PerfectMaster 2004 Free Update

Well, Kathy/Ray is back with another ad. It's for a different product than last week.

"Kathy" snipped-for-privacy@nomail.org wrote SPAM in message ---snip the spam---
multipal posting of ads on usenet is considered SPAM.
snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net

You USENET nubs have changed things then... We considered posting of ANY ad Spam back in the good old days.

In the good old days (and I wuz dere): a) "spam" referred to multi- or cross-posted material (cf Breibart Index) b) Ads were very much allowed in specific (for-sale) news.groups c) Ads in other news.groups were ok under quite restricted circumstances. Examples of ok: (note that on-topic is always present) 1) In answer to a request. (e.g. "Where do I buy an xyz?") 2) A single non-commercial mention - i.e. selling this kind of item is not the person's business. 3) A notice of availability - i.e. information 4) A brief mention in a .sig
I'm sure that the "nettiquette" docs are still around and can be consulted on these points.
But, bottom line, I'm pretty sure that if a locksmith posted about the availability of a new version of the code software she uses that it would have been ok. It wouldn't even have been considered an "ad". If the manufacturer of the code software posted the same thing - it would probably have been considered borderline - and then the size and frequency of the post and its information vs. ad content would have been considered in determining which side of the border it fell on.
Back to today - I don't believe that "Kathy" is a locksmith unaffiliated with Tres... But if she is - then I'd consider the post to be totally acceptable. If she is just an alias for Tres..., then I'd consider the post to be an ad - but given its appropriateness, brevity and lack of puffery, still quite acceptable.

And what good did it do?

None... We fought the commercialization of the net, but we were essentially powerless... Then they came up with the WWW so we thought "cool, hopefully the spam will go there and leave the the older parts of the net (USENET, IRC, etc) alone..." Still, all in all, nothing is as contaminated as the WWW, but that's pretty much what it was designed for.

Commercialization need not in and of itself be a bad thing. Spam as most people define it exists for the most part because of technical diffeciencies which make it possible to spoof the origin of a message to varying degress. Eliminate that possibility or even make it very difficult and you would eliminate most spam.