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Spam Your Rights Online

Ohio Law Could Send Spammers To Jail 455

Posted by timothy from the to-roam-among-their-own-kind dept.
ej0c writes "We in Ohio are set to save you from Spam. The legislature, with AOL's help, passed a tough anti-spam bill (Reuters). Spam in Ohio, and you'll be in the can for 6 months, with fines of $25,000 per violation, or $2 to $8 per e-mail. Text of the Act."
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Ohio Law Could Send Spammers To Jail More

Ohio Law Could Send Spammers To Jail

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  • Love at first sight (Score:3, Funny)

    by SIGALRM ( 784769 ) * on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:15PM (#10964237) Journal

    Ohio Inmate #7779: What are you in for sir?
    Ohio Inmate #2466: Nuttin' much, assault and burglary. How about you, cutey-pie?
    Ohio Inmate #7779: Selling penis pumps online.
    Ohio Inmate #2466: Eyyyyxcellent...
    • (Sung to "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young)

      Tough lawyers and Walcher* coming,
      We're finally on our own.
      This winter I hear the drumming,
      Spam dead in Ohio.

      Gotta get down to it
      Spammers are mailing us down
      Should have been done long ago.
      What if you knew her
      And found her swamped on the ground
      How can you spam when you know?

      * Representative Kathleen Walcher co-sponsored the bill under discussion.

    • Penalty (Score:3, Informative)

      by Erioll ( 229536 )
      I just hope the penalty is $2-$8 per e-mail, or $25,000, whichever is HIGHER.

      Hitting em in the pocketbook is usually pretty reliable. Assuming you can enforce it in the first place, but that's another discussion. =P

      Erioll

  • CAN SPAM? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Robert Hayden ( 58313 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:16PM (#10964245) Homepage
    Doesn't the federal "CAN SPAM" act prevent state laws from taking effect? I thought that was one of the main provisions that kept the new California law (at the time) from happening.
    • when there is a conflict between state and federal law...

      match ClosestEnforcer with
      StateTrooper -> FollowStateLaw
      FederalAgent -> FollowFedralLaw
      • Actully, local laws are always enforced. The only time another law strikes them down is when it gets appealed to a high court, so if the CAN-SPAM act has provisions about local laws, a Federal court would have to look at the case.

    • Fed laws trump state laws but.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by museumpeace ( 735109 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:40PM (#10964540) Journal
      in essence, if a federal law does not specifically permit an activity, it is within the state's power to prohibit that activity. The State law here [but IANAL] appears very clearly written and defines all its terms and the crime described in those terms with some precision. If a spammer is fighting this law in court, they will have to show that the Fed regulation [sorry, text not available to me here] explicitly permits something that the Ohio law has prohibited. [Law is NEVER as simple as the people enacting it would wish or would promise their constituents.]

      • Re:Fed laws trump state laws but.... (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Actually - it is more complex than that - I am a lawyer, although this is not my area of expertise. The general rule is that Federal Law trumps state law - if the feds have "occupied the field", then state law can not conflict. If the feds have not occupied the field, then state and federal law can co-exist. How do you determine if they have occupied the field? Either the feds make a clear statement they do, or some judge somewhere decides that they have made enough rules and regs to effectively rule ou

  • Thanks! (Score:4, Funny)

    by RandoX ( 828285 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:16PM (#10964247)
    Save me from popups while you're at it.

    • Re:Thanks! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Grey Ninja ( 739021 )
      save yourself. Get Firefox [getfirefox.com]. (I never thought I would have to do this on Slashdot.)

  • Oh yeah? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by swordboy ( 472941 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:16PM (#10964248) Journal
    Well, I do all my spamming from China. Come get me.
    • Got your house, car, and all other assets through civil forfeiture! And you can't come back to visit your family! Thanks for playing.

  • I wonder what provisions it has for someone... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:17PM (#10964261)
    ...who owns a Zombie machine. I hope that was taken into consideration.

  • Good start, but (Score:5, Funny)

    by Luveno ( 575425 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:18PM (#10964276)
    "We in Ohio are set to save you from Spam"

    Does not atone for what you did on November 2nd.

  • Not so great... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Thunderstruck ( 210399 )
    I'm finally getting the other folks in my office to use Thunderbird as an email client, the big selling point was spam filtering. Trends like this may make such FOSS evangelism harder, since people (esp. the lawyers) can just rely on the law to protect them rather than go to the trouble of trying software that didn't come with the machine.

  • Spambotnet? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by buro9 ( 633210 ) <david@nOSpAM.buro9.com> on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:19PM (#10964286) Homepage
    Scenario... innocent dumb user has their computer hijacked and made part of a spam botnet.

    Did they just spam? Are they now off to jail?
    • If they didn't know I doubt it would be their fault. The same would be true if you left your car unlocked in your driveway and somebody took it and drove it through the park running over countless people. How is that the car owners fault?

    • Re:Spambotnet? (Score:4, Funny)

      by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:30PM (#10964410)
      From TFA:

      If signed into law, it would outlaw Internet ads that are deceptive or misleading and ban people from setting up false accounts to send spam, the junk e-mail that clogs consumers' online mailboxes and taxes the resources of Internet service providers.

      Did the "innocent dumb user" set up a false account to send spam?

      Did the "innocent dumb user" gain from sending spam?

      Who cares, thow them in jail anyway :) I don't believe in innocent dumb users.
    • The computer owner who gets his computer hijacked is not innocent, dumb maybe, but not innocent.

      There have been way too many public warnings about the insecurity of PCs for hijacked computer owners to claim innocence. I wouldn't think that the courts would send the dumb user to jail for the first offense. If there were enough trials where dumb users were made to pay a fine and had their computer confiscated, then maybe computer owners might consider securing their PCs. A computer is not a harmless app
    • Would an "innocent user" that is part of a spambot net be charged and jailed?

      Only in my best dream! Oh, god, I sure hope so.

      Won't happen, but it sure makes a fine fantasy. People would have a choice -- bring in an "expert" to secure their computer, or face the consequence. Loads and loads of business.

      Problems: The gov would create a monopoly oversight and/or regulate the service. Microsoft would be left alone. Users would no longer be allowed (by gov fiat) to run ANY services. And so on.

      Far worse than t
    • If that's what it takes for people to keep their systems updated, maybe i would like that. I would rather go for a fine, for "social responsability" on a innocent person's first offense though

    • Re:Spambotnet? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Feanturi ( 99866 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @01:16PM (#10964952)
      I think that an investigation would prove an unwilling zombie to be innocent. If they can't find a money trail or anything for you, and no supporting evidence other than the existance of trojans on your machine, they must conclude you got hijacked. Someone just being clever in running a compromised machine on purpose to pretend to be a victim is going to slip up elsewhere, their life-situation may easily give them away. An investigation can show that you have stuff in your house you shouldn't be able to afford on your declared income, for example. When they start asking questions about that stuff, you're in trouble.

  • A couple of questions (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bm17 ( 834529 ) * <brm@yoyodyne.com> on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:19PM (#10964287)
    1) Does this affect spammers who operate in Ohio but send the spam from outside of the state? Or outside of the country?

    2) Does this affect spammers from outside of Ohio who send spam into the state?

    • Re:A couple of questions (Score:5, Informative)

      by RichDiesal ( 655968 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:32PM (#10964437)

      According to the text of the act, this includes any recipient of spam, defining recipient as:

      (a) A receiving address furnished by an electronic mail service provider that bills for furnishing and maintaining that receiving address to a mailing address within this state;

      (b) A receiving address ordinarily accessed from a computer located within this state or by a person domiciled within this state;

      (c) Any other receiving address with respect to which this section can be imposed consistent with the United States Constitution.

      So, that means that this act is designed to apply to anyone that sends spam to anyone that lives in Ohio, checks their e-mail in Ohio, or has an e-mail service provider/ISP located in Ohio.

      How enforceable that is, is really anyone's guess. But I do see it as wise to define spam by who receives it rather than who sends it ("spammers").

      • Sweet, are there any good providers of email services located in Ohio? I smell a home business here: I get spam mail, track people down here in the US, and extort money from them so I don't turn them in for spamming me.....

  • Treat Spam like drugs (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Lord Kano ( 13027 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:20PM (#10964298) Homepage Journal
    We send drug dealers and drug buyers to jail, we should treat spam the same way.

    We should punish the idiots that buy things advertised in Spam.

    One could argue that the "war on drugs" is a failure, and for the most part they'd be right, but I was a kid in the mid to late 1970s and the culture has changed dramatically with regard to drugs. People used to smoke weed on downtown street corners, it certainly isn't that way anymore.

    Take away the incentive to send the spam out and fewer people will risk it.

    LK
    • I was a kid in the mid to late 1970s and the culture has changed dramatically with regard to drugs. People used to smoke weed on downtown street corners, it certainly isn't that way anymore.

      We grew up and smoke it in our own homes now.

    • "People used to smoke weed on downtown street corners, it certainly isn't that way anymore."

      Funny, I observed that exact thing last year when I was browsing around downtown in Minneapolis.
    • ...but I was a kid in the mid to late 1970s and the culture has changed dramatically with regard to drugs

      Homer: For me, the sixties ended that day in 1978.

    • Re:Treat Spam like drugs (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:38PM (#10964511)
      We send drug dealers and drug buyers to jail, we should treat spam the same way.

      Oh, so the government should set up an arbitrary and updatable list of email content and bust anyone with possession of email with said content. Good call.

      We should punish the idiots that buy things advertised in Spam.

      Unfortunately, there is nothing illegal about the possession of penis enlargers, Viagra, or fake Rolex watches. Being an idiot should not explicly against the law. Fortunately, stupid people have enough trouble with existing laws, and they get weeded out accordingly. You've seen Cops right?

      One could argue that the "war on drugs" is a failure, and for the most part they'd be right, but I was a kid in the mid to late 1970s and the culture has changed dramatically with regard to drugs. People used to smoke weed on downtown street corners, it certainly isn't that way anymore.

      Now people smoke weed at their house, and dumbass inner city people now smoke crack on downtown street corners. Obviously we are winning the "war on drugs".

      Name me 2 things wrong with getting high besides its illegal.
    • We send drug dealers and drug buyers to jail, we should treat spam the same way.

      Great, becuase the USA(TM) really is drug free! Horray War on Drugs(TM)!

      *puffs joint while waiting for HL2 to load up*

      • Yeah we're winnin' the war on drugs, we're winnin' the war on drugs
        Praise the lord and pass the bong we're winnin' the war on drugs
        You can grow 'em in your basement, or score 'em off of thugs
        Put your hands against the car, we're winnin' the war on drugs.
        Asylum Street Spankers, "Winning the War on Drugs"

        For those [many] who do not know, the Spankers are an all-acoustic blues combo from Austin, TX. Insightful, talented, and witty, and they have a lot of songs about weed :)

    • I was a kid in the mid to late 1970s and the culture has changed dramatically with regard to drugs. People used to smoke weed on downtown street corners, it certainly isn't that way anymore.

      That's right... now people between the ages of fourteen and forty, from all walks of life, assemble by the thousands in warehouses and take ecstasy, ketamine, and a whole host of other cool substances we couldn't even conceive of when we were kids.

      A difference between spammers and drug dealers: spammers were both an

    • People used to smoke weed on downtown street corners, it certainly isn't that way anymore.

      Before drug prohibition, people weren't falling victim to to skyrocketing crime rates due to a violent black market. And, we weren't forking over billions to keep non-violent drug offenders in jail. We also didn't have the highest ratio of inmates per population in the world. And, we actually had rights as individuals to protect us from overzealous government.

      It certainly isn't that way anymore.

      Of course, all tha

  • Only one step left (Score:5, Funny)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:20PM (#10964299) Homepage Journal
    Now all we have to do is get all the spammers to move to Ohio and we are set.

  • Nice Law - shame its not global (Score:4, Funny)

    by dorward ( 129628 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:20PM (#10964300) Homepage Journal
    Hopfully this will be an example to the rest of the world. It would make a banner advert I saw earlier nicely illegal.

    It detected I was using Linux (No, FreeBSD) and Netscape 5 (No, Mozilla) then told me that my system could be optimised (yippie!) by installing some Windows-only software.

    Deceptive? I'd say so.

    Quite amusing though.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by KillerDeathRobot ( 818062 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:20PM (#10964306) Homepage
    Hormel factories in Ohio have been stormed by enthusiastic but confused SWAT teams. Hormel spokesmen could not be reached for comment, as they are being held at gunpoint.

  • enforcement? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ddent ( 166525 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:22PM (#10964324) Homepage
    There are already *plenty* of laws under which to prosecute spammers. They simply aren't enforced... The problem is not a lack of laws, it is a lack of resources/motivation/knowledge on the part of law enforcement. I would much rather see a commitment to spend a few million actually *doing* something - and when you consider the drain spammers are on the economy, it would be money well spent.

    • Re:enforcement? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gr8_phk ( 621180 )
      "and when you consider the drain spammers are on the economy"

      Spammers help the economy. Look at the companies doing business trying to combat spam. And some people do actually buy the products advertised. It also offers political benefits: it's one more stupid issue that people talk about, thus distracting them from more important issues. Plus, you can pass anti-spam legislation to look like you're helping people.

      The solution is simple: hashcash (though I would have used a different algorithm)

    • I've always said they should take the Al Capone approach: audit spammers and try to get them for tax fraud. Something tells me that most penis pill pushers aren't paying the full amount of taxes for every bottle of pills they sell. With all of the regulations in existance that govern business operations, any spammer has got to be violating at least a handful of them. Relentlessly investigate a bunch of them, and others will decide that spamming is not worth it. Not to mention the profitability of spammers w

  • Good luck (Score:3, Interesting)

    by suman28 ( 558822 ) <`moc.liamtoh' `ta' `82namus'> on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:23PM (#10964340)
    I am not being a troll, but for all the known spammers, there are so many unknown, who live in other countries. How is a state law going to prosecute these people? How/Will the law be implemented. This remains to be seen.

  • Priorities People! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Maybe this is a warped way to improve the conditions of America's prisons. Once they're filled with non-violent offenders like spammers, drug-users, and copyright violators, there will be less incidence of assault and rape behind bars. We'll leave that for the outside.

  • Stupid new laws & media (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:25PM (#10964364)
    Ohio legislators sent an anti-spam bill to Gov. Bob Taft on Tuesday, with the aim of joining other U.S. states that have laws that put people who flood the Web with junk e-mail behind bars.

    I guess if you use webmail the "Web" could get flooded with junk "e-mail" (previously known as email for at least 10 years), otherwise the "journalist" looks pretty dumb right from the 1st sentence.

    If signed into law, it would outlaw Internet ads that are deceptive or misleading and ban people from setting up false accounts to send spam, the junk e-mail that clogs consumers' online mailboxes and taxes the resources of Internet service providers.

    The measure would also allow the state attorney general to impose criminal and civil sanctions against spammers.

    fraud n.

    1) A deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain.

    2) A piece of trickery; a trick.

    3) a) One that defrauds; a cheat.

    3) b) One who assumes a false pose; an impostor.

    I know of no state in the United States where fraud is already legal. I'd be content with enforcement of existing laws before wasting time and effort passing new laws where enforcement of either the new or existing law is nonexistant.

  • This has likely been discussed..but.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:26PM (#10964369) Homepage
    why don't we go after spammers in snail mail?

    I really don't want advertisments ANYWHERE unless I say ok, so why is snail mail exempt? Granted, most of it is not offensive ( except for the odd jury summons ), but that doesn't change the fact that it's unsolicited junk mail, albeit arriving via physical means instead of electronic.
    • Because, even though it's a pain for everyone and landfills everywhere, the junk snail-mail advertisers actually PAY for their ads to be sent out. Thus, making a profit for the USPS.

      The world revolves around money, baby....

    • As someone else already pointed out, junk snail mail doesn't cost the recipient anything.

      The price of sending snail mail is a barrier to entry that spam does not have. Mail advertisers have to be more selective who their going to send their ads to and so it keeps it to managable levels.

      I'd be perfectly fine with spam if they paid the entire cost of delivery and fraudulent ads were punished the way mail fraud is.

    • Quoth grasshoppa: "Granted, most of it is not offensive ( except for the odd jury summons ), but that doesn't change the fact that it's unsolicited junk mail, albeit arriving via physical means instead of electronic."

      Ok, I know this is getting off on a tangent, but *what* do Jury Summons have to do with junk mail? Granted, it might not be solicited, but since it is government business, involving you directly, and not just a mass-mailed advert, I'm a bit confused how that fits the definition of unsolicited
    • why don't we go after spammers in snail mail?

      Its assumed that existing mail fraud laws are good enough for snail mail. We need new laws when old ones are broken using a different medium.

  • criminal? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by supernova87a ( 532540 ) <<kepler1> <at> <hotmail.com>> on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:28PM (#10964395)
    I am all for taking a tough approach to spammers, but putting them in jail? Have you heard about the prison overcrowding problem?

    Why don't we instead seize all of their assets, profits, and make some money for the people, instead of having to pay for them in jail?
  • I've always thought that the criminal penalty should be from one second to one minute per message sent, comparable to the amount of time the spammer intended to cannot be served consecutively with any other penalty. No upper limit on time served; all persons involved in a conspiracy to spam should be subject to the penalty independantly.

    statistical estimation based on all available information from ISP's (link utilization, etc.,) should be used to estimate the number of spam messages sent. messages bloc

  • What's throwing them in jail gonna do? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Future Man 3000 ( 706329 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:29PM (#10964400) Homepage
    Think about it. How much does it cost to effectively prosecute a spammer? How many are in Ohio to begin with?

    This is more feel-good legislation that will probably have no teeth because it takes too much work for too little result. Real change requires going back to holding ISPs responsible for spam -- cutting the worst off at the uplink when they don't put some minimal effort into keeping their users from spamming.

    Maybe that'll mean certain countries are delinked until a scrupulous ISP shows up. It'll do a hell of a lot more than prosecuting a handful of spammers here.

  • Criminal Charges= CAN-SPAM Civil from Ohio (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CoolSilver ( 794518 ) * on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:30PM (#10964412)
    This is an extention of the CAN-SPAM act.
    (H) The attorney general may bring a civil action, pursuant to the "CAN-SPAM Act of 2003," Pub. L. No. 108-187, 117 Stat. 2699, 15 U.S.C. 7701 et seq., on behalf of the residents of the state in a district court of the United States that has jurisdiction for a violation of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003,
    but the attorney general shall not bring a civil action under both this division and division (F) of this section. If a federal court dismisses a civil action brought under this division for reasons other than upon the merits, a civil action may be brought under division (F) of this section in the appropriate court of common pleas of this state.

    Additional civil cases may be personally filed with the state over spam. This is stating that the attorney general has no judical power in the courts of Ohio. Such as the normal separtation of state and federal branches and laws. If the federal goverment fails to honor the CAN-SPAM act. You can still seek compensation through civil action through Ohio court.
    Good news for me, however it is hard to say if this will help. I can see ISP rates going up due to increased labor with judical action requesting for records.

  • ob (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:31PM (#10964432)
    Your post advocates a

    ( ) technical (x) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

    approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which vary from state to state.)

    ( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
    ( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
    (x) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
    ( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
    ( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
    ( ) Users of email will not put up with it
    ( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
    ( ) The police will not put up with it
    (x) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
    ( ) Requires cooperation from too many of your friends and is counterintuitive
    ( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
    ( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
    ( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
    (z) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
    (x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever worked
    ( ) Other:

    Specifically, your plan fails to account for

    ( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
    ( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
    (x) Open relays in foreign countries
    ( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
    (x) Asshats
    (x) Jurisdictional problems
    ( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
    ( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
    ( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
    ( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
    ( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
    (x) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
    ( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
    (x) Extreme profitability of spam
    ( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
    (x) Technically illiterate politicians
    (x) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
    (x) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
    ( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
    ( ) Outlook
    ( ) Other:

    and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

    ( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
    ( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
    ( ) Blacklists suck
    ( ) Whitelists suck
    ( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
    ( ) Countermeasures cannot involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
    ( ) Countermeasures cannot involve sabotage of public networks
    ( ) Sending email should be free
    ( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
    ( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
    (x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
    ( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
    ( ) I don't want the government reading my email
    ( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
    ( ) Other:

    Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

    ( ) Nice try, dude, but I don't think it will work.
    (x) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
    ( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

  • Snail SPAM (Score:2, Insightful)

    by BlueThunderArmy ( 751258 )
    I'm no fan of spam, but really how much of an inconvenience is it to delete unwanted email? I wish more effort would be put into stopping Chase and Discover from sending me credit card offers through the post every day of the week.

    Physical spam is actually more of a nuissance IMO because it is wasteful of real resources and takes up space in my trash bin (requiring me to empty it more frequently, requiring me to buy more trash bags). Also, I live in an apartment building in which the communal area is regul

    • Physical spam is bought and paid for by the companies that send it. If a company has to fork over cash to get a return, it will have to justify that cash outlay in terms of ROI. The same theory that goes for the billboards and Race car sponsorship. A spammer is not the one who spends the capital to transfer the message to you, it is you who is burdened with cost of recieving said message. Junk mail creates employment from the ad layout guy to the printer and to the delivery channel. Spam is an end run arou
  • I require is a short list of every SMTP server IP address in your state so that I may be informed enough to comply with your legislation.

    Thank you,

    Nigerian P. Freely
  • Wouldn't Florida be a better place for a law like this?

  • Tech Solutions for Tech Problems (Score:3, Interesting)

    by tabdelgawad ( 590061 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:49PM (#10964646)
    If this had been a law designed to send copyright infringers to jail for six months, I doubt we'd be hearing the many 'hell, yeah!' responses posted so far. We should all be uneasy about 'tough' laws which can send people to jail by criminalizing online-specific types of behavior.

    I'm not claiming that copyright infringment and spamming are equivalent activities, but I'll bet many of the same arguments people would use for criminalization and tough sentencing in one case are applicable to the other.

    There are laws out there already against fraud and deceptive advertising, just as there are (old, established) laws against copyright infringement. We only start running into trouble by trying to 'update' these laws for the internet age (think DeCSS, DMCA, etc.). IMO, little good comes out of these 'tough updates'.

    And so I say "tech solutions for tech problems" and keep the government and courts out of it as much as possible ...

  • PRIVATE RIGHT OF ACTION (Score:3, Interesting)

    by www.sorehands.com ( 142825 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:55PM (#10964706) Homepage
    The I-CAN-SPAM ACT and the Ohio law may get some of the worst spammers, but that does not take care of most of it.

    By allowing a private right of action for individuals, you get some of the smaller-time spammers.

    There is one spammer, AVTech Direct (Avtech Direct 22647 Ventura Blvd. Suite 374 Woodland Hills, CA 91364), that I and about 10 others filed suit [barbieslapp.com] against for spamming. A $5000 small claims judgement won't get them, but if they had 100 or 1000 judgments for $5,000 each for spamming, they may not spam anymore.


  • Spam Cops! (Score:2, Funny)

    by bm17 ( 834529 ) *
    I had an idea for a TV show. It's called Spam Cops and it would use a similar format to the current show Cops. Every episode would focus on a differant scam. It would start out explaining how the scam works, then a commercial, then we get interviews with people who were taken in by the scam, perhaps using pixelated faces. Then, a commercial. Then an investigative segment where the spammers are tracked down. Then, a commercial, then the cops bust into the spammer's office and beat them with clubs. The

  • Sadly the same BS... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fudgefactor7 ( 581449 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @12:57PM (#10964739)
    Here's what I'm yapping about:"(F)(1) The attorney general or an electronic mail service provider that is injured by a violation of this section may bring a civil action in an appropriate court of common pleas of this state seeking relief from any person whose conduct violated this section. The civil action may be commenced at any time within one year of the date after the act that is the basis of the civil action."

    We have that same (or damn close to it) language in our state law. Notice the word "may", that's the key. If the AG chooses not to he doesn't have to do shit. He can let it all flush away. They should have put that word as "must", which would have mandated action. As it is, this law is no better than Iowa code 714E that we've had for a while now and not one case has been put to the measure, sadly.

    I predict no real help from this "feel-good" legislation.
  • There are people who bitch and moan every time a non-violent offender is sent to jail but are celebrating that someone who sends email would serve jail time. Nice.

    I don't like spam anymore than anyone else but my advice to you is to install a spam filter and shut up. I get one piece of spam a day. If you can't bare that toll, time to get off the Interweb. Sending people to jail is not the answer.

  • I'm a bit confused. When CAN-SPAN passed, I remember vividly that one of the major problems with it was that it negated state anti-spam laws. Yet here in Virginia, AG Jerry Kilgore just, amidst much celebration, sent a spammer to prison for years. Now Ohio intends to pass this law. Another commenter has pointed out that this Ohio law seems to be based on a permissive clause of CAN-SPAM that permits such laws to be passed.

    Can state anti-spam laws only be passed if states have been expressly granted the
    • Can state anti-spam laws only be passed if states have been expressly granted the power to do so under CAN-SPAM? Or am I missing something?

      There is a loophole that allows states to pass anti-spam laws providing they don't address activities already covered under CAN-SPAM. I don't recall the exact details at the moment, but I remember that much. Perhaps a NANAE regular can recall more than I? :)

      Also, I believe that ligitation that started before CAN-SPAM went into effect was allowed to continue, which i

  • Deterrent Vs. Revenge, Legal Vs. Technical (Score:3, Interesting)

    by twigles ( 756194 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @01:23PM (#10965024)
    Instead of arguing about whether a legislative or technical solution will work better, why don't we do both? Obviously Ohio spammers can simply move to Jersey or something, but this is a strong precedent that hopefully everyone else follows. Also, I've seen some comments about SPAM laws not being enforced. Well, if the DA can get actual prison time and the politicians tell the DA that anti-SPAM is a priority then maybe law enforcement *will* bother finding and prosecuting these cretins. Why would a DA bother now if they know they'll have to fight for months and the spammer will walk away with a 25k fine, which the spammer will make up in a month?

    The technical ideas are being proposed, and we are learning about which ones are promising (note to M$, byte me). This process will take 5+ years to codify into some IETF stadard and get deployed in some meaningful way. In the meantime we can let our politicians do something useful by making the spammers we can catch pay in a big way (with community input I hope). This means prison time; just like embezzlement must carry a prison sentence because the financial incentives are so great and the chance of getting caught in time are small enough to be enticing. That is the *deterrent* factor. The malicious grin we get from this law is the revenge factor of punishment. This law has both.

  • I hope no spammer goes to jail (Score:4, Insightful)

    by FJ ( 18034 ) on Wednesday December 01, 2004 @02:02PM (#10965461)
    Why should I (an Ohio tax payer) pay to keep a non-violent criminal in jail? Most jails are so over crowded they parole people early to make space. I don't care if you want to fine spammers, but don't ask me to support them in jail. Jail should be for people who are a danger to society, not for someone who sends junk emails.

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