The two lawyers who angered the Internet community when they posted ads on various USENETs tell why they did it.
On April 12, 1994, two lawyers inserted an advertisement on USENET groups -- the electronic bulletin boards that are the heart and soul of the Internet and that millions of people turn to for advice, debate, and social interaction.
The posting of ads has always been heavily frowned upon by most USENET users, but Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel's missive -- an offer to help immigrants apply for a permanent-residence green card for a fee of $100 -- was regarded as a virtual call to arms. The main offense: the lawyers had "spammed" the Internet. That is, they had used a software program to methodically insert their generally unwelcome message on 6,000 of the 9,000 USENET "newsgroups," so that almost everywhere Internet users turned that day they ran into the ad.
Canter and Siegel, who are married, quickly found themselves the target of the most vicious and widespread "flaming" campaign in the history of the Internet. Angry E-mail swamped the computers of their Internet-access provider; hate faxes, some of them racist or threatening, poured into their offices; software programs known as "cancelbots" were unleashed to hunt down and delete the ads.
How chastised did the lawyers feel? They turned around and wrote a book -- How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway (HarperCollins, 1994) -- urging other businesses and professionals to do exactly what they had done. They also founded a consultancy called Cybersell to help companies get started.
Inc. Technology editor David Freedman swapped E-mail with the legal spammers for several weeks. Here are some excerpts.
From: David Freedman david_freedman@incmag.com Congratulations on your best-seller. At what stage of your run-in with the on-line world did it occur to you to write a book about selling on the Internet?
From: Laurence A. Canter lcanter@cyber.sell.com We had been wanting to write a book about marketing for several years, but it took the green-card incident to show us the light. The Internet in general, and USENET in particular, was such an unbelievable and largely untapped resource for marketing just about anything that we simply couldn't remain quiet.
david_freedman@incmag.com I have to ask you the same sort of question that Coca-Cola was asked after the New Coke debacle boosted sales of Coke Classic. Did you even remotely imagine ahead of time that your green-card posting might bring you the sort of notoriety that it did? As you may know, Coca-Cola's answer was, We weren't that stupid, and we weren't that smart. You must have at least been aware that there would be a certain amount of flaming in response. Did you not care, did you feel it was a cost of doing business on the Internet, or did you even welcome it?
lcanter@cyber.sell.com Well, Internet advertising is probably not for the faint of heart, but then neither is success. We were aware of the controversy, of course, since we had done several smaller postings before that eventful night of April 12 -- which we believe will go down in history as the date the Internet became truly commercial.
In the end, the results speak for themselves. The project was successful. The number of people wanting our information was overwhelming, and we ended up with 1,004 paying clients. The publicity was greater than we had anticipated, however, and some have accused us of staging the entire event for PR purposes. On that count, I'd agree with Coca-Cola.
From: Martha S. Siegel msiegel@cyber.sell.com There's too much contention in the world today already. It's a shame conflicts can't be settled peacefully. If the worst thing anyone can say about me is that I put an ad on the Internet, then I'd say that speaks well for my standards of behavior. We weren't about to let a bunch of loudmouthed bullies stop us from doing something perfectly legal and ethical. I don't think it was Coca-Cola. It was probably more Davy Crockett -- "Be sure you're right; then go ahead."
david_freedman@incmag.com Martha, you sound as if you're sensitive to the fact that you guys infuriated a lot of people, and your insistence on pushing this form of advertising may be more a reaction to the obnoxiousness and self-righteousness of the flamers than a deep conviction that it's the right thing to do. Do you two sometimes wonder if the ultimate result of your having pushed the envelope in Internet advertising won't be the pioneering of a new, effective form of small-business advertising but rather the introduction of formal restrictions on broadcast advertising on the Internet?
msiegel@cyber.sell.com As to the first part of your question, congratulations, you've just proved you're a sexist -- the man is making a reasoned business decision, and the woman is reacting emotionally. Be assured that we speak with one voice on this matter. We do what we do because it's good business, and that's all. I don't know how you spend your days, but I don't have time to waste proving points to unruly college kids and assorted zealots. I have a company to run.
As to part two of your question, there's no doubt that we've pioneered a new form of business advertising, and there's no question that it is effective, but if formal constraints arise to control electronic vandals, so much the better.
One thing that also needs to be strongly emphasized about the need for regulation is the possibility of hidden agendas. After all, when an attack is made on a business, maybe it's a Netter with a heartfelt conviction that advertising doesn't belong on the Internet. Then again, maybe it's a competitor trying to put another competitor out of business. When I see members of the Bolt Beranek and Newman consulting firm publicly criticizing us, I can't help but wonder which of our competitors put them up to it, which one of their clients would benefit from seeing us gone.
The same is true when a company like MecklerMedia, our direct competitor, slams us editorially in their magazines. When CompuServe forbids USENET advertising of any kind over its network, is it doing it out of respect for the sanctity of the Internet or because it would prefer to have the advertising revenues accrue to them? Just like me, these people aren't acting on emotion. A heavy-duty business agenda is behind a lot of what's going on. We need formal control to ensure as much as possible that everyone plays fair.
david_freedman@incmag.com I don't see why you need to be a sexist to regard statements like "there's too much contention in the world today already" as the product of sensitivity. But let's not get sidetracked.
Assuming more and more companies take your advice and advertise on the Internet, which seems inevitable, do you think the Internet will have to change to accommodate an explosion of advertising?
msiegel@cyber.sell.com I can't imagine that people will find a way to relegate advertising to a separate area. It hasn't happened that way in any other medium, and it won't happen here. If there is ever a nonadvertising zone, it will be the less populated corner of the Internet, and the free advertising areas will be by far the most popular. You have only to look at the popularity of public-access cable TV or PBS versus the commercial channels to see what will happen on the Internet.
