Canter & Siegel

Laurence A. Canter and Martha S. Siegel were a firm of Arizona lawyers who in early 1994 pioneered the first massive Usenet spam, advertising their services to enroll people in a "green card lottery." To many people, this event, coming not long after the National Science Foundation lifted its unofficial ban on commercial speech on the Internet, marks the end of the Net's early period, when the original Netiquette could still be enforced.

The spam involved a US government lottery to give "green cards" to certain non-citizens, allowing them to stay and work in the country. The two lawyers offered to do the necessary paperwork for a fee, although it could be done for free through government offices.

They sent the notice to at least 6,000 discussion groups in Usenet, a huge number at the time, leading to a great outcry and the first large-scale use of software "cancel-bots" to troll Usenet and kill their messages.

Canter and Siegel established a group called Cybersell, with the Web domain www.sell.com, and sold themselves as experts in the then-new business of online retail, writing a book titled "How To Make a Fortune on the Information Superhighway."

The couple eventually had a falling out, with Canter getting disbarred and Siegel taking over the business. She has released new versions of the book under her name only.