ISP Sues Spammer 125
Stephen writes "UK ISP Virgin Net is suing a former subscriber for loss of business caused by his alleged spam. "
The subscriber supposedly spammed a quarter of a million people
(advertising his email address list no less!) and got the ISP
on the blacklist. It'll be interesting to see where this one
goes. I personally think that we should legalize spam, but
require the word 'SPAM' or 'AD' to appear in th subject so
we can procmail it out. Or just set our sendmails up to discard
it. And I think failure to clearly label spam should be
punishable by death.
Is this consistent with common carrier status? (Score:1)
It is not so much an issue of what information is being sent, but the fact that it is being bulk sent to individuals/ companies who have not requested it. There are laws which limit conventional telemarketing to only certain hours, etc. This anology being made, I disagree with it philisophically.
The problem truly is that there is very little practical way to enforce any spam related legislation. Adopting a law wont prevent the problem, it only punishes the worst of them (should they get caught) after the fact.
The only way to limit the misuse of technology, is to build precautions into the technology. I dont simply rely on law enforcement to find people who hack into my site, I install firewalls, use strong encryption, etc. to limit the number of people who *can* get thru (someone always can tho, I just make my site less of an appealing target).
One good solution would be for the industry to accept the use of X509 certificates to authenticate the E-Mail author. There can then be lists and/ or services which either block network traffic, or kill the message upon receipt.
Law enforcement is extremely limited in their ability to police the net, and its traffic. This is a good thing. However, us tech heads need to take on the challenge ourselves. We created this wonderfull, glorious mess, so we must fix it and make it better. Adding infilstructure which by its nature prevents abuse via technology is the only solution which has a prayer of reining in these newbie itiots who never apparwenly have heard the term 'nettiquite'.
Just my little 'us geeks control the system, so *we* must deal with it' rant.
Spam in its many forms... (Score:1)
filter (Score:1)
Virgin Net does not charge for internet access (Score:1)
mmmn, spam...Not Quite (Score:1)
Some good news in the Great White North (Score:1)
Here's the whole story:
http://www.plesman.com/cc/home.html
Headline "Ontario court sends spammer a message"
Allowing the market to FUNCTION (Score:1)
The market is not always perfect as there are things which cannot be accounted for by pricing products, and this is one such case.
Pay to Send Spam (Score:1)
I agree with Rob in that folks should be free to send clearly labeled spam. However, I also think that spammers should foot the bill for sending it instead of the ISP. With tracking software what it is today, it would be really easy for ISPs to charge spammers, who might be less likely to use this tactic if they had to pay for it.
Canadian Version of 'By US Code Title 47, Sec.227' (Score:1)
No, don't charge people. Bottom line: rub it out. Make it illegal. It's illegal to approach someone's home and pester them if they've got a 'No Solicitor's' sign out front in a few US States, so why can't spam be counted in that?
You can set up special rules you want; in the end the spam still uses the bandwidth. Think of your email, and what percentage of it is spam.
Put an end to it. Kill it. There's no middle ground for this kind of personal affront.
NOOOOOoooo...... (Score:2)
DON'T legalize labelled spam. It isn't just mailboxes filling up that's the problem. You apparently have a dim idea that this is the case since you made that sendmail comment, but the spam would still be running over the network.
STOP spam!
The Realtime Blackhole List (Score:1)
Let's chalk this one up to clueless ISP (Score:1)
lists are very close (I run my own email
lists, so I do care how spam is treated to make
sure that I won't be affected). However, I would
think in today's day and age that if you are an
ISP, you would block large mass emailings, and
then have your customers come to you to ask to
unblock this feature so they can run legit
email lists, with explicit explaination of
why such large lists are needed. If that
later turns to spam, then the ISP can easily
pull the account.
And again, in this particular case, the ISP
failed 4 times to stop this from happening.
The lawsuit is there to close the barn doors
after the cows have all fled.
Let's chalk this one up to clueless ISP (Score:2)
opportunities (not simulataneously) to spam
the number of messages that he did.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice,
shame on me.
The ISP should have kicked in a mail filter that
would block such large numbers of message being
sent at nearly the same time. The fact
they didn't implies they didn't really care
then, and only until *they* were blacklisted
did they seem to take steps (and as indicated
elsewhere, one spam abuse doesn't get you on
the list; it's the repeated spam abuse).
this sounds similar to the women suing credit
card companies for money she lost by internet
gambling; not seeing the light until all was
said and done.
I totally agree, Rob (Score:1)
("Commercial" would not do enough to differentiate what I get from a customer or co-worker, in terms of useful communication, from what I get from a SPAMmer).
mis-setting the class field should be punishable by having 20 pounds of monkey shit crammed up the offender's nose.
Is this consistent with common carrier status? (Score:1)
Forcing me to read a SPAM due to misrepresentation STEALS a few precious seconds from my life. It would be the same if someone saw me fall off of a building, and moments before I hit the ground, fired a shotgun blast at my head. Stole a few seconds from my life, and still guilty of murder.
Same goes for idiots who drive too slow in the left lane, or come to a complete stop before turning right off a busy street, or stop when the traffic light turns yellow.
Same goes for people who design OS-es that take too long to boot.
Same goes for "First Post"-ers.
Murderers. Killers. Life-stealers. Time-theives.
Legalizing spam is not a good idea (Score:1)
SPAM solutions? (Score:1)
Of course, there is currently no method of doing this (I doubt sending the spammer and invoice for your lost time would work
allowing spam to be SENT (Score:1)
In the event that the law allows spam, the ISP will probably include a no-spam claim in its licence to the users. If this is not done the standaard changes. The normal load becomes that of normal mail, plus spam. It will cost the ISP a lot of money to allow spam in the regions of: "new equipment" and "traffic"
Point is, if spam is allowed, it won't be to much of a problem. withing not to long all ISP's will have the problem covered on technical and contract side.
Now that leaves just the problem that death sentences aren't legal everywhere ;-)
Prerequisites for Legitimising Spam (Score:2)
The only way that spam could be legitimised was if the advertiser paid for it. If it was conducted over a protocol other than SMTP (as it currently is), where each message was accompanied by payment (or by an account number and credit limit; the server would send it only to as many networks as the credit amount would cover). Receiving servers would be reimbursed for resources used, and advertisers would be billed. Also, fraudulent advertisers could lose their accounts. This could then translate to an alternative to banner ads for free POP/IMAP accounts; users get a metered amount of legit-spam in return for the free account.
Other than something like this, spam is theft of services, plain and simple.
Under the UK data protection act... (Score:1)
I may be entirely wrong about this, but I think here in good old blighty, sending unsolicited commercial email would (or possibly should) leave you liable to prosecution under the Data Protection act; either under the bit about holding personal information about people without registering it with the Data Registrar, or under the other bit about abusing this personal information.
Personally, I think I should be allowed to charge a license fee for the use of my email address - after this is _my_ personal information.
filter (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
OOOps? It was a Mistake? (Score:1)
He just accidentally sent an e-mail to 10 million people.
Yeah uh-huh, pull the other one, its gots bells on it!
Phone solicitors suck. (Score:1)
As far as asking to be taken off the list, well, I've done that, but there's just so many damn companies out there that it hasn't helped. I think for every company that I ask to take me off their list, 3 more add me to their list. Bleh.
-mike kania
NOOOOOoooo...... (Score:1)
SPAM under same laws as Phone Solicitation? (Score:1)
I agree, DON'T use Subject: Line! (Score:1)
Better to use a different mail header expressly for this purpose.
James
james@jmarshall.com
I don't pay for Junkmail (Score:1)
See the CAUCE [cauce.org] home page
Filtering is a Bad Thing, But... (Score:1)
Unfortunately, labeling requirements are difficult to enforce, since a large portion of the problem is small time operators working out of their homes, using software they bought for $39.95. Who's going to track down all those people?
Is this consistent with common carrier status? (Score:1)
And I don't think they are really interested in the contents of whatever it is that gets sent. All that the ISP needs to know is that the subscriber sent something that caused the whole ISP to get on the shitlist, which is obviously not good for business. And it's not something the ISP could have prevented either, without them filtering messages for content, which isn't a good idea either.
And to take a shot at an analogy:
What if some J. Random Person got a phonecall from some guy threatening to kill him, or whatever. JRP doesn't like this, and sues the phone company.
Then what? Should the phone company just pay up and let it go? I don't think so, so I think they should be able to sue the sender.
Last paragraph: will they ever come to understand? (Score:2)
*sigh* Will they ever understand? And this is coming from a consumer organisation?
Any kind of government-mandated filtering is doomed to be incomplete, because people will make copies of the material, and especially the kind of people who would engage in ripping off consumers, and thus evade the filter.
But it will also give governments a change to filter other kinds of stuff they don't like; just label it "bad marketing" or whatever.
What happened to educating people? Europeans don't have as much Internet-experience as Americans, but does that mean that we have to be treated like children here?
What happened to your own reponsibility?
I really feel sick because of this kind of ignorance.
Is this consistent with common carrier status? (Score:1)
You can use the phone to talk about how bad the phone company is, even to make plans to blow up the local office. No worries. But if you actually carry out that plan...
Or, look at it this way: you pay for a certain amount of service. You use way more without paying for it. Your abuse causes other customers to lose access. You cause your provider to incur significant costs to clean up the mess. You are liable, regardless of what you used the excess services for.
Is this consistent with common carrier status? (Score:2)
Remember, this guy knew that he was breaking the agreement, and that he was abusing the system.
What is the worth of an Unsolicited EMailing? (Score:1)
A better idea, perhaps, is to place reasonable limits on the number of emails that a person can send each month. Say, two thousand, with an additional one thousand per month for extra costs. When they run out, they have to cough up an extra five bucks or forget about sending email for the remainder of the month. Each address one sends to constitutes a separate email. Any comments on this?
NOOOOOoooo...... (Score:1)
Are you *nuts*, Rob? If the spam "warning" goes in the Subject line, you wouldn't be able to filter it until the SMTP DATA parameter. By that time, the spammer has already stolen from you, making the point moot.
I could understand labeling earlier in the transaction -- like, right after HELO -- but labeling in the Subject line is useless. (This was the point of California's Bowen bill, BTW, memorialized inCalifornia Business & Professions Code 17538.4. See http://suespammers.org/ca/laws /bpc_17538-4_full.html [suespammers.org] for the full text.)
--Tom
Death to the spammers (a function to do so) (Score:1)
A little over the top, perhaps?
--
NOOOOOoooo...... (Score:1)
Furthermore, this wouldn't prevent ISPs from still prohibiting UCE as part of their Acceptable Use Policy.
Slashdot and mailing lists are different! (Score:1)
(I assume that Slashdot sends out individual news updates because my name is on the subject line.)
The Realtime Blackhole List (Score:1)
I'd be interested in hearing what the RBL folks have to say about this situation.
Perhaps a solution... (Score:1)
Let's chalk this one up to clueless ISP (Score:1)
This is truely a clueless ISP. Not only did they not notice on their own, but before anyone ever gets blacklisted, every attempt is made to confront the offender throught RFC (822 is it?) required postmaster@, as well as any other means available.
Blacklisting a relay is not done lightly. Moreover, the recipients of the spam no doubt sent many, many complaints to this ISP which were either BOUNCED or IGNORED. Either, way, the ISP had plenty of warning. They deserve everything they get, and although the spammer is of course the original cause of the problem, I don't think you can sue a spammer for your own ignorance/lazyness. Unfortunately, the internet is becomeing more and more of a war-zone, and if an ISP can't take the heat, then they should get out of the kitchen.
People don't get blacklisted on a whim.
-=Julian=-
Is this consistent with common carrier status? (Score:1)
I don't think that analogy is a very good one. For one thing, the nature of the content is different: spam e-mails are annoying and a waste of computing resources, but (generally) aren't as bad as, say, death threats.
Secondly (someone correct me if I'm wrong?), I believe even phone companies can enforce terms of use agreements, to some degree. When I started getting faxes at my home phone number at 3 am, I called my phone company's abuse line to let them know. They couldn't help, unfortunately, but there is an avenue of recourse there.
Thirdly and finally: unless you're calling collect, it's the advertiser/threatener who pays for the call. A better analogy would have been if someone had called you collect to try to sell you something. I have the option of not allowing a collect call through: ISPs don't have the same option with e-mail.
Canadian ISP already successful in anti-spam suit (Score:2)
against junk emailer
Press Release: I.D. Internet Direct. Ltd. successful in suit against junk emailer
April 1, 1999, Toronto - In the first successful lawsuit of its kind in Canada,
independent Internet service provider (ISP) I.D. Internet Direct Ltd. today announced
that the court has ruled in its favour in its recent application for an injunction against
junk emailer Cory Altelaar. The ruling grants I.D. Internet Direct. Ltd. an injunction
preventing Cory Altelaar from delivering junk email through its systems and awards
the ISP a reimbursement of its legal costs.
"This is a ground-breaking ruling in the struggle against junk email in Canada," says
John Nemanic, President of I.D. Internet Direct. Ltd. "If Mr. Altelaar violates the court
order and attempts to use our services for junk email again, he'll be looking at some
serious charges."
Nemanic says that his company received several calls and emails of support from other
ISPs who were similarly abused by junk emailers (also known as "spammers"). "We
want to thank our lawyer, Andrew Lundy of Brunner and Lundy, for his fine work in
this case," says Nemanic. "This ruling sends junk emailers a serious message: this
activity is not legally acceptable in Canada. You can try to hide, but you will be caught
and risk prosecution if you abuse the Internet."
NOOOOOoooo...... Oh yesssssssss!!!!!!!!!! (Score:1)
I have no problem with this idea, The small bit of network load wouldn't be to bad imho. (Still, you might want to make that: Clearly labeled AND smaller than 2048 bytes).
It wouldn't be a small network load even at 2048 bytes per message. Work the math. 10 million addresses. Say only 1 in 10 is sufficiently legal to cause network traffic ( either deliverable or needs to be relayed so that it won't be found to be undeliverable until after it's been transferred ). At 2K per message, you're looking at 2 gigabytes worth of traffic.
Somehow the entire burden of spam has to be shouldered by the spammers themselves, either by making it illegal or by having a reliable way to force them to pay for the don't want them to have to foot the bill for transport. And if you want the second, it needs to be after-the-fact and under the control of the recipient. I don't want to make a mailing list foot the bill because I subscribed to it, for example.
How charmingly naive! (Score:1)
Spam does not need to exist, it does not need
to be legalized, and suggesting this is, frankly,
*VERY STUPID*.
Three years ago, maybe four, when we didn't know
much about how spam would shape up, it seemed like
an interesting idea.
Now we know a lot more about the economics of
spam. And no, filtering isn't the solution.
The solution is simple; ISP's kill accounts and
web pages and all other services of spammers.
Spammers eventually run out of ISP's. End of
problem.
I personally don't think we need any new laws;
just the RBL.
http://maps.vix.com/rbl/
Go ISP! (Score:1)
EU to fight SPAM (Score:1)
If you look at the end of the article it mentions that the EU is going to look at regulating SPAM at the reception end. How are they gonna do this?
I guess SPAMers will need to have the country of residence for the email address.
Why not tax mass Unsolicited EMailings? (Score:1)
Why not tax mass Unsolicited EMailings? If thay don't pay the tax, send the IRS (or Insert country's equivalent here) after them.
Spam should NOT be allowed. (Score:1)
Virgin=spamhaus (Score:1)
If virgin want to make a point out of this, then good luck to them. But they should have been on the ball in the first place, and allowing him to spam a second time was just gross stupidity on their part.
Now if only all other UK isp's could get a clue (excluding clara, who have always been white hat)
Fishy
Spam in its many forms... (Score:1)
"Theft, I'll admit, is bad, but we'll never be able to eliminate it, so we should just regulate it. Face it, all the time the police spend filing reports and investigating theft just increases the costs. I should know; i work for a police department."
Furthermore, your understanding of the business you work for is abysmal. Spam is a cost of doing business. Eliminating it eliminates one of your costs and allows you to lower your price. While other ISPs would doubtless be able to do the same, the overall lower price would increase the size of the market, so while you might not get a proportionally larger piece of the pie, the pie would be larger to start with.
Every ISP should have a contract with its dial-up customers stating costs for sending UBE or spam. Should one substantiated spam complaint arise, that provision of the contract should kick in, and the spammer should be charged accordingly. As someone else indicated, the possibilities for revenue are tremendous. Some would say that this would require teams of lawyers. I would disagree. I would suggest that much spam comes from small business which are unincorporated (evidence to the contrary is encouraged). Whoever created the account will be an individual with a house and a car. It's pretty easy to file a lien against these assets.
How to get the message to Congress (Score:1)
":
As I'm sure you are aware, unsolicited commercial email (commonly known as "spam") has a deleterious effect on the internet. The cost of this email is borne almost entirely by the recipients, in terms of both higher prices from internet service providers as a result of dealing with spam, and of the time required to wade through the numerous spams received by each individual internet user. While some states have enacted laws to regulate or ban it, the Federal government has so far lagged behind. While spam may well be considered a form of protected speech, it is a commercial form of speech whose cost is borne by the recipients - your constituents. It therefore needs to be regulated. In order to assist you in evaluating the magnitude of this problem, I am forwarding this message, which I received today, as an example of the sort of message which can be sent to anyone with an email address."
Virgin Net does not charge for internet access (Score:1)
NOOOOOoooo...... (Score:1)
The idea is to put a [SPAM] or [AD] in the header line, not the body of the message. Sure, you still incur some overhead over simply blankly sending out the email, but you aren't wasting gobs of processor time wandering over the content.
Legalize spam? Is that a joke? (Score:1)
NOOOOOoooo...... Oh yesssssssss!!!!!!!!!! (Score:1)
network load wouldn't be to bad imho. (Still, you might want to make that: Clearly labeled AND smaller than 2048 bytes).
I'm just afraid it's not gonna work. It's a pitty but as long as there are no big actions against spammers and big punishments, nothing will change. Sad but true.
QuMa
I think we should let 5-year-olds drive (Score:1)
C'mon, Rob. I'm sure you can see why it's insane to allow the purveyors of snake oil, pyramid scams, and recursive address extractor apps to keep on dumping out terabytes of content that nobody wants to read about, let alone buy. By the time your procmail script puts spam in the bitbucket, the network resources have already been consumed.
if (not $horse) {
closebarndoor($dontbother);}
Moore's law does not apply to net bandwidth.
Indentation? Here's how: (Score:1)
The preview page will show the nbsp tags as literals, but you'll notice that they're gone from the textarea. Hit Submit.
Fee for spamming (Score:1)
Spam is just so cheap that spammers don't even bother with quality control, and they don't worry about irritating people or costing anyone money- they don't have to pay for the cost to the recipients, and even one or two responses pays back the cost of the spam.
I wish ISPs would realize what an unexplored revenue source spammers are. I claim that the number of people on any given spam list is comparable to a full-page ad in a major newspaper. How much is a full-page ad in say, the Chicago Tribune? Why should spammers be treated any different than for example, Sears, the Democratic Party, or Saks Fifth Avenue? Make them pay for advertising "space," at comparable market value. Make them sign an advertising contract before spamming. People who advertise without paying would incur fees over and above the normal advertising rates. Advertising without a contract
could be grounds for canceling one's account.
Spam would automatically go down because most people couldn't afford it. It would automatically be traceable because the ISP makes them sign a contract. It would have valid information and only rarely have duplicate addresses because the spammer (now advertiser) can't afford to send more e-mail than necessary, and can't afford to send a new, correct message.
Last paragraph: will they ever come to understand? (Score:1)
most industrial countries have laws that regulate truth in advertising; if, for example, you advertise a product at price X in California, you are required to sell it at price X, even if the advertisement was in error. Similarly, you aren't allowed to call yourself "organic" produce unless you meet certain rules, etc, etc.
The internet blows these rules out of the water. If someone in Germany is advertising something as organic in a way which is legitimate under their laws but not under California's, and I buy something which is kinda-sorta-not-really organic from them, can I sue? Under California law I probably can; how does it get resolved?
More to the point are situations where the actual advertisement would be illegal in both countries, but because of jurisdictional issues it's impossible to prosecute --- as if California insisted that I had to sue in German court, but Germany insisted that I had to sue in California court.
Countries asking for the right to block advertisements and spam is a first step towards trying to resolve _this_ issue, not just the spamming issue. I'm not certain I like the direction the steps are going in --- but then, too, i'm not certain I know what the right solution is, either.
Legalizing spam is not a good idea (Score:1)
bandwidth he/she uses spam should be illegal.
Nobody should have to pay to recieve ads.
Under the UK data protection act... (Score:1)
"Should", maybe. "Would", no, alas. The DPR [open.gov.uk] got a complaint from me about ProPhoto (the spammer in question here). They wrote back after a while to tell me that they would be taking no action. It's possible they just put the fear into Adrian Paris without actually prosecuting, I suppose, but on the face of it the DPR is pretty toothless when it comes to dealing with spammers. I get the impression that they're trying to learn about the Internet but they don't really know enough to be effective at the moment.
not only that.... (Score:1)
SPAM doesnt do an ISP good (Score:1)
I have had an instance where I received 100,000 peices of bounce mail from some a bulk email company and it stopped an important message to be delayed by 4 hours
No Spam. (Score:1)
Is this consistent with common carrier status? (Score:1)
Can anybody think of a good phone company analogy?
Legalizing spam is not a good idea (Score:1)
So you're paying to receive ads.
Am I wrong ?
Spam in its many forms... (Score:1)
Or are in the UK where you pay by the second for phone bills.
I'll take the bait .. (Score:1)
I must have given them my email address
Anyway, I recently start getting these stupid emails about services that aren't even available where I live (Duh, Microsoft, can't you check the TLD?), like that Sidewalk stuff.
To be fair it gave me two ways to unsubscribe, and I sorta believed MS would really remove me from their lists (not their databases, but their lists)
So I did the "reply and put unsubscribe in the body of the email" thing. A week later I get another spam from them. So once again, I put 'unsubscribe' in the body of the email and replied again. So far I haven't gotten any new spam from them.
Is this consistent with common carrier status? (Score:1)
BLARGH, spam... (Score:1)
Is this consistent with common carrier status? (Score:1)
Nope, but does the snail mail count as a common carrier? If I send some nasty chemical through the mail and it melts a sorting office machine then I'm sure the post office would want to take some action over it. This guy sent mail that effected the companies machines in a similar way. That the kind of thing you're looking for?
Priestess.......
Kill 'em all. (Score:1)
I hate spammers AND I hate junk snail-mailers AND I hate telephone solicitors.
This "direct-marketing database of names, addresses, and phone numbers" nonsense is getting REAL old. If I've never bought anything from you or requested information from you, you shouldn't have my name, address, or phone number. Period.
The notion that I have to ASK to be taken off your list is stupid, too. By the reasoning, you have to ASK me to stop whacking you with a baseball bat.
/* Some of my posts are very serious and thoughtful. Some are just rants. Guess which one this was. */
Indentation? (Score:1)
Also, is this function under a GPL or a BSD-style license?
/* Counting the days until Rob modifies the scripts to stop me from posting. */
Whoa (Score:1)
Should be pretty simple -- just write a standard spam bulk mailer program but add a timebomb. Give it away for free. Let the spammer go for a few days, then format the drive.
I'm not advocating this, but it does make me smile.
Yes, you're wrong... (Score:1)
Cable here basically just pipes in content from other cities - you're paying for the sattellite time, not the commercials.
Is this consistent with common carrier status? (Score:2)
wont prevent the problem, it only punishes the worst of them (should they get caught) after the fact.
The only way to limit the misuse of technology, is to build precautions into the technology. I dont simply rely on law enforcement to find people who hack into my site, I install firewalls, use strong encryption, etc. to limit the number of people who *can* get thru (someone always can tho, I just make my site less of an appealing target).
You make an interesting point - but if I were to draw an analogy, it would be this:
"Adopting a law won't prevent someone from breaking into your house, it only punishes them after the fact. I don't simply rely on law enforcement to find people who steal from me, I install better locks, put bars on my windows, to limit the number of people who *can* get thru (someone always can tho, I just make my home less of an appealing target.)"
I work for an ISP - we pay by the packet for our upstream bandwidth. When someone sends me spam, it costs us money. Therefore they are stealing from us.
Legalize spam? Is that a joke? (Score:2)
Here's a tip for keeping your email account spam-free: get a hotmail account, and use it for all internet registration and anything else that can be seen by a webcrawler or grabbed for a mailing list. Then all of the spam goes to Hotmail, and M$ ends up paying for it.
Perhaps a solution... (Score:2)
In Australia, there is a guy who clearly labels his letter box and invoices people and businesses $75 per hit for his time incurred having to attend to their physical junk mail. He is well within his legal rights to do this, and is making a tidy sum from it. (Not to mention discouraging time wasters!)
Maybe thinking like this could be applied to spammers, after all, they are in many instances taking up our valuable time, and bandwidth which as someone else mentioned, we do have to pay for.
Is this consistent with common carrier status? (Score:1)
I'm sorry, but how would you feel if you were an ISP and someone ran a huge spam run against your users and your mail server ground to a halt under the load, with millions of undeliverable messages and what not.
Legalizing spam is not a good idea (Score:1)
With spam, the opposite is true. Without spam, your bandwidth needs go down, your mail server doesn't need to work as hard, and your mail server also doesn't need to store all the crap it has to now. Spam doesn't offset prices, it increases them.
Why Spam is a Bad Thing (Score:4)
1. You end up paying for it whether you want it or not. If your ISP makes you pay for every message you get or every gigabyte of traffic, you have to pay for something you didn't ask for, don't want and will never use. Anybody on here who gripes about getting Windows with a nascent Linux-only computer should recognize the feeling. Even if you have a flat rate account your ISP has to spend time, effort and perhaps money to keep up with the flow of spam, and that translates directly into higher fees for you. (The junk mail analogy doesn't really apply here. The sender pays for junk mail; the receiver pays for spam.)
2. The few spams that are potentially of interest are drowned out by fraudulent get-rich-quick schemes, porno ads, ads for spam generators and the like. Yeah, right, like I'm going to buy something based on the say-so of someone with a fake e-mail address who posted his spam from a dial-up account.
3. Spam clogs the Net just by its sheer volume. Just think, if you could get rid of spam all that space would be available for information of interest (and it would be a substantial amount!).
Personally, I think spam should be lumped in with the "junk fax" law, and for the same reasons. It may happen, at least here in Washington; one anti-spam activist here in Washington took to forwarding the spam he got to everyone in the state legislature. He then went on to say (paraphrasing), "The next day I had several requests to turn off the flow of spam because it was clogging their mailboxes. That same day [a bill tightening spam regulations] passed out of conference..."
Caw Caw
Real Problems with Email (Score:1)
It's a great idea to set up filters, or real return addresses, or laws to prevent this. But don't forget that it uses bandwidth, which, just like gasoline for your car, costs money.
For this reason our company has recently billed a mail-bomber for network usage. We intend to collect on this, as it was a significant usage.
Use the "Junk" priority! (Score:2)
Allow spam - but give more power to the enduser (Score:1)
If you get an email from a Yahoo affiliate, and you are using Yahoo email, are you offended? I am not, but I want to have the power to stop receiving messages from that particular mailer. and every successful Internet marketing company knows that and gives you an easy way to get removed from the list (Yoyodyne, Digital Impact, Post Communications, etc.) Marketers are aware that you better not annoy your potential customer, or you might loose him or her forever. And that's even more true on the web, where the competitor is just a click away.
However, some regulation makes sense, mostly to take care of the stupid marketers. A gentle way to enforce some basic guidelines has been introduced in California:
Californi a Toughens Laws On Unsolicited E-Mail Ads [directmag.com]
SPAM doesnt do an ISP good (Score:1)
Since you are using a message medium that basically makes no such timeliness guarantees (and tell me if your ISP DOES...I'm changing over...), there's absolutely no grounds for your complaint. You might as well sue your post-office for that Christmas card that was delayed for 5 months.
Let's chalk this one up to clueless ISP (Score:2)
Think about SlashDot's Headline News sent out every-night. I can easily imagine a few thousand emails being sent on a nightly basis. Instead of making it a policy that legitimate users of the Internet and mass-mailings at-large are punished, those who abuse the system should be punished. In my opinion, Virgin is absolutely within their rights to pursue action against someone who repeatedly violated stated account policies. I would imagine their financial losses can be pretty severe, and I hope the court finds for their cause an appropriate amount.
That doesn't mean "spammers" don't have a place on the Internet to pursue their antics (which you apparently advocate). A case could be made for violations of their civil liberties. Fine, let them find service providers who are capable and willing to source such spam-artists.
mmmn, spam... (Score:1)
I agree that I don't see it as a big inconvenience right now -- it has become a fact of life. However, I wouldn't mind it being outlawed. But because that will never happen, we could at least levy a tax on the people doing it. Or maybe the ISP providing the spammers account would have a different kind of account that charged an email tax...
Dozer
"The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they're going to be when you kill them."
Fee for spamming (Score:2)
spam message sent through our system, $10 for each complaint received by the our staff as a result of the spam, and $25 for each message bounced back to us as a result of the spam.
Mailbombers will also be billed at the same rate.
:)
this is slashdot, right? (Score:1)
I think hotmail had a few quick stints on the RBL as well.
--C
Legalizing spam is not a good idea (Score:1)
We also have to pay for _all_ phone calls, meaning spam e-mail directly costs us money, even if we delete it on arrival.
this is slashdot, right? (Score:1)
mmmn, spam... (Score:1)
i mean, i have about as much use for titanium oven mitts as the next guy, and i really don't 10E^50 email addresses, (but hey, doesn't that subliminal seduction tape really work? *cough*)
But c'mon, it's just like the junkmail you get at home. only you don't have to walk all the way to the garbage can; you get rid of it without leaving your couch. if you really want to bitch, bitch about something worthwhile. junkmail is just junkmail.
Canadian Version of 'By US Code Title 47, Sec.227' (Score:1)
220-By US Code Title 47, Sec.227(a)(2)(B), a computer/modem/printer meets the
220-definition of a telephone fax machine.
220-
220-By US Code Title 47, Sec.227(b)(1)(C), it is unlawful to send any
220-unsolicited advertisement to such equipment.
220-
220-By US Code Title 47, Sec.227(b)(3)(C), a violation of the aforementioned
220-Section is punishable by action to recover actual monetary loss, or 500
220-dollars, whichever is greater, for each violation.
Charging the people $500 to use you as a relay to send spam would stomp out the problems....
--
Alan L. * Webmaster of www.UnixPower.org