Some of you might be interested in this. For those that argue "spam doesn't
cost anything", the CAUCE people put forth a good argument.

      -Chris Bartram
       3k Associates, Inc.

        From John Mozena:

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 20, 1998

Contact: John Mozena
         Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (CAUCE)
         (313) 885-0414
         (810) 595-9964 pager

CAUCE ASKS EMPLOYERS HOW MANY
WORKERS THEY'RE PAYING TO READ
THE DAILY DOSE OF SPAM

Is your company paying a full-time employee to read e-mail advertisements
("spam") for pyramid schemes, pornographic Web sites and questionable golf
balls? You might be surprised at the answer, warns the Coalition Against
Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail (CAUCE).

While proponents of junk e-mail claim that there is essentially no cost to
the end recipient, CAUCE warns that a number of hidden costs make spam,
which accounts for approximately 10 percent of all e-mail traffic on the
Internet, a major burdent to users and providers. When the account
provider is an employer, the costs are even more important.

"Assume that each spam you get takes 10 seconds to download, read, delete
and move on," said CAUCE Board member John Mozena. "That means six spams
waste a minute of your company's time, 360 waste an hour and 2,880 waste
an entire 8-hour day."

Therefore, a company with 2,880 employees who each get one junk e-mail per
day is essentially employing a full-time equivalent (FTE) employee to do
nothing but read spam. A 720-person company receiving four spams per
person -- a more realistic load -- is in the same position.

"Even if you've got a small company, look at it on a weekly or monthly
basis," said Mozena. "Would you bring in a temp each week or month to read
advertisements for a day? Of course not, you wouldn't accept the ads in
the first place."

Unlike in the "real world," however, business owners have no way to make
the ads stop when junk e-mail is the delivery method. Junk e-mailers
rarely honor requests to be removed from a mailing list, and filters
created to block junk e-mail not only risk deleting legitimate mail from
potential or current clients, they also cost the company time and money to
maintain.

"It's just another way that spam shifts the cost of the advertisement onto
the recipient," said CAUCE Board member and "Internet for Dummies"
co-author John Levine. "While the individual user might not see the cost
involved, their employer or Internet provider is absorbing the cost and is
passing it on in lower wages, decreased service, higher access fees or
increased outages."

In addition to the increased cost, junk e-mail makes it difficult to use
your e-mail for legitimate business purposes.

"With robotic address harvesters, the e-mail addresses you put on a
website for customer feedback can be rendered unusuable in a matter of
weeks,"  explained CAUCE Board member Ray Everett-Church.

CAUCE supports legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives, HR 1748,
that would extend the successful and court-tested law regulating junk
faxes to include junk e-mail. Only with a law, say CAUCE and its
supporters, will businesses and individuals be able to force unethical
marketers to respect our property rights and cease using our mailboxes for
their own private gain.


About CAUCE:

CAUCE is the world's largest "virtual organization," with 10,000 members
across the United States and supporters across the world. It supports and
works toward passage of HR 1748, sponsored by Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ),
which would extend the "junk fax" provisions of the Telephone Consumer
Protection Act to include junk e-mail. CAUCE has no budget, no office and
is run by an all-volunteer board using donated resources. For more
information about CAUCE, visit its Web site at <http://www.cauce.org>.

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