Recently, since I started venturing out into Web sites, my address has somehow been intercepted and I'm starting to receive seven to eight junk e-mails per day. A businessman I know counts about 100 spams every morning awaiting deletion. I don't pay my e-mail provider for the privilege of serving as a wastebasket for spammers' trashy tactics, and I suspect I have a lot of company. This perhaps is due to our shared concern on how to balance priorities: the degree of freedom acceptable in the marketplace versus the quality of our lives.
As the public chooses quality of life, we demand laws that bring things into balance. Some U.S. cities have already regulated one malady that may be more dreadful than the ringing of the White House red phone at midnight -- namely, the resilient telephone marketer. New York phone subscribers, for example, are given the option of being on a no-solicitation call list, ensuring them privacy and, yes, a better quality of life. Providing e-mail account holders a similar option would be reasonable.
An enforced no-mail listing would discourage spammers. Penalties could be made stiff enough to dry them up in short order. E-mail users aren't complaining loudly enough right now. Apparently there were enough phone subscribers who outshouted business and commerce lobbies to get cold-call ban options in place. If e-mail users make enough noise, we'll see some quality-of-life change for the better.
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