Spam, or spamming, refers to the use of mailing lists to blanket usenets or private e-mail boxes with indiscriminate advertising messages. Some people believe that spamming should be protected as the simple exercise of one’s First Amendment right to free speech while others view it as an invasion of privacy or even theft of resources or trespass to property, as Intel argued when a disgruntled ex-employee spammed more than 35,000 Intel employees with his complaints. In that case, the court agreed, considering his e-mail spamming equivalent to trespassing on Intel’s property and recognizing that Intel was forced to spend considerable time and resources to delete the e-mail messages from its system.

It is amusing to note that the source of the term spam is generally accepted to be the Monty Python song “Spam spam spam spam, spam spam spam spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam. . . .” Like the song, spam is an endless repetition of worthless text. Others believe that the term came from the computer group lab at the University of Southern California, which gave it the name because it has many of the same characteristics as the lunchmeat Spam:

• Nobody wants it or ever asks for it.

• No one ever eats it; it is the first item to be pushed to the side when eating the entree.

• Sometimes it is actually tasty, like 1 percent of junk mail that is really useful to some people.87 Using stakeholder analysis, make an argument that spamming is either ethical or unethical.