Internet Spam

Your Jan. 5 editorial, “Cyberjunk Cleanup,” was factually correct but chased a red herring by dwelling on cyberporn and missed the mark completely in comparing e-mail spam to postal junk mail. Although the latter is annoying, mailing a letter costs real money for the advertiser; the recipient can simply throw it in the trash at no cost. Not so for unsolicited e-mail. Spammers steal bandwidth that is paid for by the receiving Internet service provider and ultimately the recipient, whether or not the e-mail is even read.

A better analogy would have been to junk faxes (which are prohibited under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act). That same law makes it illegal to use auto-dialing equipment to bombard services in which the recipient pays for incoming calls, like cellular phones. Spam is cheap to send, but expensive for victims to clean up. When a spammer expropriates my money and resources, it’s more than fraud. It’s theft.

RICK HALL, Larry Flynt Publications, Beverly Hills