April 22, 2002, 1:27 PM — "In the future everybody is going to have 15 minutes of privacy."
Of course it wasn't twentieth-century pop-art icon Andy Warhol who said this -- his famous comment was about fame. But the quote has been appropriated and tweaked by cryptography pioneer Phil Zimmerman, the man who created PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption products.
Zimmerman's predicted future looks to be coming true as marketers battle for the right to send spam e-mails and own and collect consumer data. Direct marketing industry groups lobby governments around the world for what they call self-regulation. They don't want governments to regulate the free-for-all of consumer information.
And now, the battle of the marketers has come to my own doorstep.
XS4ALL Internet BV, my Internet service provider (ISP), together with four customers, sued direct marketing company Ab.Fab BV, one of the most notorious senders of unwanted commercial e-mail and collectors of consumer e-mail addresses in the Netherlands. And the ISP won! The Amsterdam District Court last month ordered Ab.Fab to stop sending commercial e-mail to XS4ALL customers, or face a fine of up to
