Anti Spamming Act 2001 Proposed 170
JiveDonut writes "Our friend Rich Boucher (D-VA) along with Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) have introduced the Anti Spamming Act of 2001. An article can be found at the Roanoke Times site. Penalties include up to 12 months in jail and fines of $15,000 or $10 per e-mail. Bi-partisan support to reduce spam. At least the parties can agree on something." 30-40% of my mail is junkmail (most of which is caught and filtered). I'd like to know more details, but this could be great if done properly.
Re:The penalty is too light... (Score:1)
This all wouldn't have been necessary if we'd taken the first spammers and dragged them out into the streets, beat them bloody, tarred them, and rolled them in AOL CDs or something, something which would make news everywhere and really act as a deterrence...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
Yes, it is a good bill. (Score:3)
"E) intentionally sells or distributes any computer program that--
`(i) is designed or produced primarily for the purpose of concealing the source or routing information of bulk unsolicited electronic mail messages in a manner prohibited by subparagraph (D) of this paragraph;
`(ii) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to conceal such source or routing information; or
`(iii) is marketed by the violator or another person acting in concert with the violator and with the violator's knowledge for use in concealing the source or routing information of such messages'"
This is about as benign an anti-software law as you can get. It only criminalizes software that is produced "primarily" for forging addresses, that has only limited commercially significant use otherwise (so you don't need to worry about general email tools), and that is marketed specifically for this purpose by the distributor or his agent.
In other words, this isn't criminalizing sendmail and a shell script; this is only going after programs which the seller markets as spamware and don't have any other value. This is lightyears more sophisticated than the $*@#! DMCA.
Yeah! You're right AND phone calls!!! (Score:1)
Re:Watch the Descent (Score:1)
SPAM DoS (Score:1)
Legitimize it for filtering. (Score:2)
I know we're heard close open relays a million times, but even that doesnt seem to help when free email accounts are readily available. Keep spam and spam lists legal but make the law force them to put a string in the subject like or somesuch for quick and easy filtering straight to the garbage or bulk folder. Let legitimate ISPs offer their services and sell expensive premium accounts like 100,000 emails this month = $1500.
If this was done we'd see legitimate business using spam and the fly by nights take off and people might actually scroll through their 'bulk' folders looking for deals from Sears and Crate and Barrel, etc and consider spam more like mail coupons instead of the crap it is today.
How is this a good idea? (Score:1)
Do we really need to make it criminal to send someone an unsolicited email? Why can't people deal with this themselves? Lots of people already filter their mail, and plenty of ISPs don't handle mail or filter it for you already if it is from some known spammer.
Lastly... the sad truth about spam... IT WORKS! if it didn't work and nobody ever actually bought a college diploma, the people sending the spam would give up.
The last thing is country needs is more laws... how about moving towards what all those politians have promised: SMALLER GOVERNMENT.
This law may sound good on the surface... (Score:2)
" It would make it a criminal offense to fraudulently use another individual's e-mail address to send spam, or to continue sending spam after being notified by a recipient not to do it anymore."
In other words, they are trying to make spam lists *opt-out* instead of *opt-in*...so anyone can send you spam if they want to, but they can't send you any more if you tell them to stop. Problem is, spammers rarely send spam from the same address more than once or twice, and almost never honor unsubscribe requests.
Also, if the article is being true to the wording of the proposed law, and the law really does make it illegal to "fraudulently use another individual's e-mail address to send spam," then it would still be perfectly permissable to send spam from a *fake* email address, as long as that address doesn't belong to an actual individual. I could send as much spam as I want by making up a completely different fake email each time, and advertising different crap. Who's going to really take the time and effort to find out if bob@fakeaddress1.com telling you to make millions by calling 1-800-CHEAT-ME and joe@fakeaddress2.com telling you to send this letter and a buck to ten other people are really the same person? Is the FBI going to investigate every single piece of spam that gets sent every day to determine it's origin, so that if someone asks to be unsubscribed and then gets a different piece of spam from another address which ends up being the same guy, they can fine him $10? Yeah, right...
DennyK
Re:No. YOU'RE the disease! (Score:1)
I did nothing of the sort. I called the idea of changing e-mail addresses when you get spam a flawed idea.
True spam is indistinguishable
Wrong again.
What part of BULK e-mail are you not understanding? What part of one message sent to one person unsolicited VS a 1,000,000 messages sent to a 1,000,000 people are you not understanding?
Good thing I don't write e-mail warez.
That is special. You are special. Would you like a medal?
Good thing I don't use Linux - too easy to be a 1337 spam hack
*shrug* That's nice. I didn't know that using Linux caused you to use numbers instead of letters for spelling. Another reason to not use one of the 180+ versions of linux then eh?
Re:There are 2 antispam bills proposed: This one s (Score:1)
"the term 'unsolicited electronic mail message' means any substantially identical electronic mail message other than electronic mail initiated by any person to others with whom such person has a prior relationship, including prior business relationship, or electronic mail sent by a source to recipients where such recipients, or their designees, have at any time affirmatively requested to receive communications from that source; "
But I like the other one better. Actually, given that I have my own domain name, I like the other one a LOT better (Let's see, at $1000 per spam).
Re:Double Standards (Score:1)
I am a supporter of small government, probably halfway between Libertarian and conservative Republican. (and I'm feeling increasingly drawn to the Constitution Party.)
But anti-spam laws are necessary because mass unsolicited bulk e-mail is THEFT. It causes serious problems for internet infrastructure. If spam was legal and generally accepted, then pretty much every business would spam. EVERY BUSINESS! Can you immagine what your inbox would look like if EVERY BUSINESS had the right to send you e-mail whenever they wanted? YIKES!!!!!
Boucher is from MA (Score:1)
Re:Right, this makes perfect sense! (Score:1)
Or not posting on Usenet. Running a website. Responding to e-mail.
Oh, wait, that isn't how this "Free" country works. Our real freedom is that we're free to give up our freedom in the most mindless fashion possible.
If I beat you up I'm just practacing my freedom.
If I call you at the middle of the night and call you names.. every night... for a year... I'm free to right?
If I throw a brick through your window.. burn a message in your lawn.. It's my freedom to do so man.
It's not? Of course it's not...
Becouse my freedom ends at the tip of your nose.
When my actions impact you... then you have a say.
If you say no... then I gotta go...
spam (Score:1)
Re:Right, this makes perfect sense! (Score:2)
I didn't do that to avoid being spammed. I admit that I did that to advertise the presence of my homepage, in the hope that someone may find out what I do, get interested in it and maybe hire me for a project.
As an example, when posting on Usenet, I use my real email address. By the way, munging the email address is considered a major faux-pas in the German part of Usenet.
But having your own domain aren't you immune from much of this? Filter, filter, filter.
As pointed out by many others, filtering is no cure. The moment a message arrives at my mail server, it already created the additional traffic that I have to pay my ISP for. I could filter it so that I do not see it, but I'd still have to pay for it.
That's why I prefer not to filter, but instead to file a complaint against the spammer with his ISP.
It was a strange kind of honour when I found out that all of my public email addresses were listed in a "do not spam, will complain" list that some hacker found on a spammer's computer and posted on the net.
------------------
Jail? (Score:1)
The case that started the 'Free Bernie' movement comes to mind. Our community was outraged because he was put in prison with rapists and killers for 'just' commiting computer crimes. (Among other things - such as being held without access to documents relating to his case, and being held without trial, but those don't apply here) If someone sends me spam, feel free to fine them for everything they have and their left arm, I just don't think sending unsolicitated email deserves becoming some guy named Bubba's bitch.
Head - Sand = more spam (Score:5)
I don't do any of those things, and I still get lots of spam. I've been using the internet for more than a decade, and the amount of spam I get steadily increases despite all my efforts to prevent it. These days I even get spam in foreign languages for products only available on other continents.
As far as I can tell, the "just delete it" argument is just putting your head in the sand. Immense amounts of time and money are already wasted on dealing with it. How bad does it have to be before you acknowledge a problem? 10% of your total mail? 30%? 50%? Or even 90%?
Left unchecked, spam will continue to grow as a percentage of real mail. Eventually, it will reach a level where even you will demand action. Why not stop it now?
Re:The penalty is too light... (Score:1)
Junk mail isn't life threatening. Just make it illegal to forge headers, and when spammers are forced to use regular headers, we can filter them that much more easily. And then it won't be so bad, right?
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
Re:What I want to know is... (Score:2)
1) Government finds someone in the U.S. doing spam; it goes after them.
2) An individual finds someone in the U.S. or not doing spam, sues them under the civil liability provisions of the bill, all their U.S. assets are attached and used to pay the damages (esp. if they don't show up to court).
Although not every fly-by-night spammer will have U.S. assets, they could never visit the U.S. or operate a U.S. business, their assets in banks owned by U.S. companies might be seized,etc. You'd have to be a pretty small-time operator to be completely secure from U.S. jurisdiction.
Would Make Email Privacy Essentially ILLEGAL (Score:2)
Not only is it unenforceable in the case of spammers ("Hey, look a bogus FROM line. We'll have to prosecute these guys. If only we knew who they were!"), but it makes it illegal for individuals to use software like Freedom 2.0 from Zero Knowledge Systems [zeroknowledge.com] to protect their identity or send protected email.
Please remember that who you communicate with is just as much a privacy issue as what you say to them. Give up on the first part, and you may as well give up the whole game.
Gee, let's give the government a tool to force open all of our private communications. What a great idea!
These politicians are NOT doing us any favors. They push these bills for their own reasons and then try to rationalize it by painting a veneer of public service over them.
It's a lie and a trap; don't trust them.
Wait a minute.... (Score:3)
That said...think about this (I'm not being paraniod, just throwing this out, wondering what others think) if this law gets passed and they start going after the smart spammers who do what they can to hide thier identity. How are they going to go after these people? More than likely with the same controversial tacticts that have been discussed here before. This may not be thier intention, but when the people whose job it is to stop this get going, they are going to want thier job to be as easy as possible. Will this include "Wire Tapping" suspected spammers email?
We have all seen lists of what Carnivore will/is supposedly looking for, i.e. bomb, gun, anarchy, etc...why not add "work from home", "be your own boss" and others to the list?
Will there be a commision that defines what is spam and what is not? What if companies started putting in the fine print something like "...by agreeing to this you also agree to alow COMPANY_X to send you email with store information" or something along those lines. That was a lame example, but I am sure some sleazy lawyer could figure out a way to fool people into aggreeing to accept spam.
I would love to see less spam, but stop for a second and think about 5 years down the road after this bill is enacted.
Re:Wait a minute.... (Score:1)
That doesn't always work... Some major corporations who spam, hire a service to do the actual spamming. You can contact the corporation, and they'll play stupid by not knowing what you're talking about. Or worse, they will tell you that they have nothing to do with the spammer they've hired.
Paper not worth reading (Score:2)
The practices of telemarketters especially should be a major focus of this investigation.
The common factor extends to panhandlers: "Pay, pay, pay, and I'll leave you alone" {Or will they?]
FWIW, my ratio of paper junk to substance is greater than my email,and a burden, reflected in increasing taxes, to the recycling authorities who have to deal with it. [Unread]
An intersting corollary:
At approximately the same time, bigspending advertisers [translation: major global multinationals} are complaining that banner ads on websites are a waste because only two people out of a million click'em, and neither one buys anything.
Perhaps this means the pavlovian certaintainty of advertisers so unquestioned in the second half of the last century is dying, along with equally-outdated capitalist myths.
We live in interesting times. The commies threw out their bullshit artists in 1989 [1991 in Russia itself} In America, we still have ours.....for the time being.
Re:Right, this makes perfect sense! (Score:1)
I don't get much spam today...
But there was a time when I got a huge amount of it.
If I got as much postal junk as I got spam in those days the post office couldn't deliver my lagit postal mail.
One spammer desided it was cute to send me e-mail once an hour until I responded. I deleated the e-mail for about a week so he switched to once ever half hour.
Also junkmail pritty much funds the post office.
Spam however is a freebe to the spammers. If you charg spammers even so much as a postal rate they'll stop.
Re:The penalty is too light... (Score:1)
Everyone complains when the Federal Government gets too involved with your business, but as soon as someone pisses you off you call for Congress to fix your problem for you. It's called "transferred responsibility".
Responsibility = Authority.
Some people may understand that this is why that big chunk of cash is taken out of our paychecks. Because our great-grandparents transferred the responsibility for their own welfare to the Federal Government. Every piece of legislation like this unlocks a door that can then be opened wider without your consent.
What is the legal definition of spam? How will this be enforced? Do you realize that Law Enforcement may later use this to justify Carnivore and other invasions?
Be careful what you ask for
Re:Wait a minute.... (Score:1)
Wariac writes: Now I hate spam as much as anyone but look at it like the crap I find in my mailbox everyday. It's just one of those things that you learn to deal with (As Taco mentioned...) with filtering.
No can do, Wariac. Email advertising is NOT like paper postal junk mail. Paper postal junk mailers pay through the nose to get their crapola to you. You pay for the spammer to send his/her/its crapola to you. Paper junkmailers, for better or for worse, help finance the US Postal system. Spammers don't. Spammers cost every victim some small amount of money for network connection time, CPU cycles, disk space and either the time to "just hit delete" or the CPU time for filtering.
Besides that Wariac, or should I say "Sanford", suppose that 1 million firms each want to send you 1 spam a year. That's an average of 2739 spams every day of the year. How long does it take you to "just hit delete", Sanford? 1 second? That's 45 minutes a day just hitting delete.
Suppose each of the 2739 spams a day is 2048 bytes. That's 5Mb of disk space that you have to keep around for someone else's oatmeal-for-brains advertisments, Sanford. It's 5Mb of network traffic every day that you didn't ask for and don't want, since you're filtering it anyway.
There can be No Compromise on this issue. Spamming must stop. Spammers must be punished.
Re: (Score:1)
Encryption (Score:1)
Re:It's Funny, Laugh (Score:1)
(if i sent this to the wrong person, i'm really sorry - I have a lot of people who wanted to know when the site was ready and I must have gotten some addresses mixed up)
yeah, I'm so sure.
Well.. (Score:1)
Re:Right, this makes perfect sense! (Score:1)
where in the constitution does it say that we, or more specifically those bastards in congress, can make laws that restcict one's freedom just because their actions make someone else's life inconvenient? i'm sure lots of people are inconvenienced when protestors gather at the state capitol building, but does that mean we should restrict their freedom of speech and public gathering?
Re:Why? (Score:1)
filter it out. Heck if you use procmail on the
server you can dump it to
even hits you desktop.
Now if you can not use procmail on you mail server maybe you should think about that problem first.
If you give this a thumbs up that keep your darn
mouth shut when they close down you website
because someone does not like it showing up on
their web search.
The penalty is too light... (Score:2)
Re:Jail? (Score:1)
The government should be GETTING money instead. I'd support a fine of, say, $500 per message no matter how many they send (above a reasonable minimum that would make it qualify as spam). That should make the baddies think twice before telling their "Mail Blaster" software to "Go".
"Fraudulently"? (Score:1)
Could you define fraudulently? Without consent? Forged? Guessed? How do you fraudulently use an e-mail address?
Wake up and look in you snail mail box! (Score:1)
I'll tell you what. I'm sick and tired of hearing the whining crap from the freaking babies out there about Spam. These are the same people who will get their snail mail and throw out 3/4 or more of it because it is junk. Their junk snail mail cost us money also! The bulk mailer people get a DISCOUNT for mailing bulk, junk, mail. Who pays for the difference? You and I do every time they jack up the postal rates so stop your freaking crying about SPAM. Spam dose not kill trees, use up fossil fuel to be hauled around or clog our refuse dumps etc, etc. Filter it either with software or the delete key. Same as you do with you junk snail mail.
UN-solicited email, or Spam as you cry babies call it, is used the same way as junk snail mail. It works! Just like mailed fliers work. It is called sales and sales makes the economic world spin. Those who cry about Spam do NOT understand sales. But I don't expect many people to understand sales because only 10% of the work force is in sales. The other 90% of you support us. So get a life and holler about something real like censorship.
Spam (Score:3)
Re:How is spam any different from telemarketing? (Score:1)
Spam has very little cost for those who do it, which means every single unscrupulous person and business out there can do it as much as they want, currently. Laws are really the only way to fix that. And as pointed out, telemarketing also has plenty of restrictive laws.
Personally, I think telemarketing should be banned as well, but overall it's not as big a problem as spam. For one thing, if you have caller ID, it's fairly easy to block telemarketers -- if the phone # dosn't show up, don't answer it!
Watch the Descent (Score:1)
Each congressman should be given an AOL account for a week and then we'd see a much more stricter law being passed!
correction. (Score:2)
What these list sellers are doing is selling a list that states or implies that you enjoy or at least don't mind receiving SPAM.
Snailmail too! Please... (Score:1)
Don't be paranoid (Score:1)
How is spam any different from telemarketing? (Score:1)
-Dan
Re:Non-US domains... (Score:1)
This would solve a lot of my problems. I've presently being spammed by two companies (EDirectNetwork.net and GroupLotto.com) who refuse to remove me from their spam list. If anyone knows a way I can threaten them with legal action under current laws, I'd love to hear it. I'm about ready to start shoving 70 Mbps down their throats.
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
Why? (Score:2)
There should be penalties for list sellers.
People shouldn't be able to freely share information with each other?There should be the contact information for the list sellers.
So anonymity should be available to everyone else, just not those filthy spammers?
It always strikes me as hypocritical that people who say that they're for freedom, who defend network intruders as people just wanting to explore (or that they're doing them a service by showing them their security holes!), don't hesitate for a second to throw all those values out the window just so they don't get inconvenienced with extra email. Just so you know, I'm not characterizing the poster to whom I'm replying, just pointing out the general mood.
I'd love to see what happens if Kevin Mitnick started up his own spam service. There'd be soooo many confused script kiddies.
Cheers,
Re:subsection (a) of bullsh#(b) (Score:2)
There is no question that spammers have become more sophisticated over the years. The first spams were stopped with simple filters (e.g., blocking certain phrases, header fields, or originating networks) and the culprits were easily tracked down. Some even wrote books about their efforts. These days spammers use a variety of techniques to mask spam as normal mail and to make it harder to track them down.
This sophistication allows them to deliver more email by bypassing simple filters and by evading accountability for their actions.
Sure try bringing someone over from a third world country to prosecute them for sending spam.
That won't happen, of course. But your analysis is too simple. First off, most of the spam I receive appears to be for US-based companies; I frequently talk to spammers who say, "but there isn't a law against it."
Secondly, developing countries often look to developed nations for legal models to follow. If we don't have laws against spam, China will hardly take the lead.
Having laws here also allows us to exert pressure on the operators of foreign networks. "It's against federal law" sounds much better than "we think it's not nice" or "it's against our AUP".
12 months jail is steep for a victimless crime! (Score:1)
Surely it is up to the recipient of mail to simply junk that which he/she does not wish to read.
In my experience, you only get spam mail if you have registered with some website or other, which is asking for trouble really.
Anyway, who decides what is and is not spam ? It seems very subjective. I don't think this new bill is constitutional either, since it clearly abridges my rights to freedom of speech. Just because you don't like what I am saying does not mean I cannot say it. Or does it ?
What do others think ?
I've got it! (Score:1)
Re:Non-US domains... (Score:1)
It's sad that I even had to do that though, it should NOT be required.
Matt
Re:Why? (Score:2)
This is a straw man. The law is full of apparently impossible problems like this that we deal with all the time. Depending on what the recipient feels, the same behavior can be romantic or it can be stalking. If you complain to the cops that a local business cheated youthey won't just knock the door down and seize their records on your say-so. It takes one person with evidence of a lot of wrongdoing or a lot of people with similar complaints for the boys in blue to get excited. This requires exercising some judgement, but people are generally ok at that.
Standing outside my house with a bullhorn is disturbing the peace. Spamming me disturbs my delete key for about a quarter of a second.
Ok, suppose I do this for an hour and disturb you and a few of your neighbors. That's 1 x 4 = 4 person-hours of disruption, which is certainly sufficient for the cops to be willing to come by.
Typical spam runs are in the millions of recipients. I think a quarter-second is low, but we'll use your figure for the sake of argument. Even a million-message spam run would yield 69.4 person-hours of disruption for end users, plus an unknown amount of time and money for sysadmins, hardware, and bandwidth to support all this.
So by the measure you claim is important, amount of disruption, it seems that spam is worse. Explain again why you think we should ignore it?
But I thought that we're not supposed to blame Napster for the behavior of its users. Did everyone change their mind on that one?
I haven't had time to check with everyone, but my personal take is that both Napster and Napster's users are responsible; they're enough blame to share. And the federal courts happen to agree with me on this one.
Just curious, but what's the cost in resources and works-gummed-up that spammers have cost you? I shudder to think of all the time that the spam-busters have spent for free, and how much more they could've been doing with their lives instead.
As I'm sure you know, that isn't the point. I frequently pick up trash on the street. If I see somebody breaking into a car outside my house, I'll call the cops even if the car isn't mine. I do these things because it's my neighborhood and I want to keep it up.
I've been using the Internet for more than a decade, which is longer than I've lived in any neighborhood. Spammers are parasitic scum; they bring down the property values in my virtual neighborhood. I have other things I'd rather be doing, but until people stop littering, I'll be spending time picking up trash.
And vigilante action is great fun until the day comes that the vigilante groups are against you.
It's not like we are hanging spammers from lampposts. The only serious anti-spam weapons are a) persuading ISPs to enforce their AUPs, and b) telling our computers not to talk to computers that are friendly to spam. And in the meantime, we are vigorously pressing our reps to get off their ample butts and bring the law up to date. If that's as scary as vigilante action gets, I think I can stand it when they come for me.
Bullshit (Score:2)
Most net traffic is pr0n or MP3 trading. Other web traffic is the next largest draw. Email and newsgroups are at best a distant fourth.
So, let's say that SMTP and NNTP traffic is 10% (which I suspect is rather high) Then even assuming that 30-40% of news and mail traffic is spam (which I highly doubt-- for me it's less than 5%) then we're only talking 3-4%. I suspect the actual share of mail and news traffic is less than 5% (we are talking plain text here) and the percentage of spam is more like 10%. In that case we're talking a half-percent of bandwidth usage, not 10%.
If you're careful about who you give your email address to, spam really isn't that big of a deal. I've had the same email address for three years now, and I get less than one piece of spam a day. The trick is to just not give out your personal email address to people you don't trust. Set up a second email address to give to web sites and other public places. And change that every year or two if it starts getting bombarded with spam.
Furthermore, if the bandwidth usage is as large as you claim, ISP's themselves will start shutting spammers down, and will begin to institute measures to prevent this abuse of their networks. No ISP wants to waste precious bandwidth on a usage that's going to piss off their upstream providers.
Re:The penalty is too light... (Score:5)
I'm going to assume your first sentence is a typo, because I can't make anything sensible out of it. Spammers are people who send unsolicited bulk email.
It's true that spammers aren't violent criminals, and shouldn't be treated as harshly as, say, murderers. But that isn't an argument for letting them off easy, either.
Collectively, spammers cost us $9 billion [eu.int] per year. Like con men, market manipulators, perpetrators of fraud, and common thieves, they are out-and-out parasites. They did nothing to build the internet, but make their living by stealing our time, money, and attention.
Just make it illegal to forge headers, and when spammers are forced to use regular headers, we can
filter them that much more easily. And then it won't be so bad, right?
Wrong. First, you still have to pay the costs of receiving and filtering the message. Second, everybody who received email then has to make sure they have some sort of filtering just to get rid of something they never asked for. Third, it's not obvious how this would help the common problem of "whack-a-mole" spamming. Fourth, spammers have managed to work around every technical solution now in place for spam prevention; it's safe to assume that they'll do it here, too.
So yes, anti-spam laws are needed. And yes, they need criminal penalties as well as civil penalties.
Spammer Hunting License (Score:2)
This idea means licensing them so that they are properly registered, meaning that they can be billed for use of service, etc. and jail those not properly licensed. and also means that we can send bill collectors and tax collectors hunting after them.
The bottom line is that IF we can make it profitable to go after these guys, someone will make a business of it. We just go to figure a way how.
Then we get to use the scum of society, such as bill collectors and tax collectors, and turn them to some good, going after spammers. And we can use the money collected to subsidise the cost of the Internet.
It's Funny, Laugh (Score:5)
I received unsolciited advertising mail and this was at the end:
This is not a SPAM. You are receiving this because you are on a list of email addresses that I have purchased for marketing.
----
Re:Right, this makes perfect sense! (Score:2)
where in the constitution does it say that we, or more specifically those bastards in congress, can make laws that restcict one's freedom just because their actions make someone else's life inconvenient?
Restricting my freedom to buy stuff and stick you with the bill certainly makes your life more convenient, but it's quite inconvenient for me. Since I'm sure there isn't a hypocritical bone in your body, I'll expect you to be sending me your credit card number any minute now....
/.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Re:Speach is speach, eh? (Score:2)
From what little I could tell I was NOT in favor of the bill.
I thought that it was ruled illegal for a telemarketer to leave a message on your answering machine (at least in New York).
And to top it off, the message got cut off, half way through the phone number they wanted me to call
Re:Jesus FUCKING Christ .. SPEECH S-P-E-E-C-H (Score:3)
I'll be more careful in the future, in the meantime, go eat a peech and chill.
KFG
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Who decides what spam is and isn't? Once you have somebody deciding that question, you start down the slippery slope. Is it just bulk email sent from a single point? Okay, make that illegal.
With advances in distributed technologies, some company will come along and offer money (or free services) to people who will install an app which will receive IM/SOAP messages from a central server. The app will integrate with their email client to automagically send out individual, unsolicited email to select people. Okay, now that we've decided to make these illegal, who gets to decide which of these emails are illgeal? And do we start invading individuals' computers to find out if they're part of this network, or if they just decided to send out the email at their own discretion? Do we start banning any unsolicited mail whatsoever? I can call someone unsolicited, mail someone unsolicited, but if I email someone unsolicited and they happen to have a beef with me or what I'm saying, they can turn me in to the police?
Standing outside my house with a bullhorn is disturbing the peace. Spamming me disturbs my delete key for about a quarter of a second.
Suppose he runs an open shell account server that keeps no logs but allows people to break in to your boxes? Is that also virtuous?
But I thought that we're not supposed to blame Napster for the behavior of its users. Did everyone change their mind on that one?
Just curious, but what's the cost in resources and works-gummed-up that spammers have cost you? I shudder to think of all the time that the spam-busters have spent for free, and how much more they could've been doing with their lives instead.
And vigilante action is great fun until the day comes that the vigilante groups are against you.
Cheers,
no no No NO (Score:2)
What exactly is spam? Let's say
Now is it spam? Maybe
Who decides what is spam? The courts? That's a great fucking idea let's hire some more lawyers and corrupt ourselves even more. Or lets setup a government task force. Of course how could the task force monitor our emails for spam? Are they going to just have us forward any emails we don't like to them so they can track down the senders and take action? Now that's not a very efficient method is it? So their next step will be to setup even more carnivore type of monitoring stations all in the name of saving us from those horrible spam messages. People like CmdrTaco might even be ok with it, given enough time and after enough conditioning. Think of all the tendonitis insurance claims and wear and tear on our keyboards/mice and bandwidth this will save worldwide. The task force will have to have a very broad range of powers in order to be effective. They could bust into
There is only one way to fight spam and that is to ignore it. If spammers weren't getting results then they would just stop. Unfortunately too many people read the spam, click on the link and spend their money.
The other way to fight spam is to fight back... figure out where the spam came from and ping fuck them to death. Yes their ISP would loose revenue from the downtime but I bet after the third of fourth time, the ISP's would beef up and enforce their agreements quite a bit. Of course to fight back like this is illegal anyway and no one would think of breaking the law.
Censorship is censorship even if you're censoring assholes. Who knows your ideas might be unpopular 5 years from now and then you'll fall victim to a law you promoted.
G
Re:Non-US domains... (Score:2)
------------------
Re:Head - Sand = more spam (Score:2)
I believe that somebody forwarded it to Spamcop. It was, after all, unsolicited bulk email, even if it was done on a small scale and with good intentions. But I don't buy the rest of this. I don't know of even one, let alone "multiple spam shitlists" that will block somebody on the basis of a solitary Spamcop report. If you say, "Oops! Clueless user has been beaten!" then your problem will go away pronto.
Re:It's Funny, Laugh (Score:2)
--
Re:Don't be paranoid (Score:2)
Go read the Federalist papers, for God's sake.
No wonder the nation is in such a mess.
KFG
Re:Don't be paranoid (Score:2)
Wow, that's some impressive stretching. Careful you don't pull a muscle!
I'm pretty sure that most folks don't have a personal relationship with a bunch of news anchors or their producers.
But they have a compiled list of thousands of their email addresses?
Re:Non-US domains... or are they? (Score:2)
Even if the spam originates from a foreign machine, the service they're offering is quite often located in the US. If they advertise a website, or the spam includes a submission form, it's relatively easy to locate the ISP that's hosting the spammer's site. Quite frequently, this is a violation the ISP's AUP, and a notification to the ISP will result in the spammer's site being removed (thus all their spamming efforts were wasted!).
There are utilities such as spamcop [spamcop.net] which are designed to assist in identifying the true source of junk emails. I generally do things by hand (traceroute, etc...), so I can't say whether or not spamcop is any good - just thought I'd mention that it exists.
Strags
Re:Head - Sand = more spam (Score:2)
never actually blocked. But the threat was certainly there.
Which "they" is this? And which lists? I still don't believe you were in the slightest danger of anything bad happening. I don't know of any list that will ban on the basis of a single complaint about a single message.
Hell, in this case, what if said coworker had sent *1* message, by chance to the one recipient who complained?
Spamcop is interested in fighting unsolicted bulk mail. If you get a bogus complaint, you can let the people at spamcop know and they'll rap the user on the knuckles. People who make repeated bogus reports will be terminated. The folks at Spamcop are very serious about making sure they produce mainly high-quality reports; the last thing they want is for people to stop taking them seriously.
Re:Some problems. (Score:2)
I've had situations where I've told telemarketers to quit calling and they don't. They just get more and more aggressive.
Sure, the laws are a deterrent to legitimate companies. I worked for a telemarketer who made their opt out database (DNC list, do not call list) a really big thing. But how many spammers are running legitimate companies?
I'm sorry, but anti-telemarketing legislation has been very ineffective, I wouldn't expect anti-spamming legislation to do any better, especially when it is framed in exactly the same manner.
Re:Right, this makes perfect sense! (Score:2)
I don't sign up for stupid crop nor do I frequent porn sites.
However, I use usenet, have my own domain (with an whois entry), run several web pages. All these are the main sources for email address collectors.
Just look at your article. You have to munge your email address to avoid being spammed. You call that freedom? Let me guess, you are wearing Groucho Marx glasses when leaving your house.
------------------
Re:internationalisation please! (Score:2)
If the article's accurate, the law's bad (Score:2)
I hope the bill is more intelligently written than that. The above description legitimizes the 'opt-out' defense. It also has no penalties for companies like Ebay and Amazon that don't forge mail addresses. And since many spammers use throwaway dialup accounts, they could start using the true mail addresses of these accounts and be within the law.
Worse, the above description includes lots of mail that isn't really spam. If you send an email to Digital Convergence protesting their policies regarding the Cue-Cat, isn't that an 'unwanted and unsolicited email'? (Hopefully you'd be exempt if you didn't forge the from address.) The idea of bulk seems to be missing.
I hope the law is not as stupid as this article implies. But I've never had high hopes for government anti-spam measures - in the end they'll be just another tool used by the rich and privileged to protect their position.
Re:Why? (Score:5)
Like the rest of humanity, most of slashdot's readership is in favor of laws that benefit them and opposed to ones that might harm them. And like most of humanity, they'll say it's all for high-minded reasons. There are exceptions, of course, but too few.
However, it's still possible to have an intelectually coherent position like this. I am strongly in favor of freedom of speech and strongly opposed to spam. This makes sense to me because I'm not opposed to the content of the spam, but rather the behavior of forcing me to take something I don't want and making me pay for it, just so that they can make a buck.
Similarly, I take intent into consideration when dealing with hackers. If somebody breaks into my system and leaves no trace but a little note saying "gotcha!" then I'm impressed; they've done me a service and done something cool. If some script kiddie breaks in and uses my boxes to send spam or warehouse the mp3s and pr0n that his mom won't let him keep in the house, then I come down on him like the wrath of god.
I'd love to see what happens if Kevin Mitnick started up his own spam service. There'd be soooo many confused script kiddies.
Heh. That's a good idea. 2600 can do their summer subscription drive that way.
There are 2 antispam bills proposed: This one sux (Score:5)
The so-called "Anti-spamming Act" (HR 1017 [spamlaws.com]) was introduced a full month *after* the much better "Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail Act of 2001" (HR 95 [spamlaws.com]), in an apparent attempt to weaken antispam law.
Goodlatte's copycat "Anti-spamming Act" (HR1017) takes away service providers' rights to enforce their policies: The "Unsolicited Commercial Email" act (HR95) preserves that right..
The "Anti-spamming" act gives spammers free run of your server, until you explicitly tell them to stop. The "UCE" act lets admins proactively keep spam off their system. (Note: Goodlatte's Virginia constituency includes AOL, which has fought hard for the right to spam for several years, and which pushed to defeat last year's HR3113 [suespammers.org].)
(Both bills allow end recipients to sue, both require valid sender information, both penalize forgery. Both ostensibly mandate opt-out -- i.e., you have to tell the spammer to stop before they're forced to -- but HR 95 allows service providers to supersede that issue by setting their own policies to equal opt-in.)
Don't be fooled. Rep. Goodlatte's "Anti-spamming" bill is a mandate to spam: The "UCE" Act (HR95) is the real thing.
But don't take my word for it. See what others have to say:
- US legislation pages for The Suespammers Project [suespammers.org]
- US legislation pages at spamlaws.com [spamlaws.com]
- Suespammers discussion list [suespammers.org]
--Tom Geller, Founder and Administrator, The Suespammers Project [suespammers.org]Re:Head - Sand = more spam (Score:2)
Spamcop may be responsible, but will every outfit take the same precautions? And regardless of responsiblity, the wording of the complaint notice I received from Spamcop was rather aggressive. How do you expect people to react?
Some problems. (Score:5)
- There should be penalties for list sellers. Otherwise, you have to notify each spammer.
- There should be the contact information for the list sellers.
- There should be penalties for SPAM service companies -- companies that do spamming for others.
I don't trust the remove information on any spam. Even those it's the old way of confirming email addresses, it is still used. The newer way is with web bugs in html email, src="xx.com/sucker.cgi=victim.address.Non-US domains... (Score:2)
Anyway, basically all this does is make it illegal to hijack someone's email address to send spam, and to remove someone from the spamming list when asked. But, if you're like me, I never reply to spam - that's the one way that the spammer knows that the address is live.
Net gain to most net users = almost 0.
Think about this... (Score:3)
It's not a good bill. (Score:5)
The right legislative approach is to extend the existing law prohibiting junk faxes to E-mail. That's a successful law, and would work.
Re:"Fraudulently"? (Score:5)
By using the domain of a third party in the "Reply-to:" field, like this [rahul.net].
k.
--
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people
are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Right, this makes perfect sense! (Score:2)
Personally though, I think you're a bunch of whiney bastards. Just deal with it. If you get too much spam, stop frequenting porn sites, and signing up for stupid crap. How about not using AOL?
Oh, wait, that isn't how this "Free" country works. Our real freedom is that we're free to give up our freedom in the most mindless fashion possible.
I've convinced myself, this is a good idea after all!
Re:It's not a good bill. (Score:2)
I think it will be easy to persuade the court that your address in not faked even if you don't read e-mail for that address at all, but you can if you want to.
Re:Non-US domains... (Score:2)
Should be interesting for you.
------------------
I hate spam as much as the next guy. . . BUT, (Score:2)
I'm sorry, but spam is no different. Speach is speach.
What'll be next? Making it illegal to say Hi to someone without their permission first? Think his is extreme, it'll never happen? At Antioch college it is agaisnt the code of conduct for a husband to kiss his wife without explicitly asking permission first. It's a slippery slope people.
And consider this, how is anyone supposed to GET permission to send e-mail without e-mailing to ask permission? Do we all need to walk around carrying " opt in cards " that have to be hand signed before the sender can send us mail?
Anti spam laws are a cure much, MUCH worse than the disease that will limit us all and see totally innocent people prosecuted and have their lives destroyed.
Banning forging headers might be a step in the right direction, but only if it can be done in a way that presents no double standard with respect to snail mail laws. It would be pretty easy to write an anti spam bill that would do the equivilent of making it illegal to send someone a postcard saying " Guess Who?" on it. Is that what we really want?
Speach is speach is speach. You want to keep trading files over Napster, distributing DeCSS, posting derogetory articles about Scientology, fighting patents on abstract ideas?
If so, then spam stays.
KFG
Re:Why? (Score:4)
The banning of spam has nothing to do with censorship. Spamming is a behavior that has nothing to do with the content of the message. The fact that most spam contains commercial advertising has confused some people, though.
If I stand outside your house and rant into a megaphone at 4 am, you can call the police and have me hauled away, even if I'm reading the bill of rights out loud. Why? Because whatever the content of my speech, my behavior is against the law (and also pretty rude).
EFF co-founder John Gilmore runs an open relay mail server at home, which, to anti-spammers, is among the most evil things that you can do.
Suppose he runs an open shell account server that keeps no logs but allows people to break in to your boxes? Is that also virtuous?
Back when nobody spammed and everybody played nice, open relays were swell. I miss the days when the Internet was one big community and pretty much everybody was playing positive-sum games. And the times I've met John Gilmore, he seems like a great guy. But these days an open relay can and will be used to hide the origin of spam.
If I leave my front door unlocked, the cops won't say boo. But if a bunch of crackheads use my open house as a base of operations to steal from my neighbors, then Johnny Law will have some things to say to me about it.
Personally, I don't like the anti-spam groups, because I don't want some lynch-mob arbitrarily deciding what is spam and what isn't.
Well then bug your reps to get some laws passed. I'd rather spend my time doing other stuff, but as long as spammers are stealing resources and gumming up the works, I'll be doing what I can to stop them. Vigilante action is a poor substitute for the rule of law, but it beats anarchy by a mile.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Well, obviously they include some means of contacting to buy their offering; they just don't provide general contact information. Now take a company like AT&T. They're trying to sell you something; lots of things in fact. But there is no real way to contact them. You can call 800 numbers and get phonedroids who are allowed to process a limited palette of transactions. But there is no publicized way to contact an actual responsible human being at AT&T. In other words, corporate America has largely gone the same route as the spammers - seeking to sell while remaining unreachable.
Spam is worse than junk snail mail (Score:2)
I'm glad to do it, then. There are two big differences.
One difference is in how the cost is paid. The sender of junk mail pays 100% of the cost of creating the junk mail and delivering it to your door. Spam is parasitical; most of the cost is paid by the recipients.
The other difference is that spam costs a lot less per unit to send, suggesting that we'll get a lot more of it.
Spammers and junk mailers both do what they do because the money they receive in sales allows them to pay for their unsolicited garbage. Because paper mail is expensive, you need a reasonable (e.g. > 1%) response rate to make it practical. Despite that, about half of my paper mail is junk.
Spam, on the other hand, is orders of magnitude cheaper, especially when you make others pay most of the cost. Response rates for spam campaigns thus are orders of magnitude lower, meaning that a lot more spam has to be delivered to put a dollar in the pocket of the spammer.
This suggests that spam, left unchecked, will be a much larger percentage of your inbox than is true for junk mail. Because of this, I think spam requires special legal treatment. The laws should at least be equivalent to junk faxes, but I favor stronger ones.
===
You do have a point with the ecologic costs of junk mail. But this is a problem endemic to our system of pricing; the true cost of resource depletion, polution, and disposal is hidden from consumers. Better to solve that problem directly, rather than solving this one tiny symptom.
Re:Head - Sand = more spam (Score:2)
On the Internet, and especially with collective projects like spam filtering, reputation is everytying. If Spamcop starts putting out lots of bogus reports, nobody will pay attention to them. So yes, I think that any outfit will have to take the same precautions or become irrelevant.
And regardless of responsiblity, the wording of the complaint notice I received from Spamcop was rather aggressive. How do you expect people to react?
It's been a year or so since I received one, so I guess I can't speak as to its current aggressiveness; the one I got was just a couple of lines and a link.
Perhaps the first notice should be pretty polite. If you could do better, I encourage you to get in touch with the Spamcop folks; I'm sure they'd welcome assistance. But in my experience, most of the people responsible for spam-spewing servers these days are either hopelessly overworked or terminally clueless. To get anything done, you have to scare them. So it may be that making the letters nicer will only reduce the response rate.
Text of bill (Score:2)
(thomas.loc.gov is the first site that I've encountered that not only uses temporary URLs for search results and uses POST forms for searching, but also won't accept the form if I tell my browser to GET it [hmc.edu] instead.)
Re:It's not a good bill. (Score:2)
To me, it's the same thing... because a spammer that's dumb enough to but his own e-mail in the reply-to field will do that mistake only once!
Double Standards (Score:2)
But, it seems like there are some major double standards going on on slashdot. Legislation to kill spammers is ok but legislation to prevent people from steal^H^H^H^H^H sharing music is not. Spammers should be fought with technology not laws.
So many slashdotters scream for smaller government and bitch whenever the government passes a law dealing with technology but applaude them when they pass a law that they like. Please people, make up your minds (Esp. you CmdrTaco).
-crispy
<SIG>
I think I lost my work ethic while surfing the web. If you find it, please email it to me.
Re:"Fraudulently"? (Score:2)
It's RICK! Not Rich!!! (Score:2)
forgot one thing (Score:4)
In general telemarketers pay money to call you. Maybe not to you, but they pay the cost of call and the salary of the person making the call. SPAM on the other hand costs nothing to send.
There are no-call lists for telemarketers. There are restrictions on the times calls can be made.
The same with collection agencies. Collection agencies must be registered. Employees of those agencies who do not use their real name, must have a listed alias.
In both cases, the calls are traceable in some manner. Not the same with SPAM!
Speach is speach, eh? (Score:4)
This is blatantly wrong. Good anti-spam laws focus on behavior, not on content. Even an empty message can be spam.
Consider a real-world example: If I have a political message, I can hand you a copy of it on the street. I can tell it to you as you walk by. I can even stick a copy of it to your door. But I can't force you to listen, and i can't break into your house to convey it to you.
Suppose I buy the biggest megaphone I can find, and then I and my pals set up camp outside your house and read our political messages to you around the clock at 140 decibels. If it bothers you, you need not soundproof your house; you can call the police and have me hauled off.
In front of the judge, no amount of waving the Bill of Rights will get me off. Why? Because although I may have a right to speak, you have a right not to be forced to listen. The right to freedom of speech is a requirement that the government not impede communication between willing parties, not a right to make as much noise as you want just because it could be considered speech.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Re:Some problems. (Score:2)
And you shouldn't. Most Spam will make a reference to Bill 1618 stating that they have to remove you if you respond. Snopes has an article [snopes.com] with an addedum that shows that this is bs
Re:Why? (Score:2)
I do. It's like stalking. I might enjoy being stalked by by the cute brunette across the street but would not enjoy being stalked by her second cousin. As the recepient of unwanted attentention is is purely up to me to decide when I have been wronged. Much like the rest of the criminal justice system action does not take plcae until some victim presses charges. Spamming ought to begin with just that. I was spammed officer and I wish to press charges.
"Standing outside my house with a bullhorn is disturbing the peace. Spamming me disturbs my delete key for about a quarter of a second"
Why should I be disturbed by even a uqarter of a second. Why is your desire to make some money more important then my quarter of a second. What the hell do I care how much money you want to make? Those quarter of a seconds add up.
"But I thought that we're not supposed to blame Napster for the behavior of its users. Did everyone change their mind on that one?"
Maybe on the planet you are on nobody blames the users of napster but on this planet people blamed the users of napster more then napster itself (for the right reasons I might add). Can I buy a ticket to your planet it sounds very nice.
"Just curious, but what's the cost in resources and works-gummed-up that spammers have cost you? I shudder to think of all the time that the spam-busters have spent for free, and how much more they could've been doing with their lives instead."
Why should they even cost me one milisecond of my life. What gives them that right? Who are you to tell people how they should spend their time?
"And vigilante action is great fun until the day comes that the vigilante groups are against you."
What part of encouraging your lawmakers to pass laws is considered vigilante? What part of locking up your SMTP server to preven relaying constitutes vigilanteism? Can I buy a ticket to your planet please it seems nice over there.
subsection (a) of bullsh#(b) (Score:2)
Penalties for this are a joke and anyone in the justice system who is going to attempt to waste their time going after one spammer will spend more tax dollars taking them to court, then the justice system would gain via fines and jail times.
Nicer solution would have been to sanction ISP's, uplink providers, and hold them for some accountability with the actions generated from their networks. e.g.: Provider gets warning first 20 times then fines subsequent to every infraction thereafter. This would certainly piss ISP's off and force them to open their eyes and see their is illegal actions (spoofing emails, wire fraud believe it or not) stemming on their networks, which they would have to fix or else pay hefty fines per infraction.
Think about it for a second, this law sounds like it intends the greatest good for us who hate spam, but think about someone sending spam outside of the U.S., it won't have any effect. Just try attempting explaining to a jury of homemakers how someone used proxy A, to jump through proxy B to end up in Thailand in order to send bulk spam. It just won't work.
That must be a hefty load of spam. I've worked in enterprise environments of over 5,000 people, each receiving mailing lists stuff, spam, friends mails, etc., and am just annoyed by it, never once crashing my systems. She must be targeted or using some cheesy systems that spammers are crashing. Let's at least be honest about it, sure we hate spam but crashing your system
This article reeks with clueless people attempting to explain what they don't understand. How is sophistication related to sending more emails? It doesn't take a sopistacted user to search on google [google.com] for "anonymous email" and "relay". Now had she mentioned illegally relaying to unauthorized servers, via nefarious means such as TCP/IP spoofing then I'd be impressed or more attentive to her story.
Sure try bringing someone over from a third world country to prosecute them for sending spam. Then again with the lax security abroad try obtaining log records from these sources, who's only income may be from spamming mind you, and you'll be ignored since they don't have to follow the U.S'. laws
You can't have it both ways (Score:2)
The only real solution to the spam problem is via network user agreements and technology.