not
only is very annoying to the recipients, it can also be very time
consuming to weed through the plethora of ads for anything from
sexual aids to ink cartridges. And, as everyone knows, time is
money.

In addition to the hassle for the recipients, spam is beginning
to clog the Internet pipelines. The maximum amount of data that
is able to flow over a particular pathway is called the
bandwidth. Millions of spam e-mails being sent daily clog the
bandwidth and make legitimate transmissions move increasingly
more slowly.

The junk mail everyone gets from the post office is annoying
enough. But unlike spam, the mailers have to pay for every piece
they send out. Spammers can send millions of unsolicited e-mails
for mere pennies. So, whereas postal junk mail will stay in check
due to the cost of sending it, spam can potentially grow until it
shuts down the Internet, if something isn't done to stop it.

More than half the states have passed laws against spam. Some are
tougher than others. Recently, the U.S. Congress passed and sent
to President Bush legislation aimed at curbing the proliferation
of spam. But the Can Spam Act lacks the enforcement powers
necessary to make it successful. It also does not prohibit spam
until the recipient requests the spammer to stop sending it to
them. It is, in fact, weaker than many of the state laws it
replaces.

It is going to take a combination of approaches to stanch the
flow of spam. Laws, if properly enforced, may deter some of the
most aggressive spammers who use methods that are now outlawed,
such as spoofing someone else's e-mail address or randomly
harvesting addresses from Web sites or news groups. But spam will
never be totally eliminated. 

The best we can hope for is that the flood will eventually be
turned into a trickle. For that to happen, we must employ a
variety of tactics, including enforcement of the no-spam laws,
use of spam filtering software, and by a constant, unabated
refusal of anyone to ever succumb to the temptation to purchase a
product or service from a spam ad. If spam became an ineffective
selling tool, spammers would stop using it.