14.4  THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY


1994 represented something of a watershed for the Internet -- it was the 
year the people who normally advertise in the back of the National 
Inquirer and Cosmopolitan discovered the Net. 

Usenet participants found their favorite conferences filled with ads for 
everything from thigh-reducing cream to pornography.  Canter and Siegel, 
a pair of lawyers in Phoenix, Ariz., gained national media attention when 
they flooded some 6,000 separate Usenet newsgroups with ads for a $99 
immigration service.  

The reason they gained such notice was not because they had done 
something unique (in January, 1994, a system administrator at a small 
college in Pennsylvania did much the same thing with postings about how 
the Los Angeles earthquake proved the Second Coming was imminent), but 
because of the reaction of Internet users.  Simply, they were outraged 
that no matter what newsgroup they went into, whether it was to discuss 
Unix programming or planning a wedding, they found the same darn ad, over 
and over and over.  Some responded by posting messages on how to get the 
same services offered by the lawyers for free.  More deluged the lawyers 
-- and the administrators at the system they used -- with protest 
messages, some 200 megabytes worth in just two days.  Suddenly, the once 
obscure Usenet phrase "to spam" (from the Monty Python skit about the 
restaurant that only serves the stuff) was making the pages of the New 
York Times. 

But what the lawyers pulled may be the last time anybody gets away with 
something like that.  Today, numerous Usenet users stay on the alert for 
spamming.  Using a technique known as "cancelling," they are able to wipe 
out such messages almost as soon as they pop up. 

The moral of the story is that Internet users do not object to 
advertising in general, but that many feel it has a proper place -- in 
online catalogs that users have to make a point of going to, not shoved 
down people's throats in discussion areas.