Spam Toms

I’ve found it interesting recently that people and legislatures all over the place have been pushing to make it illegal to send spam, but no one has considered making it illegal to respond to an offer delivered via spam.

While making it illegal to respond to a spam offer initially seems crazy, consider that it is illegal to procure the services of a prostitute. While some might argue that prostitution should be legal, it currently remains illegal. (George Carlin has the clearest and most lucent argument on this subject, “Fucking is legal. Selling is legal. So why isn’t selling fucking legal?”)

The rational for the legal prohibitions against prostitution (ignoring religious and moral objections) are demoralization of women, the creation of a public health problem in the form of STDs, and the creation of “clutter” in residential as well as commercial areas. (i.e. destroying the atmosphere of neighborhoods.)

The rationales for making spam illegal respectively are the decreased usefulness of email, the creation of a problem that reduces the efficiency of the Internet and requires greater bandwidth and storage to be deployed, the increase of advertising thus making legitimate opt in email advertising less effective. (i.e. destroying an advertising vehicle)

In prostitution we prosecute both the prostitutes, Janes, and their clients, Toms. Simply the logic for prosecuting both the client and the service provider is economic, that if the client didn’t exist the service provider couldn’t exist either, so it is more effective to attack the problem from both ends and destroy the market for prostitution both by reducing supply and demand, therefore hopefully reducing the corresponding demand and supply.

But, all of the Spam bills being proposed only target the SpamJanes and not the SpamToms. Spam is a business and as such obeys the laws of economics. The business model of spam outfits only requires a miniscule response rate, as does the business model of a prostitute. If spammers received no revenue from their efforts they would have no incentive to engage in spamming. Ergo, responding to spam should be illegal as well, perhaps carrying a fine of $200 or double the amount spent on the goods advertised via spam, whichever is greater. This fine amount would ensure an adequate impact on Toms without imposing undue harm upon lower income Toms.

In a real world scenario law enforcement would track down the SpamJanes shut them down and utilize their sales records to prosecute the SpamToms. In addition law enforcement could also leave the websites of spammers operational to catch any future SpamToms. (This is akin to Police Officers posing as prostitutes.) It would also be logical to make it explicitly legal for law enforcement and/or private companies to hack SpamJanes’s computer systems wherever they are located to obtain SpamToms sales records, and prosecute SpamToms even if the SpamJanes cannot be prosecuted for jurisdictional and/or technical reasons.

Spam will remain prevalent in this country as long as it is profitable. While SpamJanes can move out of the country to shield themselves from US laws, most SpamToms are unable to do so. By making it illegal to respond to spam it will not affect those who already ignore spam, and will make clear disincentives to respond to spam.

Any anti-spam efforts should be multi-pronged working to reduce the prostitution of email in any way possible.