“The Internet is a great tool for communication and commerce. It’s changing our lives-largely for the better. But as consumers, we should have the power to stop getting commercial or pandering e-mail on our computers or on the computers of our children.” Gratuitous words of a lawmaker on the bandwagon now that Congress has approved historic anti-spam legislation? Nope. Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.), Oct. 19, 1999.
It’s taken that long.
While we’ve been hunting down hackers, building firewalls and otherwise whipping ourselves into a frenzy about impending cyber attacks from terrorists, spammers-increasingly smut meisters-day in and day out gradually have been taking over the Internet. Mobile-phone networks were about to become the next great frontier.
What Wilson and Rep. Gene Green (D-Texas) started four years ago and lawmakers finished last Tuesday is nothing less than the salvation of the Internet as we know it. And thanks to Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), wireless phones will not be larded with unwanted ads for anatomical enhancements and such. We will not become Japan.
Truth is, it wasn’t Markey’s idea. But being the ranking Democrat on the House telecom and Internet panel and an influential consumer advocate, Markey was the perfect closer. Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.) introduced the Wireless Phone Consumer Protection Act first in 2000, then in 2001 and then again in 2003.
“Not only is text-messaging cell-phone spam an invasion of privacy, it’s not fair,” said Holt. “Under most cell-phone plans, the consumer has to pay for each message received. That means consumers are paying to be spammed. Under the bill passed today, they won’t have to any more.”
Yep, 2004 has been the pits for those menacing purveyors of unsolicited garbage who invade our space with reckless abandon. First the telemarketers. Now the spammers. The free-speech argument didn’t wash, mainly because its proponents had it exactly backward. Calls at dinner prevent family members from completing sentences to one another. And spam has so clogged the Net’s arteries as to restrict everyday personal and business e-mail. All we needed were the airwaves to be mucked up with this stuff.
I’m just grateful my computer didn’t crash last week as a result of all the e-mails from a certain national mobile -phone carrier that treated Nov. 24 as an early Christmas.
