Unsolicited Commercial Email

If you've ever read any of the news.admin.net-abuse* newsgroups, you'll have seen a bunch of people arguing back and forth. Sometimes it looks like no one is really tryng to have a serious conversation. These are some thoughts about Unsolicited Commercial Emails, written out so I can remember what I'm trying to say.

It is pretty much a given that UCEs are, at the very least, a nuisance. They take precious time to examine and discard, even if only an insignificant amount of time. Of course, for people who have time or volume-based charging on their Internet accounts, there is a direct cost to simply download those messages. However, even those of us who are paying a flat fee per year for our access are still charged for UCEs. The incoming volume of mail must be stored on the ISP's servers. Backbone providers also charge by volume of traffic recieved and sent. The costs are not absorbed by the ISPs, they are passed on to users in the form of higher access fees.

As we can clearly see, UCE is therefore taking value from the recipients.

"But wait!" you might say. "Advertisements on TV cost you money to recieve as well. You pay for the electricity, and perhaps for the Pay TV service. Why not complain about that?"

Well, the difference is that all other forms of advertising which take value from the recipient give something of equal or greater value in return, other than the advertisement itself. Advertisements on free-to-air TV are what pay for the programs to be made, and for the transmission itself. Advertisements on pay TV reduce the cost of the TV service. They do this because the advertiser is paying the recipient's service providers more than the cost of transmitting their ad.