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: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- 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>. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBNTuVH8U88eHdnUcpAQGRBQL/ZoZ1xP7evSc8nIQwRRTWuVSDkmHnkFhl CWwX6aWwDtnYWAVtYHZ/HZ6ONurh3qPgv/c+RicY7QqqsujUYOKhbh3iV7pY15hQ tUsT0PdtPs73HIss8BDo/WDJV3hi8tv0 =kATr -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----