I’ve received many comments on my spam article. Many say I was too ambiguous about the status of spam itself: it is not just a nuisance; it is a property invasion, perhaps not so much to the individual email user but to server owners, who lose massive resources due to unsolicited bulk email.
That might be true, but recognizing that proves nothing about the need for a federal law against it, anymore than we need federal laws against door-to-door solicitations or flyers put on windshields of cars. A response might be that local and state laws can’t work because spam is a national problem. Correction: it is an international problem; if government could solve it, it would have to be done by a world government, and anyone who believes that the UN or the WTO is going to stop Viagra ads from littering your in-box is taking an implausible leap of faith.
In any case, addressing the precise criminal status of spam was not the point of my article. The real point is that no one wants spam and hence there is a market demand for products that block it. Even from the point of view of server owners, authorizations are becoming ever stricter in an effort to crack down. But progress is being made—just as the market makes progress against all forms of public nuisances. In response to crime, people began locking cars and houses, installing alarm systems, hiring private security guards, and moving to gated communities. These are all market-based responses. So too will the solution to spam come from private agents, not public ones. Politicians posture and pester, but it is private enterprise that works to address real human needs.
