Email lists struggle under spam avalanche
Published: 14 Apr 2004 14:20 BST
For close to half a decade, entertainment executives and copyright-averse college students have debated the future of technology side by side on the "Pho" email list. Now that forum is under siege.
Membership is falling, even though subscription requests are rising. In large part that's because so many email addresses are choked with spam, or have fallen incommunicado behind bulk mail filters, and have had to be eliminated.
Recently, whole companies -- including Time Warner and CNET Networks, publisher of News.com -- have periodically started bouncing the list's messages. That's not only frustrated subscribers who miss out on their daily dose of digital music dish; network administrators say they sometimes have to clear their servers of thousands of returned messages a day.
Pho isn't alone. Email lists in general, long one of the most popular and useful online tools, are increasingly in danger of becoming collateral damage in the Net's war on unsolicited bulk mail.
"Our cures for some of these diseases are boomeranging and killing us," said Jim Griffin, chief executive officer of Cherry Lane Digital and co-founder of the Pho list. "What we're discussing is the passing of a medium. It is alarming to me that one of the most basic features of the Net has been threatened so badly."
It's far too early to write an obituary for email lists. The 30-year-old medium has confronted crises before and has been reborn with the help of clever programmers and new technology. Email advocates say this process is already under way, as companies and list administrators figure out both how to keep spam under control without so much of an effect on mail lists and other desired email messages.
"In the early days of the Net, we built a nervous system, but nobody built an immune system," said Marc Smith, a sociologist who studies communities such as Usenet and email groups for Microsoft's research division. "What we're seeing now is the emergence of an immune system."
Nevertheless, it is undeniable that Pho and other groups are facing serious hurdles that could change the way the medium operates forever.
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