The incident also prompted a philosophical discussion among early Internet designers as to whether advertising should be allowed on the network at all. The consensus was a clear "no." Yet as Mark Crispin, another early scientist who detested the DEC message and saw no place for advertising, wrote: "I shudder to think about it, but I can envision junk mail being sent to [regular] people…and no way it could be prevented or stopped. I guess the ultimate solution is the command in your mail reading subsystem which deletes an unwanted message."

Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, loc. 662