Laurence A. Canter (born June 24, 1953) and Martha S. Siegel (April 9, 1948 – September 24, 2000) were partners in a husband-and-wife firm of lawyers who posted the first massive commercial

Usenet Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it wa ...

spam Spam may refer to: * Spam (food), a canned pork meat product * Spamming, unsolicited or undesired electronic messages ** Email spam, unsolicited, undesired, or illegal email messages ** Messaging spam, spam targeting users of instant messaging ...

on April 12, 1994. This event came shortly after the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

lifted its unofficial ban on commercial speech on the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...

, and it marks the end of the Net's early period in some views, when the original netiquette could still be enforced. Canter and Siegel were not the first

Usenet spammers Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was ...

. The "Green Card" spam, however, was the first ''commercial'' Usenet spam, and its unapologetic authors are seen as having set the precedent for the modern global practice of spamming.

Green card spam

In early 1994, Canter and Siegel contracted with Leigh Benson to write a program to advertise on

, but Benson was unable to write their software. In April 1994 they used a

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...

script written by a programmer known only as "Jason", to generate advertisements for their service of enrolling people in a " green card lottery". This US government program allocates a limited quantity of "green cards" to certain non-citizens, allowing them to stay and work in the country. The two lawyers offered to do the necessary paperwork for a fee. Canter and Siegel sent their advertisement, with the subject "Green Card Lottery – Final One?", to at least 5,500 Usenet discussion groups, an enormous number at the time. Rather than cross-posting a single copy of the message to multiple groups, so a reader would only see it once (considered a common courtesy when posting the same message to more than one group), they posted it as separate postings in each newsgroup, so a reader would see it in each group they read. Their

internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise priva ...

, Internet Direct, received so many complaints that its mail servers crashed repeatedly for the next two days; it promptly terminated their service. Despite the ire directed at the two lawyers, they posted another advertisement to 1,000 newsgroups in June 1994. This time, Arnt Gulbrandsen put together a software "

cancelbot A cancelbot is an automated or semi-automated process for sending out third-party cancel messages over Usenet, commonly as a stopgap measure to combat spam Spam may refer to: * Spam (food), a canned pork meat product * Spamming, unsolicited or ...

" to trawl Usenet and kill their messages within minutes. The couple claimed in a December 1994 interview to have gained 1,000 new clients and "made $100,000 off an ad that cost them only pennies". On May 5, 1994, the couple established a company called Cybersell. They promoted themselves as experts in the then-new business of online retail and in February 1995 undertook the first known commercial spamming on behalf of clients (so-called "spam for hire"). They wrote a book titled ''How to Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway: Everyone's Guerrilla Guide to Marketing on the Internet and Other On-line Services'' (). In 1997, Martha Siegel published a revised version titled ''How to Make a Fortune on the Internet'' () under her name only. In 1997, the Supreme Court of Tennessee disbarred Canter in part for illegal advertising practices. William W. Hunt III, of the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility, said at the time that he believed it was the first time a lawyer had been disciplined for Internet advertising practices. Cybersell was dissolved by default in March 1998 after repeatedly failing to file annual reports or pay its incorporation fees.

References

External links

* Ben Delisle
Green Card Lottery – Last Call
– 1994 Usenet post giving background on Canter and Siegel * Wyn Hilty

* Ray Everett-Church
"The Spam That Started It All"
''Wired'' magazine, April 13, 1999 * Sharael Feist
"The father of modern spam speaks"
CNET News, March 26, 2002 * John M. Moran

''Hartford Courant'', June 30, 2002 * Neil Swidey
"Spambusters"
''The Boston Globe'', October 10, 2003 * {{DEFAULTSORT:Canter, Laurence American lawyers Business duos Married couples Usenet spammers Jewish American attorneys

Green card spam

See also

References

External links