Congress has had little luck on the issue. The House of Representatives Wednesday slimmed down a bill that would protect consumers against unsolicited bulk e-mail. Ted Gavin, a consultant with Nachman Hays Consulting who is helping to draft policy against spam for the marketing industry, said that the issue will be better fought by reaching the people using direct e-mail marketing as an advertising venue. Many companies selling products or services would have better luck targeting a specific audience rather than blanketing mailing lists with spam, Gavin said. Many marketing professionals fall victim to the fallacy that distributing mass e-mail is low cost.
Somebody pays for everything that gets done on the Internet.
There is always a cost associated with sending an e-mail. The cost is hard to calculate, Gavin said, but includes the resources ISPs use to deal with large amounts of data being sent over their networks. Since the early 1990s, when America Online first took its service to consumers, the Internet has become a gold mine for direct marketers, according to Geller. Since then, marketing scams such as Ponzi and pyramid schemes have migrated from mail and newspaper advertisements to the less costly medium. And there may be no way to get rid of spam if governments, marketers and consumers don't come to a consensus on a solution.