I was just reading a thread on Wicked Fire about a presentation given by Jason Calacanis, founder of Mahalo.com, at the Le Web conference.

The gist of the presentation was that spam ruined Usenet, and we are seeing the ruination of search from affiliate spam.

This quote from Jason pretty much sums it up…

“There is a generation of people who are becoming entrepreneurs today who believe that because the Internet technically allows you to do something that you are within your right to do it. You are allowed to pollute the Internet, because you can.”

I agree, and this is definitely a problem. Some folks on Wicked Fire disagree with his statements.

In the thread there, he is labeled “the kid who always got picked on and hassled,” “a whiny little girl,” and “the hitler of the internets.”

The interesting thing is that Jason emphasizes that we must be self regulating, and not have the government come in and fix the problem.

I hope to see it work out that way. Otherwise, we may well see a CAN-SPAM equivalent for affiliate and/or search marketing in the near future.

I’m anxious to hear Jason’s further take on affiliate marketing when he keynotes Affiliate Summit in February. It should be an interesting Q&A.