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Comment by rauljara | Hacker News Reader

"If it was not of value, it would not be profitable and hence, would not exist."

Thievery, blackmail, extortion, etc. are all profitable, and yet, I would argue not of value. So is legally tricking people into paying for services they do not want. This is a terrible sentiment that can be used to justify any number of shady dealings. But it's also housed in an incoherent paragraph where the author briefly argues both sides, so I have no idea whether he actually agrees with the above statement or not.

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Playing devil's advocate for a moment, No property or person is being harmed with spam. Time is wasted, yes. But no crime is being committed in the normal sense of the word. To compare spam to thievery, blackmail and extortion (where their is a removal of property of threats to a person) is not a very good analogy and I think taking things a bit too far. It's closer to aggresively handing out flyers on the street and possibly a case of harrassment.

Time is money.

I would disagree. Phishing spam exists in an effort to steal or otherwise harm the recipients who are tricked into responding. Prescription drug spam can tempt those who may have a moment of weakness into breaking the law, and they could possibly purchase counterfeit goods that can directly harm the person. Money is spent by companies who have to either self maintain or pay a service to maintain a spam filter. I occasionally miss important emails that are incorrectly filtered as spam, one was an offer for a side job that would have paid me real money.

Spam is harmful, plain and simple.

To be clear, I was specifically arguing against the quoted statement, and the idea that because something is profitable, it must be valuable. That idea has implications far beyond spam. I would argue against spam, as well, but differently. S_A_P's response strikes me as a pretty good one.

I can't agree that no person or property is harmed by spam. A lot of resources have needed to be spent to reduce the spam that lands in my inbox. Someone paid for that, and most of us are probably happy that this effort has been made. There is, of course, the time lost in dealing the spam that does make it through the filters. There's also storage space that gets wasted in the process.

If you are a forum admin then the value of your side will go down if you don't clean up spam regularly (and for big forums you might have to cleanup several times every single day). I'd rather compare it with gluing advertisement illegally all over the place.

>> But no crime is being committed [...] It's closer to aggresively handing out flyers on the street and possibly a case of harrassment.

Well, technically littering, graffiti-vandalism, etc is also a crime. In certain cities treated harder than small thefts.

All these loophole-abusers make me really sick. Even if there's no "law" making it "illegal" it doesn't mean you have to abuse every possible loophole there is in the "system" to make some money "legally". If you are going to ignore ethics and cause pain to people anyway just grow some balls and rob a bank instead.

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