[twobitshifter]

Email would be so amazing were it not for the spam problem. In the early days you’d just send a mail to your computer and your address was yourlogin@yourdomain and mail just ended up on your machine in a folder. Relays were like p2p networks. It was actually beautiful in its simplicity and in a perfect world with everyone being good actors could have been incredible.

[Froedlich]

And it was, back when any hint of "commercial use" could get your machine booted from the mail routes and usenet. After Cantor and Siegel, it was every spammer for himself.