Thursday - June 29, 2000

Attack of the SPAM Lawsuits

According to Forbes:

"Nobody likes getting junk e-mail. It's always annoying and often offensive. Still, a pending cure from Washington could be worse than the disease. On June 14, the House Commerce Committee approved the Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail Act of 2000 (H.R. 3113). Sponsored by Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.), the bill would make it illegal to disobey the corporate policies of an Internet service provider (ISP) and give recipients of unsolicited e-mail, known as spam, the right to sue in federal court.

If successful in court, these aggrieved consumers could collect $500 for each violation, up to $50,000. In other words, 100 illegal e-mails to one person could trigger a $50,000 penalty..."

Click here for the full story. [Link no longer active]

Amazon.com — The Halo is Gone
According to the Washington Post:

"In the lobby of Amazon.com's headquarters in Seattle, there's a commemorative announcement of the retailer's $1.25 billion bond issue, billing it as "the largest convertible debt offering in history."

Not every company would make sure that the first thing every visitor sees is a declaration that this is an empire built on borrowed money, but Amazon has always had that sort of in-your-face confidence. It was going to take over the world, selling all things to all people all the time.

For a time, that arrogance was on a fast track to reality. By last December, less than five years after former Wall Street executive Jeff Bezos launched his Web site, he was Time magazine's 'Person of the Year.' Bezos was widely viewed as someone who would ultimately be recognized, as one analyst told Time, as the developer of 'one of the smartest strategies in business history.'

Six months later, that halo is gone..."

Click here for the full story. [Link no longer active]

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