[spam] Damn Spam — The New Yorker on Internet Spam [via qwghlm]…

‘After selecting six hundred West Coast addresses, Thuerk realized that he would never have time to call each one of them, or even to send out hundreds of individual messages. Then another idea occurred to him: what if he simply used the network to dispatch a single e-mail to all of them? “We invite you to come see the 2020 and hear about the DECSystem-20 family,” the message read. As historic lines go, it didn’t have quite the ring of “One small step for a man,” yet Gary Thuerk’s impact cannot be disputed. When he pushed the send button, he became the father of spam. The reaction was immediate and almost completely hostile. “This was a flagrant violation of the Arpanet,” one recipient wrote. Another noted that “advertising of particular products” should be strongly discouraged on the network. The system administrator promised to respond at once, and Thuerk was harshly reprimanded. Nevertheless, his company sold more than twenty of the computer systems, for a million dollars apiece.’

The New Yorker on Internet Spam

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 9th, 2007 at 8:40 am and is filed under Internet, Spam.

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