Commerce is important to the future of the internet, and to the ecomonic future and wellbeing of the country. Those of us who grew up with the internet as our private playground, and who followed strict usage rules dictated by the arpanet due to the government funded, research nature of the arpanet, have resented many of the changes brought on by commercialization of the internet.
I personally remember that 7 or 8 years ago being upset that my internet connection from boston to california was slow, due to, as it was reported by our Internet carrier, IRC traffic. I was livid. I had work to do and deadlines to meet, and these yahoos were goofing off with a multiuser talk program.
But, we survived that. We got commercial exchange carriers so that business could be conducted over the internet. Businesses without "research interests" began to get on the net to exchange files and email with customers and even competitors. Companies began collecting email addresses at trade shows, and sending product marketing materials over the net. They kept these lists, traded them, and used them in future marketing campaigns. Then came the web, and commerce really took off. And along with it came corresponding growth in commercial direct email campaigns.
I also realized quickly that direct email is much more ecologically sound than direct postal mail which wastes paper, and requires killing trees.
While many have heralded the advent of the paperless office, it is clear that paper use can and will decline due to a transition to electronic marketing and sales. Not only will this transition be better ecologically, but it will lower costs and open up global markets. Which means either lower consumer prices, or better stock and mutual fund performance, or both. It also means more competition, more consumer choice, and better products and services, not to mention more opportunity for small entreprenuers to enter a global marketplace.
Direct email is an important component of this transition, and like direct postal mail, its legitimate use cannot be banned without significant detriment and harm to commercial activity.
I wrote this page using technical knowledge that I have on the internet, and some basic logic on how direct mail operations would be implemented on the internet. I have never actually setup operations for a spammer.
An online provider may allow you to operate mailing lists or they may not. They may charge extra for this service, or they may not offer it at all.
If you don't know anything about managing computers, or you have very little money to spend, this can be a good solution.
Besides shell accounts and email services, some providers offer personal web pages, virtual domains, anda nearly infinite variety of other services.
There are many complex varieties of services available in this category as well. This is not a taxonomy, but should give one some idea of what exists and what the costs are. Basically, what you are purchasing is bandwidth. A combination of how much you might be able to burst, and how much you can sustain. But the minimum cost is a higher, so you probably want to have a need for bandwidth before youi spend the extra money.
A typical 56K connection might run around 400.00 or 500.00 per month, plus phone line charges for the leased line.
A typical T1 (1.544Mbps) connection might run from $1000 to $3500 per month depending on your particular combination of burst and sustained data rate.
A typical T3 (44Mbps) connection might cost $20,000 per month.
Basically, a company with a product or service can directly send email to potential customers. They may rent a list of potential customers , they may have a customer list of their own, or they can get a phone book and send out some mail at essentially random. The company writes the advertisement, stuffs the letter (or sends the email) fills orders, and collects money all by themselves.
Many direct mail operations start as one person, at home operations. Some are large companies. Just check out the junk mail that you receive in your post box, and you will get an idea of the variety.
Then there are companies that do much of the work for you, such as fullfilling orders, collecting money, doing the mailing, etc. All you have to do is invent the product or service, and for a fee, they will do the rest.
These are generally called fullfillment services.
So the one person commercial operation might get an account from an online provider, and send email to their potential customers soliciting their product. A single person might be able to work from a $20 dollar per month dialup account. I began my consulting service using an account on an early boston online service, which I still have. I sent out email to customers, and potential customers of my services.
I know a lot of other consultants on this online service who do exactly the same thing. Now that the business has grown, and we have employees, and offer our own internet services to customers, we have our own leased lines to our Nashua, NH and Boston, MA offices.
Of course, if one is selling widgets, they will probably send out a lot more email than a consultant, so the online provider may want to charge more for the service. Or they may not allow that service. It's really up to the provider to set their rates and fee structure. As a provider, I would not like to see any regulation or restrictions on what fees and services I can charge.
A fullfillment service sending out thousands or millions of emails on behalf of their clients might have a T3 connection. So they would pay $20,000 per month just for internet service, and have a reasonably large and expensive computer system, a staff to manage it, billing systems and accounting and sales staff, warehouses, etc to fullfill product and service orders, etc. In other words, a it costs a lot.