The First Spam: May 1, 1978

Happy(?) birthday, spam. No, not the canned meat by-products.

The first piece of unsolicited bulk e-mail (what will come to be known as spam) is written. When it’s sent two days later, more than 400 people with an Arpanet address receive a promotional message sent by Gary Thuerk, a marketer for Digital Equipment Corporation. It’s been pretty much downhill from there.

Unsurprisingly, this early feat of cluelessness foreshadowed the fall of DEC. Interesting that, on May 1, 2007, people spammed Digg to defend the First Amendment.

Digg Defies MPAA on HD-DVD Decryption Code

In a bold move that will go down in the annals of Internet legend, Digg founder Kevin Rose joins the Digg Revolt of 2007 by defying the MPAA’s order to make the HD-DVD decryption code an “unspeakable” number.

You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

Yes, Kevin, you have balls the size of Google. You richly deserve your $60 million. And your hot girlfriend.

(Via Jon-Paul Oliva.)