Politicians Seek Spam Loophole 395
Steve B writes "An article in the Mercury News by Mike McCurry and Larry Purpuro (respectively heading an "advocacy management and communications software company" and a "political e-marketing firm") wraps the case for political spam in all the usual Mom-Flag-&-Apple-Pie cliches. They conclude with a cynical appeal for a special exemption, while condescendingly instructing anti-spammers that their efforts are "better focused on commercial e-mail" and painting spammer Bill Jones as a victim who made a few trifling mistakes."
high and mighty (Score:5, Insightful)
Very similar to the old cliche that some people really believe that their shit don't stink.
Re:high and mighty (Score:3, Informative)
1. Check to see if im in the State Opt-Out email database (I am).
2. Use [ADV] and [ADV ADULT] in the subject line.
Those 2 things are ALL I need to combat spam. Of course hardly anyone does. We dont have the "Sue for Money" clause like other states. Oh if we did.....
Re:high and mighty (Score:3, Insightful)
ADV
ADV ADULT
ADV POLITICAL
ADV NONPROFIT
If there are any more groups that think their shit don't stink, give them their own subject line heading.
Re:high and mighty (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:high and mighty (Score:2)
If you are on the opt-out list, and they check it, then this lessens the load.
If they don't check it, but put ADV or ADV-ADULT, then it is trivially filtered by any modern mail client. Economics and response rate eventually kills spam.
Re:high and mighty (Score:2)
Yes ADV is trivially filterable. NEITHER IS THAT THE POINT. By the time it's on your client, a large portion of the costs of spam have already been realized.
Economics? What economics? Spam is currently incredibly easy to send. It costs them more to filter the lists than to not filter them. So why adjust them?
Re:high and mighty (Score:2)
Re:high and mighty (Score:3, Insightful)
Slippery slope (Score:5, Insightful)
Then we'll have demands for party affiliates and candidate support groups to have their own equivalent exceptions added, since they speak on behalf of the candidates (purely nonprofit, of course).
Then we'll have demands from the lobbyists to have their exceptions added, since they push the issues that the candidates deal with on a daily basis, and if a candidate is, say, pro-life, why shouldn't the pro-choice lobbyists get equal say?
And finally, since many lobbyists are on corporate payroll, the corporations can just take the gloves off and ask for their own exemptions, since they might want to support a particular candidate, and as a legal "individual" (without voting rights, of course), they are entitled to endorse a particular candidate in means outside of the normal campaign contributions.
But, of course, once they get their hands on the e-mail lists of a certain group of constituents, you can bet that it will accidentally fall into the wrong hands, along with the demographic/geographic data that accompanies it.
Marketer heaven. And, before long...Spammer heaven.
Re:Slippery slope (Score:2)
You have the right[1] to free speech. You do not have the right to force that speech upon others or use others resources without permission to do so.
[1] In the US.
Re:Slippery slope (Score:2)
(Of course, it still doesn't entitle someone to clog my inbox.)
Good thing about political spam (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, as soon as the politicians discover that they can send attack-ads as anonymous spam then it won't be so easy to exact vengence, but until then they sure make it easy to beat them up for spamming.
Just you wait (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an old trick for a candidate's staff to canvas for votes for the OTHER guy -- at 3AM. No better way to piss people off and get them to vote for you instead of them. Print up campaign stickers for the other guy, and paste 'em on people's car bumpers. Make sure they're the sort that don't come off without special chemicals. There are several variations on this theme that have been used before and will be used again.
So when your mailbox gets bombed with 100 spams, all asking you to vote for someone, and all infected with Klez -- don't assume they actually came from the candidate.
Re:Good thing about political spam (Score:5, Funny)
I can see political spam changing if things take off. At the very least, spammers could hide their stuff as politics if political spam were legal.
"I was a lowly senator, unable to service my hot young interns (see them now at hot-young-interns-in-the-senate.com), until I bought this herbal extract which works like Viagra for less. Buy it here...for every $10 spent, $1 goes to my releection campaign".
Or
"dear sirs,
I am writing to you in utmost confidence, as a former republican congressman of Texas, now in exile in Sierra Leone. An aide of mine, on loan from Enron, has the information needed to get at $17 million of Enron investment information from an offshore account in Nigeria. I need your help to get this money, with which I will take a small percentage to pay for TV advertisements"
etc.
Re:Good thing about political spam (Score:2)
Or, perhaps, +1 Scary...
...And here I am having just spent my last mod point.
Re:Good thing about political spam (Score:3, Insightful)
In my book - this isn't SPAM. If I can call, write, email, or personally visit the guy who sent it, then I really dont class it alongside 'send $10 to PO BOX 666 for a hot babe' type SPAM.
Email from hagkjhkj@hotmail.com offering viagra is SO different from 'hi - vote for me'.
Politicians have a duty to inform the public - email is an excellent, cost effective, environmentally friendly way to do this. Drop your SPAM IS EVIL mindset for 2 seconds and see the wider picture.
Re:Good thing about political spam (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I depends on your point of view. I already get a lot of spam on how to evade US tax laws - or how to get certains US permits, etc. Guess what, I don't live in the US. Getting messages from US politicians would certainly be spam in my book.
At least, viagra works - the same cannot be said from politicians. :-)
The core problem is always the same "it's not spam if it is sent to the right people". The problem is, spammers are not very good at selecting the right people.
If you add up all the people that cannot vote in the US, don't care, don't want to get political stuff at their work address or hate the guy anyway - it makes quite a lot of people that will get unsollicited e-mail, eg will be spammed.
Political messages can be handled in the same way that legitimate communications from organisations: by using an opt-in mechanism.
Re:Good thing about political spam (Score:2)
Spam on the other hand, it most certainly is. There is one key factor - Is it unsolicited? It's consent, not content.
Re:Good thing about political spam (Score:2)
Because some spam is accepted, there are even more people that try, hoping theirs will be accepted. Your mail very rapidly becomes unusable.
There is no such thing as good spam. Unsolicited bulk e-mail is not a viable form of advertising. It does not scale. Would you like several thousand to tens of thousands e-mail in your inbox daily? That's what you'd get if it was an accepted practice, not the shady side of the net it is now.
Re:Good thing about political spam (Score:2, Insightful)
So, if a political candidate calls you collect to ask you to vote for him, it's okay? What if you couldn't refuse the charges?
First of all, see the wider picture yourself and realize that campaign emails are not "informing the public" but are advertisements.
Secondly, the problem with spam is that it costs the receiver money[1] as opposed to most other media where it only costs the sender. When spammers advertisements don't cost me any money, then I'll be content to set up my filters and let them have at it.
Television ads don't cost me money. Direct mail doesn't cost me money. Radio spots don't cost me money. Until you can say the same thing about email ads, stop comparing them.
[1] For the few who haven't heard this before: Even if you pay monthly for unlimited access, it still cost you money. Your ISP has to pay for the extra bandwidth and equipment to handle the traffic. One guess who gets to pay for that in terms of higher access fees.
Re:Good thing about political spam (Score:2)
That's it, I'm gonna start spamming business, sending out unsolicited messages asking everyone to help Dubyah get re-elected.
Compared to commercial spam... (Score:4, Interesting)
If this is the bone we need to throw to Congress to finally get some laws passed banning commercial spam without opt-out lists being honored, so be it. Besides, if spam is as irritating as we think it is, it's going to backfire as a PR tool even if it isn't illegal to use.
Re:Compared to commercial spam... (Score:3, Funny)
That's why the abuse would take a more nefarious form: spam that appears to come from candidate A and violates good practice, but is actually sent by candidate's B people who made it look like it came from candidate A in an effort to turn the tide against A. Then when candidate A denies sending it after the expected uproar, and accuses B, you really won't know who to believe ... you'll just have a pile of email you didn't request and can't stop, just like now.
Re:Compared to commercial spam... (Score:2)
Exactly...we need to keep this sort of childish behaviour out of politics. Blaming the opposition for something you have no clue about just isn't on, and we can't allow it to happen.
As for not knowing who to believe, well I certainly hope that never comes about.
Re:Compared to commercial spam... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Bonded Spam (Score:3, Informative)
eWeek has a slightly interesting article here [eweek.com] about a company putting together a bonded sender program, where people who receive unwanted mail from such a sender would be able to charge against the bond.
Interesting, though it won't work of course. As the article points out, legitimate mass emailers are less likely to have large scale complaints compared with unbonded/unwanted mass mailers, but personally I wouldn't mind being able to charge for each Viagra, HGH, mortgage, and credit repair email I've gotten just today.
eWeek [eweek.com] has a couple of articles on spam (see the homepage), and Spam is the cover banner on the hardcopy magezine this week.
At least he saves money... (Score:5, Insightful)
Strategy: More impact, less money (Score:3, Funny)
Its interesting that the article doesn't address the cost picked up by the reciever and the ISP. Its also interesting that they note:
Just think. He spent 2 cents a message to get a torrent of negative press. This is supposed to be a good example? Heck. Hire me. I can top that campaign easily.
Hold a press conference... it'll be free (minus the cost of coffee or whatever one traditionally spends on keeping the press happy to be there). Once assembled, make the following statements:
There. Done. Your words will be repeated amoung an untold number of general and specific interest news sources, far outpacing the number of people reached by any SPAM campaign. And you'll have done far more damage to your campaign for much less money than any SPAM campaign and "email marketing" company could ever do.
Now, if your intent is not to damage your campaign, you probably don't want to follow this strategy. But then... you probably shouldn't use SPAM either.
Re:Strategy: More impact, less money (Score:3, Insightful)
[...]
Your district's natural resources are there for slash-and-burn style exploitation by your district's largest political contributer to your political fund.
I can't help but thinking that that is exactly what all the candidates are actually saying beneath the sugar-coated fluff that are their campaign speeches.
Ah well.
Re:Strategy: More impact, less money (Score:2)
Yea. But they don't just come out and publically state it.
The odd thing is that as I was thinking of political-suicide statements to make... it dawned on me that they would appeal to SOME people. So I tried to make a few statements that would cover enough territory that the candidate wouldn't stumble on some quiet constituency that makes up the majority population who doesn't vote and just haven't had the right candidate that reflects their views... until now. Or some such lunacy.
Re:Strategy: More impact, less money (Score:2)
>
> I can't help but thinking that that is exactly what all the candidates are actually saying beneath the sugar-coated fluff that are their campaign speeches.
Agreed.
That's not a political suicide speech. Hell, in California, that's how Gray Davis raises his campaign funds!
(Oracle's $25K buys a $95M contract debacle, a few weeks ago, Herbalife's $100G buys them an exemption from reporting ephedra on their product labels, the Tosco refinery's $75G buys an increase their allowance to dump dioxin into the San Francisco Bay - that last one's a real hoot, as Davis, as a Democrat, is claiming (with a straight face, no less) the environmentalist high ground.)
Make them pay... (Score:2, Interesting)
*Every* reply. Candidate A sends you spam? Reply detailing why Candidate B is better. Candidate J tells you how he's tough on crime? Reply talking about how J's daughter was repeatedly given a slap on the wrist after crimes for which other people are sent to federal prison. An RIAA shell candidate sends you spam? Reply with an MP3 as an attachment. Attach goatse! Attach the plans to the secret death ray! Attach your vacation photos and free up some of your own webspace! Reply grinding your own personal political axes.
Read through the archive and reply pointing out how 90% of the responses offered are merely a form letter.
Read through the archive and reply pointing out how the other 10% of actual responses with content make contradictory arguments.
And the spamming candidate has to pay to host all of this.
It would still be cheaper than TV/Cable advertising, though.
Hi (Score:5, Funny)
Over the years, my competitor, Mike Jones, has fucked a lot of whores and raised taxes by an astoundingly high 0.00001%. He's also poisoned our well water, seceded our state from the United States on two seperate occasions, and invited several known child molesters to his fundraising banquets, during which he has served dead puppies as the main course. In short, he's a scumbag, and he's evil.
Don't vote for him. Vote for me. Because he sucks.
Paid for by the Friends of Bob Robertson, who absolutely fucking hate that bastard Mike Jones. Burn in Hell, Mike.
I can't wait to see, hear, and read this shit not only on my TV, on my radio, in front of people's houses, on the subway, in my mail, in front of schools, in front of public buildings, at every public event in every town in the state, AND on my computer! I just can't get enough of hearing about how the politician that has less money and can't run as many commercials is the antichrist!
Re:Hi (Score:2)
I wish people would stop bashing the 'mud-slinging' campaign tactics. As far as I'm concerned, we should encourage them. Hell, that's the only way we ever actually hear the shit that our own politicans are doing (even if you hear it from the other party). Some of the things they dig up are so well hidden that a normal person couldn't hope to find out about it. The press possibly could, but nobody in the press has actually done any 'reporting' in years, so they're out as well.
Who would you have doing the investigating and reporting? The FBI? Where were they during Watergate, IranContra, Air America, 9/11/01, et al? Why is it that the agencies we pay to find this sort of thing, NEVER find them?
Oh, yeah: </rant>
Re:Hi (Score:2)
Besides, there's a fair amount of mudslinging that isn't even related to how effectively someone would serve in office...
-gleam
Re:Hi (Score:2)
Especially if the same mud would stick to more than one candidate. Which is quite likely where you have two large political parties and the same questionably entities trying to lobby both of them.
An alternative suggestion (Score:5, Interesting)
An alternative would be for the government should create opt-in mailing lists (or web forums) in the spirit of equal-time laws, that allow posting by all registered candidates, that anybody may subscribe to. This would enhance public debate on issues (as candidates would be able to counter their opponents claims in the same forum), without forcing those debates upon those who have no interest.
I'm with you 100%, but the problem is... (Score:2, Insightful)
1) The vast majority of the voting populace is stupid. Too many of them couldn't distinguish a good public debate from an old episode of Flying Circus. (Frankly, given some of the candidates lately, I'm not sure I can either.) Now I'd hope and expect this to be less true of the subset of the public that regularly uses the Internet, but sometimes, I'm just not too sure about that.
2) Most politicians don't want real public debate on issues. That takes thought and preparation and may require an admission that they were wrong about something or perhaps don't know enough about the issue to form an opinion. As long as there are only a few debates, they're televised, and they're short, the politicians can focus on just a few tried-and-true issues, avoid the tough questions, sling a little mud, distort a few statistics, and just be done with it already. Much less effort, and to the vast stupid swaths of population, much more convincing.
3) Most politicians don't want the playing field too level. Incumbents have more money. They like that more money means significantly better chances. And the Democrats and Republicans like that the television debate format doesn't scale well with increasing numbers of candidates. They'd like us to believe that really only two candidates can comfortably fit on a half-hour televised debate. Anything that brings third-party candidates into debates and lends them any air of legitimacy is bad to them, and to be avoided.
Again, this is my cynical side speaking here. My idealistic side is saying the exact same thing you are. Unfortunately, in the world of politics, and especially American politics, my cynical side tends to be closer to right much more often.
That's a wonderful idea. (Score:2)
But I have to agree with the cynical guy above. It's just too good to be true. It's something that would greatly help the voters and the underdogs, two things that no politician wants, because he wants an easy re-election, not a fair contest.
Re:An alternative suggestion (Score:5, Insightful)
The cost needed to run a successful campaign in the US is already ridiculous. And this weeds out people who cannot obtain truckloads of corporate money - surely not a good thing.
How high does it have to go before you would start having doubts?
Re:An alternative suggestion (Score:2)
As well as people not associated with the Democratic and Republican parties. Yet IIRC a majority of the US electorate don't vote. Some of these voters undoubtedly because they can't find a candidate not opposed to their position.Whilst allowing spam is unlikely to be the answer it seems clear that the US needs some method to enable indepdendents and "third party" (including maybe "The flying circus party") to stand on a basis more equal to that of the democratic or republican party endorsed candidate.
Re:An alternative suggestion (Score:2)
I'm sorry about spam. I'm sorry that it clogs up your servers. Deal with it. I'm sorry that the poor ISP's are spending money to relay this stuff. But, you know, that's the business they're in. Let them figure out a different pricing scheme so they can get some revenue from spammers.
In any case, the ISP business is soon going to be a heavily regulated quasi-public business, in the model of the USPS. That'll take your toys away.
In a Future Session of Congress -- H.R. Bill 6969 (Score:5, Funny)
"The Law" shall be amdeded as follows to include the following excemtions to the law:
(a) Sending of Unsolicited Mass E-Mail for the Purposes of:
(a)(1) Governmental Communications
(a)(2) Communications Originating by an Elected Official
(a)(3) Communications Originating by a person or persons seeking Elected Ofice
(a)(4) Communications regarding Laws, Governmental Regulations, Policies or activities
(a)(6) Communications by a non-governmental entity for the puroses of selling a product or service
(a)(7) Any Communication with the word "the" in it.
Re:In a Future Session of Congress -- H.R. Bill 69 (Score:2)
That does it. I'm adding "the" to my list of filter words. I always knew it was the only way to really avoid spam in my inbox.
Re:In a Future Session of Congress -- H.R. Bill 69 (Score:2)
You don't really need any more clauses. As written this is a giant loophole, simply mention a law, regulation, policy, etc and you can then say whatevert you like.
My Letter to the Editor of Mercury News (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is a simple question that I would like answered. Should we, as consumers, have to pay every time someone sends an advertisement for their product to us? If we did we would all be broke very quickly. The people promoting and advertising products, services, or political campaigns are the ones who should foot the bill of spreading their information.
Unsolicited e-mail is like sending something cash on delivery without a way of refusing to receive the item. Any person or group of persons should be held accountable for any and all monetary charges they force upon others. Unsolicited e-mail in any form should be dealt with in the harshest manor available to the recipient. There is no such thing as unharmful unsolicited e-mail, if it costs anyone other then the sender money, then it is causing harm.
Re:My Letter to the Editor of Mercury News (Score:2)
You don't understand. We have a civic *DUTY* to read these important messages, lest we go to the polls uninformed. Is this not the least we can do for our esteemed candidates?
Re:My Letter to the Editor of Mercury News (Score:5, Informative)
In case there's any confusion on the backgrounds of the authors, McCurry was President Clinton's press secretary Purpuro was deputy chief of staff of the Republican National Committee (in other words, they're both veterans of the political misinformation game) .
Re: (Score:2)
Clearly Labeled as "Opinion" Piece (Score:2)
Re:My Letter to the Editor of Mercury News (Score:2)
I don't like spam. It's annoying, and I really don't want to see some of the nasty things that show up in the mailbox. But it is cheap. It doesn't harm the consumer, though it may annoy them. Spammers (legitimate business people) pay for their bandwidth somewhere. As long as the links to remove you from the list are legit and other political guidelines are followed (paid for by... wording), let them have at it.
Brought to you by... (Score:4, Funny)
BULL FREAKING CRAP (Score:2, Insightful)
All we have is a spammer apologist claiming that 'spam is only as bad as as direct-mail, telemarketers, or TV ads!'
Well, guess what? People hate telemarketers, but that's not the point. The point is that all three of those are (say it together, now) PAID FOR BY THE ADVERTISER.
Spam isn't. It gets paid for by the recepient, like postage-due junk mail.
And you don't even get the choice of refusing it.
If spammers were willing to pay all the costs of sending spam (not just the cost to click the 'Send' button), I think there'd be a lot less concern.
I know I'd be more willing to 'just delete it' in that case...as well as set up a bulk mail filter (I just depend on Sneakemail right now).
Re:BULL FREAKING CRAP (Score:2)
I think you're wrong about that.
Spammers do pay to send their emails, and I think they'd be quite happy to pay double or even 10 times as much if it meant their ISP wouldn't terminate them.
And I for one would not consider 30 cents a month adequate recompense for the spam I receive.
-- this is not a
True spam style (Score:4, Funny)
Make the right choice.
Table turning (Score:5, Informative)
Just wait until these bozos start getting tons of "political" e-mail from nut cases like McElwaine. I suspect that then they'll start saying "Oh, political spam is only OK if it comes from a legitimate candidate."
There's no hope, though. The junk-fax laws and the anti-telemarketing laws already exempt political appeals. Never mind that a ban would be perfectly constitutional (under the time, manner, and place doctrine). There's no way the politicians are going to write a law that makes it harder for them to "communicate with their constituents".
Fortunately for me, DCC [rhyolite.com] is apolitical. It doesn't give a hoot what the content is, as long is it's unsolicited and bulk.
Re:Table turning (Score:2)
UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Vote is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to BALLOTS and VOTER REGISTRATION CARDS! :)
> Just wait until these bozos start getting tons of "political" e-mail from nut cases like McElwaine. I suspect that then they'll start saying "Oh, political spam is only OK if it comes from a legitimate candidate."
Actually, I hope this is true.
Before the Spam Warz started, I thought there were two kinds of companies - legitimate companies and scam artists. After the first year, I realized that spam was spam, the well was poisoned, and that any company that wanted to use the same marketing techniques as the h0t b3a5t pr0n d00dz was unworthy of my business.
So bring it on, KKK and Commies! Bring it on so that when I get my spam for Candidate Foobar, I have no idea if he's a real candidate or just some whackjob with a grudge. Bring it on, so that when anyone sees "Foobar" on the ballot, and an (R) or (D) beside his name, we conclude "Foobar? Naaw, a real political party wouldn't do that. He must be a joke candidate, or maybe the real Republicans or Democrats aren't running this race."
> There's no hope, though. The junk-fax laws and the anti-telemarketing laws already exempt political appeals. Never mind that a ban would be perfectly constitutional (under the time, manner, and place doctrine).
You're right, but you're understating the problem.
> There's no way the politicians are going to write a law that makes it harder for them to "communicate with their constituents".
You are confused because you lack perspective, grasshopper.
"There's no way the politicians are going to write a law that applies to themselves as well as the peasants."
The world makes much more sense now, no?
Re:Table turning (Score:2)
BTW and FWIW, in several weeks of running both DCC and Razor, I never got a Razor hit. So now I just run DCC (well, I also use a rule-based filter).
Re:Table turning (Score:2)
This probably won't be to well received... (Score:2, Insightful)
This man is attempting to gain a seat of enormous power over Californians and they they don't care about that, they care about what was likely a text message with a link or two. ---Speculation of course, but I've seen no presentation that it was otherwise.
If this practice does become more widespread, I wonder if voter turnout would be affected, beyond the possible minority that would attempt to vote out the evil, malign spammer. It does make a good point about leveling the playing field a little bit. I would think that this would lend a little bit more democracy to the process of elections and government, rather than how elections are often won now, with money.
No one ever said that a government of the people, for the people, and by the people was supposed to be easy.
If any spam legislation does come about, the politicians should have a loophole.The process would likely self regulate itself. If a politician sends out a spam, and if either his presentation or content prove unpopular, they get knocked out of the race. Most importantly, these are messages that in essence say,"I'm one of the guys trying to control some heavy aspects of your life." To not listen to those messages could be a tremendous folly.
We not only need more voters in the US, we need informed ones.
Re:This probably won't be to well received... (Score:2)
Re:This probably won't be to well received... (Score:2)
Well, yes, and I'm sure that Jones' unmasking of himself as a jerk who was willing to steal from his would-be constitutents (and others) was helpful to the voters of California.
This wasn't exactly an ad for penis enlargment or girlie porn, but an example of free speech.
Can we bury this stupid "free speach" excuse once and for all?
Spam is not a free-speech issue. Spam is a property-rights issue.
We not only need more voters in the US, we need informed ones.
True, but I don't know of any acceptable way to get to that result. The only one I can think of that would work (requiring proof that the voter is at least vaguely familiar with the candidates) is irredemably poisoned by its past use as an excuse to disenfranchise blacks during the Jim Crow era.
TV Spam (Score:3, Insightful)
Get their self-serving, bashing, slime-hurling, pseudo-factual (and sometimes outright dishonest) ads off the air at election time altogether. Let the voter who wishes to be informed to READ about the candidates and issues rather than having (dis)information spoon-fed to them through the boob tube. The cost of campaigns would decline dramatically.
Ah, what the fuck. The problem of spamming politicians pales in comparison to the damage being done via political ads on TV. This country is doomed because the vast majority of the people in it are fucking stupid. Who was it that said "Nobody ever went broke under-estimating the intelligence of the American public"? At one time in this country reasonable people had a good shot at educating/informing/persuading the masses as to what was "the right thing". TV, and to a lesser extent other forms of media, have turned Americans' brains to mush.
Where do they get the addresses? (Score:3, Interesting)
I almost wish I didn't have spamassassin running so I could see if I get any, and offer my opinions
BTW, there is a good presentation on Mail::Audit and Mail::Spamassassin linked over at http://igor.penguinsinthenight.com/spamtalk/ [penguinsinthenight.com] with a PPT at this site [ufies.org].
Re:Where do they get the addresses? (Score:2)
Either don't use HTML mail (mail should be plaintext!) or don't allow your mail client to talk to any port other than 110 and 25.
(Actually, only allow it to talk to those ports on your mailserver's address.)
My mail client is MS Outlook, which has a much deserved reputation for allowing all sorts of stupidity through, but I haven't had a problem. Why? It's allowed only to talk to localhost and to my mailserver.
Additionally, specifically disallow any program other than your browser from connecting to ports 80, 81, 8080, 8888. Or even better, allow only your web proxy filter to talk to those ports, and disallow any proggie but your browser from talking to your proxy.
MS Windows:
Kerio Personal Firewall is free for personal use, and allows you to create rule-based filters either manually or interactively in reaction to attempted connections. Proxomiton's a great web proxy.
Linux:
Any of various versions of ipchains and squid.
McIntyre vs Ohio (Score:3, Informative)
Free speech cuts both ways - it protects crypto code publication and it also protects political SPAM. That's the point about the 1st ammendment it's there to protect unpopular speech because the popular variety doesn't need protection!
That said I've been involved in a couple of campaigns and we only used email to keep in touch with our people and to see what the other side was saying to theirs (on the internet nobody knows you're a Democrat :-)
Re: McIntyre vs Ohio (Score:3, Informative)
If they want politcal spam...give it to them (Score:2)
The politician who chose to go this route is going to have to waste time and effort defending which e-mail is his *real* spam and his fake spam. Maybe they'll eventually give up on this ridiculous crap. If they want to use a cheaper medium like the internet, instead of spam, they should get a good website together and have pre-poll websites run by the election boards to house links to all of the candidates. Even better would be to then include links to the Women Voters' questionnaire answers and other information from the campaigning period (editorials, interviews, etc).
Just because its a donkey not a cow on the commons (Score:5, Informative)
Specific problems I see in their article:
(1)My definition: bulk email from a stranger. This definition catches damaging email, although not all annoying email. I think definitions that include content (i.e. "commercial" alone is bad), non-bulk email, or email from a pre-existing business relationship aren't good because laws based on them won't be upheld.
Larry Purpuro (Score:2)
Spam, no spam, won't change a thing (Score:3, Insightful)
People still cling to the quaint vision of democracy in America rising from the ashes because of some magic ring that can only be worn by the good guys. There's no such thing!
America is governed by lobbyists and PACs who have successfully cracked the system. The only way I can think of to win is not to play the game. Instead of competing make money irrelevant, for example by making Congress sort of like a priesthood, wherein elected officials relinquish all material goods for the rest of their lives and live on a modest stipend. Something like that might work. Yeah, like it would ever happen.
See who the authors are (Score:2, Insightful)
When a political candidate sends a voter an e-mail, that recipient can choose to delete the message without opening it, unsubscribe from the list, read it or even reply and engage the sender. That choice should belong to the voter -- not to anti-spam advocates
And the authors of this are:
(1) president of a political e-marketing firm
(2) CEO of a communications software company
So, the above should really read - "Don't you anti-spam advocates mess with our business, it's very different from spam. Spam is all about Viagra, while we offer you politicians !"
Re:See who the authors are (Score:2, Funny)
Q: What happens when a politician takes Viagra?
A: He gets taller.
Dear Politicians: Feel free to send me spam. (Score:2)
In return, I'll feel free to think you suck, and to never vote for you.
Do you really want to alientate the people you're trying to get to vote for you?
They've ruined it for themselves (Score:2)
The reality is, using e-mail to get the word out about canidates, policies, civic issues would be a great use of the Internet.
But so many spammers have left such a bad taste in consumers mouths that if and when a politician does it, it could only spell disaster for their campaign.
It reminds me last election. I hadn't really looked at the local canidates, but it's a pretty small city, and your vote does count. I received a phone call one evening, during dinner, with a chatty person on the other end asking me if I would vote for canidate X.
I said 'hold on, let me get a pen', and asked him to repeat her name. Then I informed him that I don't, or ever will solicit or support any telemarketer, and would make sure that I did not vote for that canidate. I then politly said goodbye.
She lost.
The truth is, I really don't know if she was a good person, or would have done a good job. All I know is, I'm steadfast to equate telemarketers with scum, and have the same feelings for spam.
Any unsolicited email--email that I didn't ask for--from a politician will ensure they will not get my vote.
Actually, political spam serves ONE useful purpose (Score:3, Insightful)
In the USA, the odds are about even that any political spam you get was at least partially funded by an RIAA/MPAA member.
It gives you a reason to vote for the opponent of whoever's sending it.
For a politician with a clue (yes, there are a very few), it's also useful. If a political consultant proposes it, he knows to fire the imbecile and hopefully, the consultant will go to work for the opponent. . . sinking the guy's campaign.
So political spam indeed serves a useful purpose. It tells you that the politician it promotes is an idiot without having to do the ordinary work required to get the candidate's position on the issues that matter to you.
A spammer politician is not going to be proposing or voting for a repeal of the DMCA.
.ca (Score:2)
I think I'll read my sample ballot and look for their web page if I'm interested, when I'm insterested.
Steve Biener, Candidate for US Congress (Score:5, Interesting)
Later, I started getting compaints from several at the college I work at. He was spamming all employees. I sent him another e-mail asking him to voluntarily stop sending the messages to everyone in the college. I told him if he continued, I'd be forced to esclate the issue to my superiors for action and that would make this a real political mess.
So he writes back to me and the college's attorney and threatens us with legal action. I never threatened to block his e-mails, yet he felt a need to send the following:
I was basically told to back off by our legal council, and I did, despite my personal feelings about the issue. Some other techs that report to me got his spam and tried to educate him how to use the Internet as an effective communication vehicle for his campaign, one which wouldn't piss off everyone. He refused to listen to them. So right away, before he's even near being elected, he refuses to listen to his potential constituency and rejects expert advice. Just what we need, another narrow-minded lawyer in the U.S. Congress. His e-mail also stated:
Thank you so much for the valuable advice. Every chance I get, I'm doing just that. Now I get to post to slashdot about it -- and even remain on topic!
So, if you live in Delaware and are a Democrat, I encourage you to go to the state primaries on September 7. I'm going to cast my vote to hopefully help ensure that he doesn't get past the primary. If you'd like to hear his side of the story, his website address is bienerforcongress.com [bienerforcongress.com] and his e-mail address is stevebiener@aol.com [mailto].
Re:Steve Biener, Candidate for US Congress (Score:2)
So why not make a parody web site of his web site, but called something like bienerforspammer.com or bienerisaspammer.com or some such name. Of course, buy commercial hosting to run it and only access it from home, not work.
And be sure when you talk to people about his actions, you make sure they understand that free speech is fine and all that, but theft to accomplish it is still a crime. Do I get to steal a printing press just to put my message out? No. And so, I do not get to hijack a server, or a mailbox, which is intended for other things. Note my signature.
Re:Steve Biener, Candidate for US Congress (Score:2)
I tried telling him something along those lines as well. His response to that attempt at reasoning was:
I guess, using that logic, I should be able to check out a state car from our fleet services and use it to spread my own political message, since it was paid for with state taxes and I helped pay for it.
His argument is weak in my opinion, because much of the computing infrastructure we have was paid for out of private grant money from businesses in the state and not taxpayer money. Other portions was purchased via tuition money and technology fees from students. Yes, some was paid for out of state general funds, but certainly not 100% of it. And even if it was, I, as a citizen of this state, can't just walk into a state building and start using things, like copier machines and computer equipment, for my own political speech.
But IANAL and he is, so obviously his interpretation must be the correct one.
Re:Steve Biener, Candidate for US Congress (Score:2)
And one more thing. Could you perhaps post the Received: headers of the spam he sent, so we can see the backtrace of it? Some of us might want to pre-emptively block a known spammer.
Re:Steve Biener, Candidate for US Congress (Score:2)
- I am not sure what type of action you are threatening, but you should be aware that, under Title 42, Section 1983 of the United States Code, any person in a position such as yours who deprives a citizen of the United States of any right secured by the United States Constitution is subject to liability in legal actions.
Does anyone know of such a law that exists in Canada? I am in a similar role as the original poster's (network admin/postmaster for a university) and I routinely blacklist addresses and sometimes entire domains that spam us. Am I breaking any laws?Cheers,
Jason.
Re:Steve Biener, Candidate for US Congress (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Steve Biener, Candidate for US Congress (Score:2)
By this reasoning, it should be illegal to filter any spam. Score one for the penis enlargement lobby!
I encourage you to exercise your First Amendment rights in speaking out against my e-mails. Write letters to your newspaper, send an e-mail to your colleagues, but do not try to act as a censor for the entire college community. It is violative of my First Amendment rights. It is also a disservice to those in the college community who do not object to receiving my e-mails and who want to participate in the marketplace of ideas.
Now, combine this with the first statement and you could have some fun. Cut off any spam filtering you have in place and be sure to let everyone know that you have taken this action because Steve Biener warned you that there could be legal consequences if you "act as a censor for the entire college community" and prevent people from receiving this "marketplace of ideas" that he has associated himself with. Be sure to suggest that they let him know how grateful they are that he helped you see the error of your ways.
Re:Steve Biener, Candidate for US Congress (Score:2)
I recently had some Steve Biener guy spam me with his election pitch.
Who is his leading opponent? I'd like to send a check for $20 to him/her and send Mr. Biener a nice e-mail explaining what I did and why. I don't live in Delaware, but this is worth a Jackson.
My Letter to Steve Biener (Score:3, Interesting)
One of your constituents, a Mr. Weaverling, recently posted a message on Slashdot (http://www.slashdot.org), a technology news and discussion forum, in which he described your use of unsolicited e-mail communication to disseminate your political views, and his unsuccessful attempts to explain why your actions are unwise.
I'm writing you to support Mr. Weaverling's position and arguments, and to offer some suggestions on ways to minimize the offensiveness of your spam, if you insist on sending it. I also want to describe the action I intend to take to support your opponents.
I have been a heavy user of e-mail for over a decade, and I'm very concerned by the recent surge in unsolicited commercial e-mail, and the even more recent appearance of unsolicited political e-mail. Like many people who've had a stable e-mail address for a period of time, I now receive dozens of unwanted messages every day, and have had to resort to all sorts of automated and manual filtering processes to avoid being buried in unwanted and irrelevant e-mail.
What makes spam attractive for both commerce and politics is that it appears to have very low cost. In fact, it does have very low cost -- for the non-selective sender. This is because the recipient bears most of the burden, a situation which almost begs for a Tragedy of the Commons effect. The nature of the spam (political or commercial) does not change this fact.
I looked at your web site and while your message is somewhat interesting, if the cost of lowering political dependence on campaign contributions is yet another massive influx of unsolicited e-mail, then I'd prefer to make campaign contributions. You may see this as an unreasonable position, particularly since you yourself probably don't send out huge numbers of messages, but keep in mind that you are not alone. If this becomes a popular method of spreading a political message, every city councilman, sheriff, assessor, congressman and senator will being burying us in messages we don't care about.
I would prefer that political spam not be eschewed completely, if you insist on sending it I would recommend that you follow these guidelines:
1. Please mark your spam as such in the subject line. I recommend something like "UNSOLICITED E-MAIL: ". This makes filtering much easier.
2. Please ensure accurate targeting. This places a much larger burden on you, but spam which has some relevance to the recipient is less offensive.
3. Make it very, very easy for someone to opt out of your mailing list.
One final note: I am going to find out who your primary opponents are and send a small donation to each of their campaigns. Further, I have also posted a message on Slashdot (read by some 300,000 people daily) and recommended that they do the same. Those of us who will suffer most from spam must do what we can to discourage it.
Thank you,
Shawn Willden.
The "right" way to do political mass emailings (Score:2)
The only legitimate way I can see to send bulk political email right now is to buy lists of registered users from *local* TV station, newspaper, and other media Web sites. This way, almost all recipients would a) Either live in or be interested in the area in question; b) Be more interested in news than the average person, and therefore more likely to vote; and c) might have a fighting chance of already knowing about some of the local issues, which would mean *informative* polispam sent to them would probably not irritate them very much -- unless they strongly disagreed with positions held by the sending candidate, and in that case they would not view his or her polispam either more or less favorably than they'd view his or her brochures, TV spots or direct (postal) mail.
Careful targeting is the key to efffective polispam. Right now, for all I know, half the Korean language spam I get is "vote for me" messages. I also have a horrible vision of 1000+ candidates for the ~435 U.S. Congress/Senate seats all spamming the whole world constantly. Add in the many special interest groups (and even ordinary interest groups) that always have something to say about a campaign, and you'd have email pipes all over the world clogged with polispam for months before every U.S. election.
Now imagine a democratized China.
Scary.
- Robin
The LIST (Score:2)
It's like they believe spam lists are some big list hanging in the supermarket window that you can walk by and cross your email address off of. Are they honestly so clueless they think people that subscribed are the ones that are complaining? If people subscribe to spam, it isn't spam, it's a mailing list and even if it accidentally gets red flagged, you can white flag it with any decent filtering software.
And that isn't even covering the you can delete it without opening it ignorance. Look up POP3 sometime. Maybe people don't want to pay your connection costs to access their email. Some people pay alot, even voters to access their email from hotel phones, wireless PDA services, overseas phone lines. Excellent way to anger consituents.
Effort for the people they will represent... (Score:2)
If the only input from potential candidates to political office is a "mass e-mailed" request for votes, I'm sorry to say that only demonstrates how much effort said candidate will put in for the people the represent.
While their SPAM may cut their campaigning costs, a candidate who doesn't put enough effort into meeting their voters should never represent them.
More Evidence that Slashdot is a Rag (Score:2)
Next time someone claims that Slashdot is a news site and practices journalism, take a look at this biased, unsubstantiated intro. At least the staff is smart enough to actually quote the submitter so they can defend themselves against libel and slander. Since this is a filtered site, though, my assumption is that this piece represents the opinion of Slashdot and OSDN.
Re:More Evidence that Slashdot is a Rag (Score:5, Informative)
Re:More Evidence that Slashdot is a Rag (Score:2)
these authors - misguided and naive or are they? (Score:2)
Bundy (Score:2)
spam from RNC is never ending (Score:2)
Finally, in October of last year, I sent email out to gopteamleader@gopteamleader.com, dns@rnchq.org, ipadmin@gblx.net, abuse@rnchq.org, abuse@gopteamleader.com, abuse@gblx.net, abuse@rncmail.org, abuse@verio.net, postmaster@rnchq.org, postmaster@gopteamleader.com, postmaster@rncmail.org, abuse@onr.com, abuse@texasgop.org, postmaster@texasgop.org, and some individuals and consultants who I found through SOA searches and whois records, complaining about the situation, and asking each company hosting servers or IP for these guys to look into this.
I did finally get a message back from one of the webmasters, who promised me that my name would be removed. He was from the Texas GOP site, though, so I wondered if he really could remove me after the fact from the national organizations he had shared my name with. None of the carriers, of course, bothered to answer; having seen from the ISP side how these complaints get handled, I added them only to show the spammers I meant business.
Everything was fine until March or April, when I started getting spam again. I've been Spamcopping it since then, though now that I'm playing with SpamNet, I'll probably just filter and forget, until the point I kill the account to which they are sending, anyway.
Re:How does one tell the difference? (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's my take on the difference (Score:4, Insightful)
Spam: Bulk email from a stranger. Solved mostly with technology and a little bit by laws. By emphasizing method (bulk), not content, we can use technology to block spam and courts are likely to uphold our rights to do so. Blocks or bans on content (1), non-bulk email (2), or email from a pre-existing business relationship (3) are likely to fail and could make the problem much worse.
Non-bulk email, or email from entities who aren't strangers: not spam, however annoying. Generally solved with boycotts, public ridicule, and questions about ethics "Would you accept 'technically I didn't lie' from an employee? Then why should we the public accept it?" (As for 'friendly' email, replies of "By forwarding this email to me you give me permission to think you're an idiot. There is no virus. Timmy hates postcards. You can't send angelic blessings as an attachment, and if I wanted that joke I'd go to rec.humor.funny-the-1st-time-20-repetitions-ago." might work.)
Laws: Even on spam not a good idea- ineffective at best. Dishonest spam & spammers (forged headers, etc.) don't care about existing US laws- they break laws on contracts ('no spamming' ISP contracts), theft (stolen credit cards to pay for accounts), identity fraud, spam (California requires "ADV," in the subject line...), and more already. And domestic laws can't stop a fundamentally international problem. Even worse, if US laws only ban dishonest spam then honest (think DMA) spam is legitimized. And banning commercial speech alone won't make it because of the Constitution. It protects commercial speech much more than some people might think. Thus, it is bad to focus on...
(1) Content: Political or religious messages can still be spam, and any speech, commercial or not, has to be really, really bad before the Supreme Court will even start to think about unprotecting it. You'd have to prove Spam-speech is equivalent to "'fire!' in a crowded theater" or "riot right now" speech. Unlikely. Instead, focus on...
(2) "Bulk" because bulk is what causes damage. One bounced email: no problem. 100,000: big problem. Courts are likely to find that individually written emails, however annoying, aren't going to cause the damages of bulk - people just can't write that many in a day. Courts won't like punishing a person who wrote one letter ("Hi, I saw an article about you, you might be interested in my software..." is an unsolicited commercial email. Laws that ban it won't last very long.). "Bulk" makes a better brightline. If a spammer is caught breaking an ISP's contract, and claims the emails weren't bulk, easy perjury... Judge: "4 emails with boilerplate text after the first sentence. This isn't bulk?" Exceptionally stupid Spammer: "No."
(3) "From a stranger" for two reasons. One- its easier to prove that bulk email from strangers is inherently a burden. Email from all 200 businesses and 10 candidates you do know: irritating but not impossible to deal with, maybe not worth curbing speech. Email from all 29.9998 million businesses and ten thousand candidates you don't know (opt-outable or not): impossible. Two- if you voluntarily gave your email address out, courts might rule that caveat emptor trumps "punish them because their email annoys me."
Re:future NANAE post (Score:2)
Sorry, your post was not viewed by the intended reader. Reason code number 9, subcode 45 was detected that prevented it from being accessed. More information follows:
Reason class 9: A word or substring in the message content is disallowed. Please check the content and remove the offending word or substring and try again.
Subcode 45: String text is "bill 1618"
Re:Loopholes... (Score:2)