Spam

SPAM AND TELEMARKETING

But I didn't ask for it...

In the good old days, I would go out to the mail box and find brochures and mailers and flyers and catalogs for a variety of offers and special interests. With my planning nature, I placed a trash can just inside the door and without paying any attention, eliminated everything I didn't want to deal with or had no interest in. This process worked well. I didn't pay for ads to be prepared or delivered to me, the sender did. In this case, the sender paid for the design, printing, packaging and delivery (and that's the important part). The method of delivery was paid for by the advertiser.

With the advent of radio and then TV, the cost of the broadcast was made possible by the selling of advertising. In the early days of TV, a sponsor would develop a show that entertained while trying to include sales pitches for the products they supported. The process has changed a little but the concept is the same. An advertiser will design, develop and prepare a commercial spot that is aired during the selected broadcast programs. As in mass mailers, the advertiser is paying for the delivery of the message. Yes, I pay for the TV, but the signals broadcast to the TV are free to the viewer.

In both of the above examples, the delivery process of the advertising is completed at the cost to the advertiser. I don't pay a monthly fee to the post office to have my mail delivered and I don't pay a monthly fee to the TV companies to get their free broadcasts. Yes, I know about the cost of cable but that is a different issue, free TV is available to anyone that wants to avoid cable.

Over the last few years, there has been a dramatic shift in the methods of advertising. First there was telemarketing and then e-mail spam. Both of these are different than what went before in one crucial manner, the method of delivery. If I must pay for telephone service and Internet service, why can advertisers use what I pay for as a means to reduce the cost of their advertising?

For me the issue boils down to who pays for what. If the phone service was provided free of charge, then I would be subject to telemarketing because they would be paying for the calls, but since my bill hasn't dropped to zero, then I assume that telemarketers are not paying for the delivery of the advertising. The same discussion is true for Internet. As long as the end user must pay for the service then what right does the advertiser have to advertise to me on my dime?

What lies at the bottom of the issue is money. The telemarketers and spammers don't have to pay for the delivery of the advertising so they can charge less or make a larger profit. And with the advent of automated callers and computers that do nothing but generate e-mails, the cost can go down even more. The worst part about the entire issue is the need that the advertisers feel to hide what they are doing. Telemarketers block the caller ID so you won't know it's them calling and spammers use mystic names and routing codes to confuse the reader into thinking this is important. Both of these practices are deceptive.

The time has come for legislation controlling these practices. If the end user must pay for a service, then the advertiser does not have a right to use that service without compensation to the end user. Phone companies already do this exact same thing. It is referred to in two different guises. The first is the more prevalant and relates to long distance. If you make a long distance call, then the phone company on the other end of the call that has to deliver the call, will charge your phone company for the use of the 'local' services to deliver the calls. This is referred to as Carrier Access Billing. The second is only on a local level and is fading away but refers to the same thing. If you are a customer of Qwest and your friend is a customer of Cox, then when you call him, the call requires the use of the Cox 'local' facilities to deliver the call and Cox will present a bill to Qwest for those charges. It's not much on a per call basis but adds up pretty quick when you consider the millions of minutes used each day. This version is called Reciprocal Compensation.

If the telemarketers and spammers provide free service to anyone that wants it, then they can send out all the advertising they want. However, for those people that will pay for the services, then telemarketers and spammers can't infringe on them. Sounds fair, huh? Call your Congressman.