[at-l] about that SPAM...

[Shelly Hale]

Felix wrote:  So, how did 'junk e-mails' and the like get to be known as
SPAM?  And, if people stopped responding/replying to it, wouldn't 'they'
stop 
sending it? 

SPAM is a backronym that means "shit posing as mail."

Here's a bit of it's history from Wikipedia...

The term spam is derived from the Monty Python SPAM sketch, set in a cafe
where nearly every item on the menu includes SPAM luncheon meat. As the
server recites the SPAM-filled menu, a chorus of Viking patrons drowns out
all conversations with a song repeating "SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM... lovely
SPAM, wonderful SPAM," hence "SPAMming" the dialogue. The excessive amount
of SPAM mentioned in the sketch is a reference to British rationing during
World War II. SPAM was one of the few foods that was not restricted and was
therefore widely available.

Although the first known instance of unsolicited commercial e-mail occurred
in 1978 (unsolicited electronic messaging had already taken place over other
media, with the first recorded instance being via telegram on September 13,
1904), the term "spam" for this practice had not yet been applied. In the
1980s the term was adopted to describe certain abusive users who frequented
BBSs and MUDs, who would repeat "SPAM" a huge number of times to scroll
other users' text off the screen. In the early Chat rooms in services like
PeopleLink and the early days of AOL, they actually flooded the screen with
sizeable quotes from the Monty Python routine. This was generally used as a
tactic by insiders of a particular group who wanted to drive newcomers out
of the room so the usual conversation could continue. This act, previously
termed flooding or trashing, came to be called spamming as well. [8] By
analogy, the term was soon applied to any large amount of text broadcast by
one user, or sometimes by many users.

It later came to be used on Usenet to mean excessive multiple posting-the
repeated posting of the same message. The first evident usage of this sense
was by Joel Furr in the aftermath of the ARMM incident of March 31, 1993, in
which a piece of experimental software released dozens of recursive messages
onto the news.admin.policy newsgroup. Soon, this use had also become
established-to spam Usenet was to flood newsgroups with junk messages.

Commercial spamming started in force on March 5, 1994, when a pair of
lawyers, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, began using bulk Usenet posting
to advertise immigration law services. The incident was commonly termed the
"Green Card spam", after the subject line of the postings. The two went on
to widely promote spamming of both Usenet and e-mail as a new means of
advertisement-over the objections of Internet users they labeled
"anti-commerce radicals." Within a few years, the focus of spamming (and
antispam efforts) moved chiefly to e-mail, where it remains today. [9]

There are three popular fake etymologies of the word "spam". The first,
promulgated by Canter & Siegel themselves, is that "spamming" is what
happens when one dumps a can of SPAM luncheon meat into a fan blade. The
second is the backronym "shit posing as mail." The third is similar, using
"stupid pointless annoying messages."

Hormel Foods Corporation, the makers of SPAM luncheon meat, do not object to
the Internet use of the term "spamming." However, they do ask that the
capitalized word "SPAM" be reserved to refer to their product and trademark.
[10] By and large, this request is obeyed in forums which discuss spam-to
the extent that to write "SPAM" for "spam" brands the writer as a n00b.
However, Hormel has begun to press the trademark issue-first, when a firm
registered the trademark "SpamArrest" in 2003, Hormel sued to invalidate the
mark,[11] , and more recently two failed attempts to revoke the mark
"spambuster".[12], [13]