Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel

Laurence Canter And Martha Siegel

Laurence A. Canter (b. June 24, 1953) and Martha S. Siegel (April 9, 1948 – 2000) were partners in a husband-and-wife firm of lawyers who, on April 12, 1994, posted the first massive commercial Usenet spam. 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.

Canter and Siegel were not the first Usenet spammers. The "Green Card" spam was, however, the first commercial Usenet spam, and its unrepentant authors are seen as having fired the starting gun for the legions of spammers that now occupy the Internet.