The general consensus among the users of the internet is that spam (Unsolicited Commercial E-mail) is a bad thing. Just ask a sysadmin of any ISP how they view spam and spammers. Some Sysadmins have described spam as network abuse and were dumbfounded that a magazine such as Communications Today could carry such a clueless article.

Communications Today is a publication with a circulation of 6900 and little consumer visibility. Cronin was described by the editor of Communications Today as one of the leading internet marketers in Ireland. This has all the bad vibes of story from the Spamford Wallace era.

The article entitled "Don't Call It Spam" puts the argument for the responsible use of e-mail as a direct marketing tool. Cronin tries and fails to distance what he is advocating from from unsolicited commercial e-mail. Spam is unsolicited commercial e-mail.

Cronin admits to having used what he refers to as "unsolicited e-mail"  as a marketing tool and outlines, somewhat ironically, the steps one should take to observe "netiquette". He does point out that the user has to pay for the privilege of being spammed. But that does not stop him from advocating the use of spam.

The strange thing is that he refers to spam as being a newly minted term. A term that has been in use for nearly five years can hardly be considered "newly minted". He also questions the existence of the word "netiquette" as if to lay the foundation for a justification for his breach of it.

Apparently two things struck Cronin about the responses he received when he engaged in spamming: The response rate varied from 1 to 17% and secondly that less than two percent of respondents availed of the opt out clause he so "responsibly" included. Perhaps if he realised that people generally do not respond to spam because spammers typically use faked return addresses or harvest the e-mail addresses of those who opt out for further spamming. The internet magazines have been full of articles about how to deal with spam and one of the things they frequently advise readers to not to do is respond to spam.

The article proceeds from bad to abysmal as Cronin advises potential spammers to examine the spam that they receive in order to best defeat anti-spam defences that users may have set up. Most of these techniques centre on the phrasing of the subject line. He then proceeds to what to do when trying to obtain a list of e-mail addresses for spamming. Offering such nuggets as "The hardest problem to overcome is obtaining a targeted list from responsible brokers. Can you damage your company's reputation by buying a list and blitzing away? Of course you can." The fact that the user has to pay for the spam is mentioned in the article.

Above all Cronin shows the poverty of his outlook by in the following quotation: "I have a feeling that that the people who whinge most about spam that are those most likely to be sloppy about how visible their address is. They might also be sour that the only mail they get is of a commercial nature."  In pop-psychologyl terms this is called a rationalisation. It is the kind of lie that people use to justify their actions when the actions are socially unacceptable. And on the internet, spam is socially unacceptable.

At the one extreme interpretation of Cronin's comment, a kid who puts up a personal website with their e-mail address is a legitimate lead for a hard core porn spammer's list. After all their e-mail address is visible and therefore usable by a spammer.

The use of free e-mail accounts to engage in spamming is detailed in the article. The free e-mail services Yahoo and Hotmail are mentioned specifically by Cronin. What the article does not say is that he has, according to the terms and conditions of these services, abused them.

Cronin admits that when the free e-mail accounts he has used to send his unsolicited e-mail become clogged with the complaints of irate victims, he drops the accounts.

The free e-mail services have a no-spam clause in their user agreement. Hotmail makes it clear in section 12 of their acceptable use policy: " The Service makes use of the Internet to send and receive certain messages; therefore, Member's conduct is subject to Internet regulations, policies and procedures. Member will not use the Service for chain letters, junk mail, spamming or any use of distribution lists to any person who has not given specific permission to be included in such a process." Notice that this agreement contradicts virtually everything that Cronin was proposing in his diatribe. It prohibits junk mail, spamming and most importantly it deals with opt-in rather than opt out. This means that the recipient has to have given permission for their e-mail to be included in a list - quite the opposite of Cronin's opt-out approach.

Yahoo the other free e-mail service similarly has a "no spam" section in it's policy. In order to sign up for either of these services you have to agree to the terms and conditions of use.

The article was included in Communications Today as an opinion piece. It is an opinion that most internet users and internet service providers  find disgusting yet the editor of Communications Today when questioned about it stated that the magazine was standing by it. A message tacked on to the end of the article stated that Communications Today and it's publishers were standing by the article.

The Irish Times was not so eager to run such an  article considering that it has carried more than a few articles in it's Computimes section dealing with the evils of spam. It initially pulled the article. Now apparently it has reinstated the article on the website.

Questions have to be asked as to the editorial judgement of both the Irish Times and Communications Today. But even more disconcerting is the inclusion of what arguably is a pro-spam section on the Irish Internet Association's website.