Defendant derives a benefit from the service of Internet computers and servers located in Indiana for the purpose of distributing his electronic mail. The Internet, Electronic Mail, and Spam 5. The Internet is an international computer communications network using telephone lines and cables to link computers together and allow vast amounts of information to pass between individuals, businesses, and other computer networks. Because electronic mail provides an opportunity to reach a wide audience quickly and at virtually no cost to the sender, some companies have begun using it to distribute advertisements over the Internet, sending the same unsolicited commercial message to hundreds of thousands of Internet users at once. To most Internet users, the receipt of unsolicited advertising messages is seen as a costly nuisance and an invasion of their privacy.
Many Internet users pay for their electronic mail service in increments of time.
As a result, the time a user spends accessing the junk mail message, reviewing it and discarding it costs the unwilling recipient money. Spam is thus no different than a telemarketer's call to a cellular phone user who must pay for the air time spent answering and hanging up, or a collect call from a telemarketer on which the recipient must accept the charges, or an unsolicited facsimile advertisement received on a traditional fax machine. In addition, individuals generally distribute their electronic mail addresses selectively, much the same as one would make available his or her unlisted home telephone number. When mail is received, users expect it to be correspondence from a family member, an acquaintance or someone else to whom the individual has given the e-mail address. Most are disturbed to find that their unpublished mail addresses have fallen into the hands of a direct email service that repeatedly fills their electronic mailboxes with unsolicited, and unwanted advertising, even after being ordered to cease by the unwilling recipient.