Protecting Your Cyber Marketing Stake: Is there a possible role for Government

As a high-tech marketer, you are probably familiar with the thought processes, planning stages, factors, and risks involved which lead to a carefully planned and executable direct mail marketing program. The costs involved, creative, printing, postage etc., combined with adherence to basic guidelines, yield a responsible campaign to market goods or services to consumers.

Consider how this entire paradigm drastically changes when it is performed electronically utilizing Email or the Web. With the removal of investment, risk and guidelines, it's easy for anyone to initiate a marketing campaign with no responsibility for their actions. Could this define a valid role for government intervention?

From one point of view, the Internet democratizes marketing, allowing entrepreneurs to solicit customers in the same arena as larger companies. However, the paradigm shift due to the construct and accessibility of Email messaging and the Web opens an uncontrolled floodgate. With this floodgate open, anyone capturing Email addresses or establishing a home page can easily perform unethical marketing acts without any costs or risks. Intervention could help to preserve and nurture the legitimate marketers while, most importantly, protecting the consumer.

With some form of government involvement in place on the Internet, the unscrupulous vendor will think twice about the content of their mass Emailings and who they are targeting. It will also alleviate the mindset that marketing on the Internet is only for opportunists. Legitimate marketers who adhere to the guidelines will have momentum to use the electronic medium where they might have originally avoided it in fear of being labeled as "schlock."

The government can add definition to how marketing is performed on the Internet, and actually make it a safer place for legitimate marketers by minimizing irresponsible opportunists.

It's not government interference, but marketing responsibility that will make it better for all of us, including the consumers.

If you observe the origin of the Internet, the US Government has actually been involved all along, starting in the 1960's with the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) funded by the Department of Defense. The primary use of the ARPANET was to allow scientists and researchers to easily access each others information, and to continue accessing information if one of the systems went off-line due to a military attack.

In the 1980's, the Government's National Science Foundation officially created the Internet, replacing the original ARPANET with a more modern, higher-speed network. The NSF's original goal for the Internet was to provide distributed access to government-owned supercomputers. Intended as a broad-base educational and research network, the Internet has evolved to include businesses, commercial services, and consumers. In addition to remote computing, file access, and Email, the Internet later supported multimedia elements, specifically color, graphi`cs, audio, and video via the implementation of the World Wide Web, which is based on the infrastructure of the Internet.

With the Internet's governmental roots, there is a place for continued involvement. Perhaps by charging a milli-cent for electronic communications coupled with the implementation of legitimate guidelines, a heightened level of responsibility would result. These charges could then be available for expenditure on continued services while adding further improvements to the overall infrastructure.