Brad Templeton, an old school internet guy and chairman of the board of the EFF, writes an excellent essay titled Reflections on the 25th Anniversary of Spam. It covers a brief history of spam, and gives an excellent overview of the current solutions available.
Posted by Eli at April 29, 2003 09:18 PM | TrackBackSpam fascinates me because it sits at the intersection of three important rights -- free speech, private property and privacy. It's also the first major internet governance issue (possibly in tandem with DNS) that the members of the internet community have been so deeply concerned with.
The reaction to it has been remarkable. By attacking something we hold dear, and goading us by using our own tools and resources to do it, spam generates emotion far beyond its actual harm, even though that actual harm is quite considerable.