Internet Users! Read Now to Learn of Unique Opportunity!

The citizens of cyberspace are shocked! Outraged! Appalled! Barbarians have breached The Net and that could mean The End of Civilization as They Know It. The horror, the horror . . .

Cavalierly exploiting the laid-back, laissez-faire culture of the Internet, an Arizona law firm earned the enmity of the entire cyberspace community by broadcasting an unsolicited electronic mail advertisement to more than 5,000 Usenet groups, which are basically electronic bulletin boards for subjects ranging from the Postal Service to pet birds. The firm was trolling for green card applicants in need of legal help.

That only a fraction of the vast Internet audience would be interested in this message was beside the point. Given that through the vagaries of Internet pricing, the advertisement could reach millions at the cost of mere pennies, the lawyers got a heck of a direct-mail buy.

But for a culture where commerce is supposed to be an act between consenting adults and not a trespass into personal conversations, the Internet community--the prototype of tomorrow’s interactive masses--viewed the green card ad as the sort of boorish, unsanitary act one associates with tinkling in a public pool or passing gas in a crowded elevator.

The law firm undeniably got some business. However, thousands of Usenet participants sent angry e-mail to the lawyers, condemning the intrusion. For its premeditated violations of Internet protocol, the law firm was disconnected from the Net. Naturally, the law firm threatened to sue to get back on. America is truly a great country.

The New York Times reports that the lawyer responsible for the green card ad is unrepentant and quotes him as saying, “We will definitely advertise on the Internet again.”

Now, this conflict has been portrayed as a clash between the commercial values of ruthless entrepreneurs and the “information wants to be free” Twinkies-and-Jolt-Cola values of the hackers. That’s nonsense.

This clash isn’t even about the future of “netiquette” or why it’s a pity that, in cyberspace, it’s so easy for jerks to express themselves on a global scale. No, this is really a story about what kind of networks we want, who gets to have access and why.

Now, we certainly don’t allow the telemarketers and obscene phone callers to determine how we use our phone system. Do we really want to allow the excesses of the exploiters and the parasites to define the dimensions of our computer network interactions? Or does it perhaps make more sense to design networks that can profitably coexist as both marketplaces and communities?

The green card tale merely confirms what we all know: We need public networks that neither subsidize bad behavior nor penalize people who are going about minding their own business. Networks must respect the boundaries of personal privacy while offering the potential for reaching out to those unknown.

Fortunately, that’s not nearly as difficult as it sounds. For example, there’s a simple way to handle pseudo-entrepreneurial law firms that want to turn the Internet into the world’s largest direct e-mail medium: Create the equivalent of e-mail stamps and charge people a per-message fee. The discipline of a pricing mechanism would go a long way toward preventing a recurrence of the excesses of the green card ad.

But there’s another market mechanism that offers even greater potential for striking a better communications balance. Every Internet message that is sent out has a “header” that describes something about its origin: who is sending it, where it’s from and so on. It would be a straightforward matter of simple programming to make the header do a little more work. For example, instead of simply listing name and origin, headers could also list whether the message is solicited or unsolicited; it could mention whether the message is commercial or private.

Recipients could then program their mailboxes to screen out unsolicited commercial messages or even seek out commercial messages on topics they’re interested in--say, how to get a green card.

Ultimately, what you’d have is a thriving market in software filters, screens and agents to get the information you want and get rid of the messages you want to avoid. In many corporations today, individuals use “bozo filters” to screen out e-mail from unwanted senders. And Usenet users can use a “kill” feature to block out postings from any e-mail address.

Soon, Usenet groups and individuals who wanted to get commercial solicitations could design filters that let those queries in; bulletin boards that didn’t want ads could easily block them out. (The design of software agents and screens is one of the hottest areas of computerdom.)

Of course, this system requires people who send messages to accurately describe them in the header. In other words, it requires truth in labeling. Now, you couldn’t imagine a lawyer improperly or inaccurately labeling a network solicitation, could you? That would be unethical. In the future, it should also be illegal. Fine the abusers and kick them off the Net. Think of it as the Information Age counterpart to mail fraud.

The Internet may well be the most fertile development and testing ground for the development of software agents and filters for the future. This kind of experimentation should be encouraged. You can be sure that these kinds of filters and agents will eventually find their way onto tomorrow’s interactive cable networks as well.

So instead of treating the green card episode as the end of the open Internet era, let’s use it as the opportunity to build a network infrastructure that gives people the power to create new choices in a new marketplace of messages.