Hello all,
This whole conversation about Spam Cop has opened up an issue that I
would like to see discussed a bit more.
My question is... Why do we take such offense to unsolicited email and
get so passionate about it being "disgusting" and "unethical" when it
really is no different than direct mail. I know... you are thinking...
SPAM costs the person who receives it and direct mail doesn't. To that
I answer... oh really? How much does it cost a homeowner to pay for
garbage pick up? How much does it cost tax payers to maintain garbage
dumps? I wonder if anyone out there can tell me how many millions of
tons of direct mail which were never opened are sitting in garbage dumps
right now? Some people on this list are apparently pro-direct mail SPAM
since it was suggested by multiple people. Heck, what about unsolicited
girl scout cookie salespeople or students selling magazine subscriptions
to win a trip to France? :) Though I suppose they don't cost anything
other than time and annoyance.
I understand SPAM takes up server space and memory and all that. But
taxpayers pay our postal service to deliver our direct mail SPAM as
well.
Don't get me wrong... I generally think it is wrong to send anything
unsolicited. But in my mind there should really be different levels of
unsolicited mail/email.
Maybe a level for the unsolicited, totally unconnected to anything I
have any interest in that I really consider SPAM. On the other side of
the spectrum is messages that really do have something to do with you or
your business that you simply aren't interested in. I hate to just lump
them all as SPAM and call them all equally evil.
Received on Fri Mar 14 2003 - 12:30:18 CST
