Keep our e-mail clean

Ever since IU servers were hacked last semester, IU students have received a barrage of spam e-mail messages advertising everything from low mortgage rates to techniques for increasing penis sizes. Spam has been a growing problem in today's Internet age, but until now, no one has done anything serious about it.\nThe Federal Trade Commission recently launched a suit against a California man for using deceptive message headers to lure spam victims to his site. This form of spam, commonly known as "spoofing," is even more irritating since the e-mails are typically sent from bogus addresses and cannot be responded to or are part of mass lists that victims can't unsubscribe from. While he will probably counter with a free speech argument, the FTC should prevail.\nSpam goes further than just the gray line between commercial and free speech; it jumps over that line by leaps and bounds. Since spam is typically advertising a product, it is commercial speech and therefore has less protection than other types of speech. Beyond that, it is often times unsolicited and offensive to many Internet users who don't really care if some XXX web site women haven't had sex in four months.\nMost speech has an identifiable speaker, whether it be a telemarketer or a lonely streetcorner pamphleteer. E-mail has the ability to let the spammer remain completely anonymous. Spammers set up free e-mail accounts at Yahoo! or Hotmail, send numerous messages and then destroy the account, leaving the victim with no way of responding. Not only does this practice annoy anyone whose e-mail account has been flooded by spam, it's wasteful for companies like Microsoft and Yahoo!, as their server space is consumed by these spammers. In the past, attempts have been made by these companies to curb spamming, but a new joint effort may, hopefully, prove fruitful.\nTo some, spam is nothing more than a nuisance that must be deleted every day before the real e-mail can be read; but to many, it is dangerous and offensive. Even the most conservative Internet user can find him or herself trudged down by horny housewives, and unsuspecting newbies may wind up the victim of a seemingly legitimate Internet business. If only Congress had focused more on this issue than on broad Internet censorship in the mid-nineties, maybe we wouldn't be having this problem right now.\nIU has recently implemented anti-spam software, but its usefulness is questionable. Still, at least it's an attempt, and it is far more applicable to student life and more worth our tuition money than the monetary sink-hole known as PeopleSoft. Much of the recent spam problem is the fault of IU, and as such, the administration should be doing everything it can to correct the problem.\nBut real progress is only going to come through legislation. Congress needs to push for a bill that would force all e-mailers to identify themselves and provide the right of reply. Additionally, mass e-mailers should have to use lists like those used by telemarketers that Internet users can unsubscribe from. An e-mail box is private, and everyone should have the right to keep it free of unwanted commercial speech.\n-Jason Gaddis for the Editorial Board