faedle's Journal: Ueberroth __NOT__ for Governor

I'm submitting this as a slashdot story, but in the likely event it dosen't get approved, I'll go ahead and write something here. It's also on my livejournal.

I got spam from the Ueberroth campaign this morning. Ugh. Not that it matters, because I'm still registered to vote in Arizona (not here in California). But, I did send off this little letter to Ueberroth's campaign. Maybe something will come of it. I doubt it.

It's very unfortunate that your campaign has chosen unsolicited E-Mail as a way of promoting your campaign. It now has required me to rethink whether or not Ueberroth is going to be sensitive to the needs of the electronic community.

Unsolicited E-Mail is a huge problem on the Internet. It costs mail operators and ISPs like myself millions annually in costs, clogs our systems with mail that is largely unwanted and discarded by our customers, and is generally used to advertise products and services of questionable legality. One of the issues that will inevitably come up during this governor's term is the "SPAM issue".

By choosing to send spam, you have proven to me that you will not be "tough on spam". We need laws that make spammers responsible for the damages they do to systems, and to allow both consumers and business owners to seek damages; and allow our state government to imprison those who use spam to run scams.

As an aside, not only does this show a resistance towards passing tough anti-spam laws, it also shows that Mr. Ueberroth is out of touch with those of us that the media has labelled the "digerati." Without question, none of us likes spam, and the vast majority of us get so much spam in our mailboxes that we are drowning in a sea of penis-enlargement scams, MLM solicitations, and porn website ads that we go through extensive technical measures to shelter ourselves from such unsolicited crap. It does make me wonder how Mr. Ueberroth will vote on other important issues like UTICA, the use of open-source software (and IT methods) in government, and the abuse of the court systems by "industry groups" like the RIAA and MPAA. It sends a very clear message that Mr. Ueberroth is likely either behind the times, or in active opposition of the online community in these areas.

For the record, at no point did I ever release my E-Mail address for the purpose of solicitation. I do not tolerate spam, and this is "polite" compared to the average spammer message I send. I expect to be removed from your mailing list, and further expect an apology for intruding on my personal space.