The subject
of email spams is as controversial as talking about abortion.
Since there is no exchange of money for a product or service,
we do not consider it a Consumer Complaint. Some people believe
they should not receive anything in their "in" box
that they didn't request. Others don't seem to mind at all.
There are two sides to this debate. We understand it is currently
politically correct to condem all commercial email, but lets
look at it from both sides for the moment, in an effort to understand
why it is a problem.
Mass commercial
emailing is not an acceptable practice. There are plenty of
sites on the net pertaining to netiquette. This should be required
reading when people get a commercial account from an Internet
Access Provider.
A few individual
States have passed legislation; one being that of the Washington
[June 1998]. Until specific federal laws are passed to define
this, Netcheck will remain neutral. There are hundreds of people
on Usenet posting complaints about email spams every day. We
believe they are justified. Usenet is topic specific and should
remain so.
There are
software programs springing up, all intended to make mass emailing
easier, basically because there are no laws against it. As far
as we know, no one has collected $500.00 an hour for their time
because they had to read an unsolicited email. It doesn't look
like any immediate judicial decisions are around the corner
either. If you look at history, advertising has a way of becoming
something we do not have a lot of control over. TV, radio, newspapers,
and magazines are all made possible or cost controlled by advertisers.
We wonder
about what the alternative would be if laws were passed against
using email to advertise. Would we lose part of our browsers
to mandatory advertising space? So far, Advertising has been
able to gain that much control over every other medium. We would
hate to see that happen.
Most of
the small companies that could have offered a better price or
service on a product could be eliminated from the marketplace.
If you have to spend large amounts of money on advertising the
cost is passed on to the consumer, so who ends up losing?
The problem
doesn't seem to be going away for a few reasons. On one side,
it isn't fair to waste someones time reading unwanted junk email.
Especially the type sent by companies only interested in turning
a fast buck with some offer of instant wealth trying to find
people who still believe that you can get something for nothing.
The spam is usually a mile long and sent out bcc: or cc: to
hundreds of addresses. This is not an ethical way to do business.
You can't really blame anyone for getting mad. Complaints about
the type of spam described above will be accepted by Netcheck.
We will try to do what we can to stop them.
As far as
the small companies with something of value to offer maybe a
little tolerance is in order. They won't be in business very
long on page 14 of a search engine and they can't afford to
buy ad space on a major search engine. Most of what is suggested
as alternative ways to increase traffic doesn't work very well.
If the email notice is kept short and only sent individually
to someone ONCE, we will not consider this a spam. Complaints
about a single, short email will not be accepted by Netcheck.
So here
we have defined the two sides of the unsoliciated email problem.
Rather than consider any email notice not requested as a spam,
we choose to promote a little tolerance, only because the possibilities
that accompany government and legal intervention look a lot
worse to us, than the effort it takes us to glance at an email
header, and hit the trash button. This does not mean that we
condone mass emailing, MLM scams, or ghost software products.
However, we have to limit our involvement on the subject of
Email Spamming Complaints and concentrate on the Goals of Netcheck.
. .