Circumventing CAN-SPAM 127
Dekortage writes "The iMedia Connection newsletter is running a story on how some politicians are violating CAN-SPAM with impunity. Apparently so-called 'political speech' e-mails do not fit the legal definition of spam, even if they are wholly unsolicited and unwanted. In this particular case, the spammer is the attorney general of Florida, who considers himself an anti-spam crusader."
Send it back to him ... (Score:4, Insightful)
He'll get the message.
Re:Send it back to him ... (Score:2)
Keep in mind who you're dealing with. This would very likely land you in some pretty hot water, seeing as how unsolicited faxes are illegal, and don't carry an exemption for political speech.
Not to mention that you would very likely get nailed for spamming for sending the emails back. Don't forget, the rules apply to you, not those in power.
Re:Send it back to him ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Send it back to him ... (Score:2)
Re:Send it back to him ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Poster wrote:
FTFA:
So, send him back his spam 100 times - its political speech, not spam. And if you send it back 100 times, its definitely a political statement, and protected speech to boot!
Better yet, turn his spam into a bmp (a jpg or png won't be big enough) with a big "F. U." on it, and make his ingox go over quota. Better y
Re:Send it back to him ... (Score:2)
He or she is an idiot.
Suggestion:
Re:Send it back to him ... (Score:2)
Re:Send it back to him ... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Send it back to him ... (Score:2)
r do like one of my friends did - he sent it back via one of those manual-feed faxes, and as the top came out of the machine, he taped it to the bottom of the page, so it be
Mod parent up (Score:2)
Re:Send it back to him ... (Score:2)
Re:Send it back to him ... (Score:2)
Tell other people not to vote for him (Score:2)
Re:Send it back to him ... (Score:2, Insightful)
about SPAM, and mail those to him.....
how can this be a surprise? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:how can this be a surprise? (Score:2)
Re:how can this be a surprise? (Score:2)
Re:how can this be a surprise? (Score:1)
Re:how can this be a surprise? (Score:2)
Re:how can this be a surprise? (Score:2)
Crist is a Republican, not a Democrat. This is likely to be a bipartisan issue though.
Well this is the point, you can vote spammy politicians out of office, the situation is self-limiting. Commercial spammers do not face the same penalties.
CAN-SPAM was written very tightly to avoid unin
Re:how can this be a surprise? (Score:2)
Throughout the 90s I repeatedly approached my elected with pleas to do something about spam and offered to help in a variety of ways. The two D-MI Se
Absolutely! (Score:3, Insightful)
SPAM is SPAM ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SPAM is SPAM ... (Score:2)
I find your presence of faith disturbing.
What's this "almost" of which you speak?
Faux-Spam (Score:5, Insightful)
Spam is often referred to as UCE "Unsolicited Commercial Email", which his emails were not. We tend to apply a broad label to spam. Often "Any email I don't want.", which may not be fair in all cases. In any case the law seems fairly clear that he was not technically breaking it.
However, as someone who says they are a proponent of anti-spam, engaging in "spam like" behavior can only undercut their position.
Re:Faux-Spam (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Faux-Spam (Score:3, Informative)
Spam is often referred to as UCE "Unsolicited Commercial Email", which his emails were not.
Well, from what the people interviewed say it certainly sounds like the emails were unsolicited. I guess they weren't "commercial" though. (Actually I'm pretty sure most people use the term "Unsolicited bulk email). This stuff easily fits that definition, so I think by most peoples definition, this is spam. It may be all nice and legal, but that doesn't excuse this guy from being an asshole.
Re:Faux-Spam (Score:1)
Re:Faux-Spam (Score:2)
Justin.
Re:Faux-Spam (Score:1)
Spam spam spam spam spam and eggs. (Score:2)
Yes, some people call it that.
...
... but may not meet the criteria for that specific sub-category of spam known as "UCE".
...
But it is important to remember the origin of the term "spam" in this context. It refers to posting/sending the same (or almost the same) thing over and over and over
So, it is possible to "spam" a USENET discussion board with non-commercial postings.
So his emails are "spam"
All UCE is spam
Not
Re:Spam spam spam spam spam and eggs. (Score:2)
Re:Spam spam spam spam spam and eggs. (Score:1)
Targeted UCE tends to be less offensive, but I still classify it as spam and refuse to buy from sellers who advertise this way.
Re:Faux-Spam (Score:2)
Spam is basically "the same many times" as in the Python scetch.
The "commercial email" only became part of the description because most spam is both commercial an email. So newbies will naturally believe that is part of the definition.
Re:Faux-Spam (Score:2)
That's such an unusual definition I wonder if you came up with it yourself. We usually use "Unsolicited Bulk Email" - anything that lots of copies were sent of. Which I suspect applies to his messages.
Re:Faux-Spam (Score:2, Insightful)
I fail to understand what is so wrong with this as (at least) the first half of the definition. My full definition is "Crap I don't want and didn't ask for." Regardless of the message's intent (viagra, pr0n, "vote for me") I count it as SPAM.
Mailing lists are not. I asked to be on those.
Mail from friends and family is not. The relationship is implicit permission.
Mail from companies I do business with* are not. The relationship is implicit permission.
Most everything else,
Re:Faux-Spam (Score:2)
I think it's reasonable to assume any political activity is at its heart, at least in part, commercial.
Nothing faux about it. (Score:2)
I can (just barely) imagine emails from an all grass roots, all volunteer, all living-in-their-own-homes campaign who are trying to elect someone for the purpose of ra
Re:Faux-Spam (Score:2)
Yes it is fair, because of how amazing computers are at automating information tasks (like sending e-mail), it's not "any e-mail I don't want", it's "millions of the same copy of the e-mail noone wants, delivered to noone in particular". I really dislike it when some asshat decides that our domain is their personal poster board and jams our mail server shut with their crap. Our customers hate it even
How is this diferent... (Score:2)
A "prank" for just such an occassion: (Score:2, Troll)
With any luck, he'll have to burn down the house and salt the earth it stood on to get that itching to stop.
CAN-WHAT? (Score:5, Informative)
So guess what? This guy had hundreds of domains, officially different companies which would act as agents for his clients, so that he (the spammer) could use the same mailing list over and over and over, because it wasn't "him" that was using it; it was his clients.
So basically, CAN-SPAM is really SWISS-CHEESE. There are so many holes in it that any idiot can figure out a way to avoid being penalized.
Unfortunately, there are no holes in the laws protecting these guys from great bodily harm...
Re:CAN-WHAT? (Score:3, Interesting)
OT: Incumbency and outcumbency... (Score:3, Insightful)
EVERY incumbent should be thrown out of office. This is the ONLY way to get anything useful, meaningful, honest or good accomplished: all of the elected congresscritters know that no matter what they do they'll be back in office. Three cycles of single term US Reps will solve the problem nicely and convince them that they had better start staying the course or they won't get those annual raises-that-aren't-raises.
This sounds good, and it seems like a hopeful sign that general approval ratings of congress
Re:OT: Incumbency and outcumbency... (Score:2)
Even if it were, until we in the US fully embrace the idea of third-party candidates, very little will change. Sure, we may throw all the US Representatives out, and what would we have then? Instead of 232 Republicans and 202 Democrats, we'd have 232 Democrats and 202 Republicans. And whi
Re:CAN-WHAT? (Score:4, Informative)
No, but I believe that the CAN-SPAM law does require a valid physical postal address. It would be really, really illegal if somebody were to use that information to beat the sh*t out of him.
If he's not including that valid postal address, then he should be arrested under the law. My concern with CAN-SPAM isn't the loopholes as much as that they don't seem to be enforcing the rules. No law does any good if it isn't enforced.
I'd really like to see him try the "But it wasn't really me, it was my multiple domain names" excuse in front of a judge.
Compliance is trivially easy (Score:2)
I've tracked down one spammer's WHOIS registrations and got the address of The Company Corporation in Delaware, which is the canonical place to spend $100 to register a Delaware corporation - so there's a file folder in a desk drawer there that has the
Re:CAN-WHAT? (Score:3, Insightful)
If CAN-SPAM can can spam?
Not very much, evidently.
Re:CAN-WHAT? (Score:2)
No, CAN-SPAM means that spammers CAN-SPAM you with impunity!
What I've found (Score:4, Insightful)
That if you get on the phone and call these idiots often enough to complain they sometimes get the message.
Just tell them that you will call each time you receive that unsolicited email or phone call from them.
Make absolutely certain that you put the poor staffer on the hotseat. Make sure they fully understand that who they represent is invading your privacy and that you will not tolerate it.
If they try to hang up on you then simply tell them that if they don't hear you out that you are a constituent that will be walking through their front door to give them the piece of your mind in person otherwise. That usually really gets their attention.
Being a bit obnoxious can have it's benefits.
Don't accept crap from those boneheads, you bought and paid for them to be there, get your money's worth!
What also works (Score:2)
What worked for me was to first e-mail them with a polite request to be removed from their lists. When that request was ignored I then followed with a handful of warnings that I would begin reporting them to various anti-SPAM groups and blocklists if they continued to send me spam.
They stopped shortly after.
Not Surprised (Score:3, Funny)
Not circumvention (Score:1)
Legal reform (Score:4, Informative)
By definition then, if political speech emails are not legally spam, then the politicians are not violating the CAN-SPAM law. The summary is contradictory.
Should you* want politicians to conform to an anti-spam law, the solution is to lobby and vote for either the extension of CAN-SPAM to apply to political speech or alternatively for the creation of a new law. But currently, the politicians are not breaking an existing law. This is a hrader task of course, but that's the only way forwards.
Cheers,
Ian
(*by 'you' I mean US voters, I'm in the UK)
Re:Legal reform (Score:3, Interesting)
The interpretation of the constitution deals with speech issues differently depending on the type of speech involved. There is very little protection for fraudulent speech, so this can be made a crime and you can be put into jail. The same goes for yelling
Re:Legal reform (Score:2)
Except that anti-spam laws aren't a free-speech matter. Free speech means your right to say what you want. It does not mean your right to use my hall without my permission to say what you want, nor does it mean your right to demand that I listen to you. If you're paying for the venue/publication, or you're using public property, then talk away all you want. But I don't see you paying my ISP subscription and my e-mail inbox (which is part of that subscription) isn't public property, and the First Amendment d
Re:Legal reform (Score:2)
The real iss
Re:Legal reform (Score:2)
I no more invited trespass by having an e-mail inbox than I invite trespass of my house by having my house number and my name on a sign by the street. If I don't ask someone to speak to me, I've given no invitation to them.
It's not a matter of inbox clutter. It's a matter of the companion right to your right to speak: my right to not listen. If you want to pontificate on a street corner that's fine, but the right to do that doesn't give you the right to grab and detain people to make them listen. If you wa
Re:Legal reform (Score:2)
Re:Legal reform (Score:2)
There's one big difference: with snail-mail the sender is paying the freight with the postage they have to put on the item to send it to me. If they're paying, they can do what they want. But as I also noted earlier, you (ie. the people sending spam) aren't paying for their use of my mailbox and they're not asking permission to use it. It's the same as someone sending me snail-mail postage due and claiming their right to free speech gives them the right to do that. Sorry, but no.
Your living room is your pr
Re:Legal reform (Score:2)
If someone sends you an email, they can only send it to you because you have setup your mail server to receive it. They did not break into your computer system to deliver the mail to you. You setup a server that is designed to accept exactly what the spammer is sending to you
Re:Legal reform (Score:2)
Re:Legal reform (Score:2)
SPAM is many things to many people. To some, it is an email message, commercial in nature, and unsolicited. To some it is any unsolicited email. To others, it has to be sent in bulk (whatever that means).
Regardless, if the email itself is political in nature, it is covered by free speech. If you don't want to read it don't. If you want to filter it out fine. If you want to only get email from your frields, blacklist everyon
Re:Legal reform (Score:2)
I never claimed that political speech does not belong in email. I get plenty of emails that are political in nature. Some I read and some I don't. I merely claimed that not all methods of sending political email messages are protected as free speech, just as not all methods of going door to door to talk to your (potential) constituents are protected. The example I gave was an example of a metho
Re:Legal reform (Score:2)
If you want to argue that a candidate cannot send you an email once a day (or once an hour) then I think you are wrong. If you want to argue that a candidate cannot send you 1000 emails per hour shutting down your inbox, then I think you are right. You really do have to go to extremes to find cases where restricting political speech is justified and constitutional.
If the speech itself makes your
Re:Legal reform (Score:2)
Actually, I don't really care how oeften they send emails to me. As far as I am concerned, there should be two restrictions.
a) Since I didn't pr
makes sense (Score:3, Insightful)
CAN-SPAM was never designed to prevent spam. It was designed to codify what could legally happen, provide a way for web-sites to harvest e-mail, and finally, to prevent the states from enacting new laws against these companies. For all purpose, it was a giveaway to BIG money that does spam (and inheritenly, the lobbyists). SO anybody who voted for it, supported spam, but could declare that they were fighting against it i.e. bait via name, but switch via action (think patriot act).
Re:makes sense (Score:1)
I'm still waiting to see the true circumvention though, when the charities get in bed with the spammers and offer a bigger penis with a suitable donation, and by law that will not be spam.
KFG
Re:makes sense (Score:2)
Re:makes sense (Score:2)
Maybe if they called it CANT-SPAM I might have believed that it was at least a token attempt at preventing spam...
Does this really surprise anyone? (Score:1, Insightful)
software spam controls (Score:2)
Ditto Spam. The only way to block spam
It is not a matter of the definition of SPAM (Score:3, Interesting)
What was really funny in the Florida case is that they guy had campaigned on SPAM and had pushed for tough anti-spam laws. Then to top it off they released a message saying "This is not spam. This is truthful, it's straight forward. We're honest. To be spam it has to be, under Florida law, defined as being deceptive." No matter how it goes that is all just funny.
BTW there has been a court case over the exemption for political and nonprofit organization, the FTC argued that they were less likely then for-profits to abuse the practice.
Re:It is not a matter of the definition of SPAM (Score:2)
In that case political email would fit the definition, as when did any politician ever say anything that was not deceptive?
But he can still be an "anti-spam crusader"! (Score:1, Troll)
Now that Bill Clinton has opened the door to questionable definitions of existing words, both the Democrats and the Republicans have embraced his ideas firmly and run with them as far and as fast as they can.
Re:But he can still be an "anti-spam crusader"! (Score:2)
And that Democrats in general can logically be blamed for spamming [oreilly.com] by Republican Attorneys General [easybackgroundcheck.com].
Take a look at any of the anti-advertising laws... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, phone robot autodialers are illegal... except of course if they are talking about something political. Spam and do-not-call as well. It's all in there.
Imagine the analog for mugging laws; mugging is illegal unless it is being done to raise campaign funds, in which case it is forgivable. Sounds silly, doesn't it, but I don't see a difference from the way they are writing the laws now.
If a tactic is annoying, intrusive and disliked enough to make it illegal, I have no idea why the politicians involved in this are unable to see that it is not a good idea to be the exception.
Here is california politicians are perticularly fond of auto-dialers; even the local unions use them.
Re:Take a look at any of the anti-advertising laws (Score:1)
The problem is that pesky First Amendment. Do you REALLY want the government to have the power to quash or restrict political expression by dubbing it "spam"? As annoying as those autodialer calls are, I'd rather just hang up on a machine every once in a while than lay a precedent that could lead to more serious gove
Re:Take a look at any of the anti-advertising laws (Score:2)
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/c onlaw/commercial.htm [umkc.edu]
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/am endment01/17.html#2 [findlaw.com]
thank fvcking god for that.
Spam = Florida (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe a big filter between Florida and the rest of the World would work, and while we're at it a 100 ft high wall.
Re:Spam = Florida (Score:2)
Re:Spam = Florida (Score:1)
[just a joke, don't waste mod points here)
Re:Spam = Florida (Score:2)
I don't know about you, but personally I would also vote for inward-pointing machine guns that will be going night and day until the spam problem stops. Or is that outward-pointing machine guns on the inside, with the spammers lined up against the wall?
Whatever.
Erm... (Score:2)
So, uhm, how would they be in violation? Far more than merely "not fitting the legal definition of spam," 'Political speech' emails--particularly from elected officials--IIRC, were explicitly excepted precisely so litigious morons who can't grok that a thing must meet some required legal definition before it can be in violation of a law ref
Re:Erm... (Score:1)
They legally defined "spam" as something that does not include what they want to send, creating an exemption for themselves by changing, under the law, the widely accepted definition. (Stop co-opting the language!)
They're not telling anybody how they're doing their job. They're sending out the usual misinformation and spun-up bull about how wonderful they are and why you should vote for them.
Re:Erm... (Score:2)
Freedom of speech? (Score:2, Insightful)
On a different note, it is stupid that they are
Re:Freedom of speech? (Score:2)
I am all for someone's freedom of speech, but I should also have the freedom to listen, or not. Filling my email inbox with unsolicited "free speech" is a problem.
If I was truly interested in someone's opinion, let me subscribe to a mailing list, or make some form of indication that I want to receive their freedom of speech, or go to their blog and read it at my leisure.
Forcing someone to have to wade through garbage free speech is almost as repressive as censorship. Forcing s
Re:Freedom of speech? (Score:1)
If you don't want to hear my free speech, don't read emails from me.
My right to speak is not based upon your desire to hear my opinion.
I don't see what this has to do with dictatorship in the slightest. Now it just seems that you've resorted to name-calling.
In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."
Defining spam (Score:2)
For me it comes down to two major things. The first is unique content. As you pointed out in your post, anyone that sends you ANYTHING 30 times in a row, in any medium, is spamming. I don't need more than one email with identical
Re:Freedom of speech? (Score:2)
Related - spammer begs for mercy (Score:2)
http://spamkings.oreilly.com/archives/2006/01/und
Honestly, I still believe that vigilante tactics combined with laws such as ours in TN (making spam a civil action) are the only realistic way to go.
Policticl Speech is Different (Score:2)
Re:Policticl Speech is Different (Score:2)
Re:Policticl Speech is Different (Score:2)
Got in trouble with whom?
As far as I know, the ONLY legal issue is that a tax-
Re:Policticl Speech is Different (Score:2)
Even if gay marriage were legalized, the churches would still have the right to prohibit gay marriage in their church or amoung their congrigation. This is an issue that they want to control outside of their realm of d
Politicians above the law? I'm shocked! (Score:3, Funny)
Shocked I say! To think politicians believe they're above the laws they write! Next thing you'll be telling me is that they rearrange voting districts to prevent them from losing elections...
Political speech is a higher standard (Score:2)
Protected Political Speech... (Score:4, Insightful)
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A politician lying?... (Score:2)