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Spam

Europe Passes Pro-spam Law 95

Posted by CmdrTaco from the its-the-law dept.
Richard Jones wrote in to send us a story from news.com talking about the latest developments in European Spam Law. They basically ruled it legal. (CT:The U-Haul is returned, we have a lot of unpacking to do, but next week should be back to normal around here.)
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Europe Passes Pro-spam Law More

Europe Passes Pro-spam Law

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  • Re:Definition (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And if .001% of the 6 billion people in the world come up with a "good reason" to send spam to you one time a year, you will have 164 spam messages per day.

    There is no "good reason".
  • Yes indeed. The article states that individual countries are still allowed to ban spamming even if the EU rules allow it.

    I'd be surprised if no more EU countries (other than Germany, where it's already illegal) take that provision and run with it.

    Remember... Know your Enemy. The DMA is the Enemy!!

    You're welcome.

  • The solution is obvious... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If everyone would just delete their SPAM without *buying* any of the products or services advertised therein, companies would give up on this mode of promotion. The fact that they don't tells me that there must be some people out there who appreciate being introduced to these fantastic new products or services (hey, who wouldn't want to MAKE MONEY FAST!!!). As usual, we've got nobody to blame but ourselves (or our neighbors).

  • This is not a free speech issue (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    and because it is not, the government shouldn't get involved. This is essentially spammers holding ISPs and users hostage and forcing their to be heard; not much different than the publication of the Unibomber manifesto.

    This is something that needs to be handled by users and between ISPs in the existing open market, capitalistic system. The question becomes what method will the average user accept? I think an outgoing mail quota isn't unreasonable. Users could be limited to, say, 10 outgoing messages per day. Anybody who needs to send more pays more for a high-traffic account. ISPs could form similar agreements between themselves so that if one host is looking to send an excessive amount of email to another host, they have to pay the target host for that kind of access. The smart ISP will pass some of the income to the users in the form of lower access fees.

  • Slashdot moderation doesn't work. (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 07, 1999 @10:45PM (#1900239)
    this article is proof.

    If you look at the responses, "scores" were handed out as to how well they fit the opinion of the moderator, rather than the vailidity of the argument.

    A comment: the law passed isn't "pro-spam" in any way. It simply fails to outlaw spam. It acknowledges spam but this is not the same as legagitimizing it or protecting it in any way. What is this? if you aren't violently against it, you're for it? The 1996 Communication Deregulation Act (or whatever it was called) also did not contain any clauses outlawing spam. Does that mean it's "pro-spam"?
    The previous paragraph is an opinion. It is not neccicarily the correct opinion, but it is a valid one.

    But any opinion giving some kind of compliment to the "pro-spam" bill-- or even an indifferent, non-hating outlook on it-- was given a low score.

    the "Why is this labeled "pro spam" ?" posted by Anonymous Coward was given a 1.

    The comment that was most inflamatory and angry about the "pro spam" bill ("The "opt-out" solution isn't a solution") was given one of the two fives. This post basically pointed out the obvious flaws in the opt-out system (which, while flawed, isn't exactly going to make the problem worse). One of the replies to this, the one from "Melbert", quite eloquently pointed out the much larger flaws that "outlawing spam" has. this post was given a score of one.

    The only non-pissed-off post i saw with any score at all was the "Definition" one, which got a 3. but that was it.

    I'm not sure quite what this says. But i don't like it.Anyway, whoever was arguing against "moderating" slashdot earlier was probably partly right..

    --just another AC
    i feel cowardly.

  • Why is this labeled "pro spam" ? (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 07, 1999 @04:01PM (#1900240)
    Hello all,

    I'm wondering why this EU law is labeled as being "Pro SPAM". It just isn't Anti-SPAM. The opt-out system is entirely voluntary, and it doesn't prevent any of the member countries to outlaw spam anyway. At most, it's a missed opportunity to regulate spam, leaving the Net to fix the problem by itself. I actually like what they've done here...

    Levien
  • Most campaign spam would follow under a_scam anyway.

  • ...so why am I not allowed to vote for candidates outside my own country?
  • I gather that while spam is not prohibited by aforesaid action, retaliation is not. Note Virgin.net's reaction to being RBL'ed because of failure to police spam emanating from their operation.
    I'm sure the black-holing of even a few such emboldened domains should render this matter moot in a hurry.

  • Consider a few scenarios where POP account providers (or the webmail equivalents) require you to submit a credit card number when you sign up for an account.

    - The email provider takes your credit card number, calls up the appropriate authorities, and verifies that the number is valid. Results: More load on the credit card system. Anonymous and pseudonymous email become illegal. People with bad credit and those who prefer not to use credit can no longer legally use email. The cheap spammers go back to usenet flooding; the well funded ones get around ISPs.

    - The email provider takes your credit card number, performs a checksum to make sure it is a well-formed number, and only calls Visa/MC/Amex if they feel like billing your number. [Forgive me if I'm remembering incorrectly that credit card numbers hold checksum information - just skip this paragraph...] Results: every scriptkiddie on the planet gets hold of the checksumming algorithm within a few weeks, and fake number generators proliferate. The situation stays basically the same as it is now, except that less people will use pseudonymous accounts for legitimate purposes.

    - The email provider takes your credit card number but does nothing with it until they decide to bill you. Result: Less people use pseudonymous accounts for legitimate purposes. No other changes from the current situation. (Even a three year old can type in a random number.)

    Further problems with this idea: it assumes that the only people running sendmail & pop servers are ISPs of some sort. What's to stop someone from getting some sort of connectivity, running sendmail, and shipping off all the mail they want from their own machine?

    I don't think ISPs have any responsibility beyond denying service to people who misuse it

    -Mars

  • #ifdef SENSE_OF_HUMOR
    How about everyone forwarding all the SPAM they receive to their government officials with polite requests that something be done about it?
    #endif

  • How about this: It's spam if it:

    1. is unsolicited. The people you are spamming did not specifically ask to be added to your list.

    2. is a mass mailing. You send the same email to multiple people.

    3. the people you are emailing don't have a common thread which relates to the topic of your message. For instance, if you send an email to each of your Congressmen about a political issue, that's not spam.

    If the above three are both true, then it's spam. Just try thinking of a situation where you obtain a bunch of email addresses without the addressees' permission, you send them all email, the email isn't about something which you know for certain will interest them, and your positive that it's still not spam. If you can't think of such a situation, then chances are my definition is a good one.

    --
    Timur Tabi
    Remove "nospam_" from email address

  • ISP need to levy fines against spammers (Score:3)

    by timur ( 2029 ) on Friday May 07, 1999 @04:18PM (#1900250)
    The only way spam is going to end is if all ISP's start levying fines against anyone using their system to send spam. The most that any ISP will do at this point is to close the account. What good does that do? They'll just go to another one and spam from there.

    IMHO, it should be illegal to obtain an email account (and hence the ability to send email) unless billing information is provided. If your ISP catches you sending spam, your account is closed AND you are billed $100 (or more). Email accounts can still be free, but you should have to provide a credit card or some other means by which you can be billed.

    --
    Timur Tabi
    Remove "nospam_" from email address

  • here, in slovakia, internet is still at the begining, so spammers are at the begining too. but they are apearing quickly. a lot of them still using amateur methods but they are spaming. for now we (in our company) use some sendmail capabilities against such entities (there are alredy 12 blocking records in our /etc/mail/access for past one year).

    it's diferent here in slovakia with spam. we're not in EU, we're just discovering internet, ... and law are bad in more important areas than privacy protection, etc.

  • i agree (Score:1)

    by hany ( 3601 )
    i agree
  • i agree with not involving government into problem. instead handle it by ourselves (as users thus recipients of spam) in cooperation with ISP as we are theire customers and are paying them for services.

    on the other hand, numbers you mentioned are too low for me (not wery often, but it happens :) but those are subject to discusion and agreement between user and ISP, between ISPs, ... so we should not argue about those numbers right here :)

  • check out http://maps.vix.com/ [vix.com]. using this database is not limited just to sendmail...
  • I've somehow managed to avoid getting spam for a while. I use the RBL religiously, I don't put my email address online promiscuously in a way that harvesters catch, and I'm constantly adding things to my .procmail/rc.spam filter. Yaaay. Still the occasional piece of spam reaches me, at which point I get horribly medieval on the spammer, the spammer's upstream, all the relays used, InterNIC, etc. I don't even do it with a script, as I take some sort of insane pleasure in dealing with it by hand.
    ---
    "'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.

  • Span being legal is NO problem. . . (Score:3)

    by heller ( 4484 ) on Friday May 07, 1999 @04:57PM (#1900256) Homepage
    . . .as long as it's illegal to send ANY piece of email without a valid return email that goes to the sender of the mail.

    I just wanna see how many spammers stick around after their first spam with a valid reply to address. . .

    ** Martin
  • In the past year about %80 of my spam mail has
    been redirected from US mailservers. More
    importantly, the US admins seem less inclined to
    close holes in their servers than those in the EU.

    Please feel free to killfile European sourced
    mail, as I detect a distinct smell of xenophobia
    in your ill considered post.


    Chris Wareham

  • I thought up this idea [best.com] some time ago (though I've yet to actually put it into practice). The idea is to add a custom header to all my outgoing messages citing the license, so that spammers "stripmining" the net for email addresses are on notice that my email addresses are not to be spammed.

    I figure, if shrinkwrap "agreements" are supposed to be enforceable for big corporations, then why can't us lowly peons use the same mechanic to our advantage?

    Schwab

  • Link to CAUCE (Score:5)

    by ewhac ( 5844 ) on Friday May 07, 1999 @04:18PM (#1900259) Homepage Journal
    The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email [cauce.org] is one of the leading organizations fighting the battle to get spam off the Net. You may wish to give them your money. At the very least, you should give them some of your attention.

    Schwab

  • #define SENSE_OF_HUMOR 0

  • It's a pain, but most major ISPs have an abuse@ email address, and most of the time, they get results. Learn to decipher the mail headers, and send mail to the originating host, as well as to anyone who hosts web sites mentioned in the spam. I've stopped counting the number of accounts I've gotten canceled, but I think spammers fear me now. Yes... they tremble in their boots... as they send me more spam. :/ It is satisfying to see a 404 Not Found on a spammer's URL though. :-)
  • ... please just let us know.

    If you'd prefer that we not sleep with your girlfriend again, please drop us a note.

    If you'd rather not have your house robbed again, please call this number.

    If you'd prefer that we not steal your services again, please reply to this address.

    No, "opt out" is not an option.
  • A centralised "remove" database does not work either. The majority of spammers ignore this information, since they don't really give a rats ass if you don't want to receive their junk. Some spammers may use this information to *create* lists.

    One-way hash functions are your friends. Submit your address to a central remove database, they store the MD5 hash. Spammers can MD5 each address on their list and see which hash to something on the remove list, but they can't take the remove list and reconstruct addresses. (Government and/or ISPs publish "trap" addresses and add them to the list to catch spammers who ignore the list; well-publicized free services exist to strip opt-outs from an arbitrary list of addresses.)

    Why can't a centralized opt-out method be made to work in this way?

    Alan

  • I have the right to speak, but that does not equal the right to be heard. If I go to the middle of town and start shouting all sorts of crap really loud, such that it is a nuisance to those around me, I can be found to be "disturbing the peace" and forced to stop, because I would be infringing on the right of the public to not be harassed.

    Basically, the spammer's rights end at the point they begin to infringe upon the rights of others. They have the right of free speech, but they do NOT have the right to harass people with spam.
  • could someone please point out where I could find out which domains are on the RBL? Thanks.
  • It isn't declaring itself to be pro-spam, but by doing this opt-out policy (which we all know does not work) the EU politicians are giving a tacit approval to spam. That may not be the intent, but it is the effect.

    The problem here is that there is no middle ground. Doing nothing favors spammers by failing to require them to be accountable for the costs they force upon users and their ISPs. Thus the legislation IS pro-spam, it just doesn't bill itself that way (it doesn't make your constituents very happy to hear "yeah, today we passed legislation that does nothing to help you. In fact, it hurts you since you have to opt-out every time someone spams you. Next, we're thinking that we're going to amend our assault laws. If someone beats you up, you have to tell them you want to 'opt-out'. So if they do it again, maybe then you can take action against them. Oh, and BTW this is going to make our area look really attractive to bullies...". Yeah, the public will like to hear *that* one.)
  • The readers with accounts are the moderators on Slashdot; check the archives for some of CmdrTaco's (CT==Rob Malda) posts regarding "new Slashdot features". CT, Hemos, and company aren't usually the moderators.

    And, once more for the record, I *still* think all these posts should be available via NNTP, so we can use our newsreaders and 1) do our own filtering and scoring, and 2) keep track of which articles we've seen already much more conveniently (I use nested or threaded mode, at -1 because I frequently disagree with the scores I see assigned, which means in order to see new posts, I have to reload the page all the time and wade through everything I've already read. I'd set a higher score level, but then, as you noted, I'd miss the less-popular viewpoints, and the opposing side is often the side I want to hear from, not everyone that I agree with. Strange that so many alleged "unpopular geeks" seem to have such a problem with the unpopular opinion!).

    Whatever. Using a web browser to read hundreds or thousands of Slashdot posts is a horrible kludge.

  • Re:Gah. (Score:1)

    by PD ( 9577 )
    I'm more like the foolhardy WWI officer marching along the top of the trench, daring anyone and everyone to shoot at me, because I know that I am wearing a Kevlar vest which can stop a tank round.

    Or something like that. Spammers can e-mail me at pdrap@concentric.net, and I promise that I'll f**k you up as hard as I can.
  • I totally agree.

    How much spam do people get from the Concentric Network? Not much. In the past month, I've gotten 3 mails, and in the year before that, nothing at all. Those 3 unlucky fools who spammed me from Concentric were charged $200 for each incident.

    It's not that hard. They already have their credit card number. If uu.net started charging people $200 for each spam incident, then uu.net would instantly stop being a spam haus.

    This is the only thing that really really works. How can we start a public movement to make people adopt this sort of license?
  • Everyone here knows how to sign up for a free e-mail account from wherever, and how to make it forward all incoming mail to a third e-mail address.

    What would be the effect if everyone set up a free e-mail address forwarding to the representative of your choice, and posting the address on the Usenet?

    Note that I am not advocating this, I'm just wondering what would happen? :-)

  • A court would probably not enforce your liquidated damages clause for $1000/incident. You can't ask for a lot more than actual damages.
  • perhaps an even better idea would be an incentive for the spammed to turn in spammers -- ie., if the isp is gonna charge the spammer, tell users in advance that they can get $10 or $20, etc. of that fee, for each spammer they turn in that is successfully nabbed.
  • But the problem is not simply spammers that send out 6e9 messages at once. There are times when it is perfectly appropriate to send out, say, 50 messages to a group of friends, coworkers, etc. But in other contexts, this would be considered spam. I think it is going overboard to make it a crime to send more than one person at a time email without first asking their permission, and short of that, I don't see how you can define it with precision necessary for a law.
  • Well, the first two sertainly must be a part of the definition. I think the third is the one that is insufficiently precise:

    The people you are emailing don't have a common thread which relates to the topic of your message. For instance, if you send an email to each of your Congressmen about a political issue, that's not spam.

    How about if I send out emails to all Americans telling them to vote for Al Gore? They have a common thread (they are American voters) but I think everyone will agree that that is spam. Or what about sending out messages to people because "they are in my address book"? Obviously this is a stretch, but on the other hand, I occasionally send out email to a group of 10 to 50 people whose only connection is that I happen to be acquainted with them. (Jokes, party information, etc) Another example would be the president of the U of Minnesota sending out emails to the entire U of M community. This is probably appropriate for him, but would not be appreciated if I did it. So depending on the wording of this third criteria, I think it either allows most spammers to get through or unreasonably restricts the use of mass mailings for legitimate. I think that third criteria needs to be refined before it could be put into anything resembling good law. And until I see one, I don't think its a good idea to start regulating the flow of information via email.

  • Definition (Score:4)

    by binarybits ( 11068 ) on Friday May 07, 1999 @04:18PM (#1900276) Homepage
    My problem with laws banning spam is that it is not clear to me that you can draw a clear line between spam and non-spam email. You could define it as any email sent to more than one person that was unsolicited, but that strikes me as too draconian. I could come up with cases where there are legitimate reasons to send out mass-mailings, and it seems excessive, to have the governmnet step in every time you have to hit the delete key. Yes spam is a problem, but I wonder whether banning it would really accomplish anything, and whether it could be done without stifling free speech. Anybody have a definition that would prevent abuses without turning every mass email message into a lawsuit?
  • Hi,

    I tried to submit the story about our petiton to the European Parliament (http://www.politik-digital.de/spam/) several times to slashdot, but it was ignored.

    Well, now that the damage is done, I guess it's too late.
  • I've thought several times about suing a spammer for keeping
    my name, email address (and thus my employer's name) in
    a database without noticing me, in violation of the French
    "computing and freedom" act.

    Problem: I get very little spam from France. Almost all the
    spam I get comes from the United States.

    Let's note that spammers are often very stupid: they
    spam non-US address like mine with things only
    pertaining to US citizens or to US residents.

  • In Europe, or at least here in Portugal here i live, it seams that killing US post works best... almost every spam i get it's from there.
  • AOL in particular has won a couple of court judgements against spammers who've abused their system. In AOL's case, IIRC, they sued for costs of receiving spam. ( news.com article [news.com]) In other cases ISPs have sued for the costs of having been used to send spam (e.g. all those e-mails sent to abuse@domain).

    It's probably legally dicey to enact some kind of after-the-fact fine system, but that's exactly what small-claims court is for.
  • I don't know why you think that that there is little unregulated spam in Singapore. I am living there and I can tell you that if you are active in newsgroups you will get a lot of spam (at one stage, I was getting at least ten junk e-mails a day). Once you stop posting, the spam disappears quite quickly, though.
  • Restricting spam isn't a free speech issue.
    Want to say something on the net? Put up
    a webpage! Make sure the search engines pick it up, and anybody interested will find your site.

    There is such a thing as the "free silence" issue too. I am free to not listen to the "free speakers" out there.
  • No, that's not the problem. Why should I have to request removal at all? I don't have to ask to be protected from having people stand outside my bedroom window with a megaphone telling me to buy their stuff, why should I have to request it in this particular case? The default should be that you can't harrass someone without their permission.

  • Get real.

    So I go get an account from AOL and spam a zillion people. They could then legally flood my mailbox with complaints, but that doesn't mean I have to read them.
  • Why should we have to live with junk mail and cold calls either? I mean really, what social good does it serve to have some bozo call me in the middle of dinner to try to sell me insurance? If I want insurance, I can damn well look in the phone book.

    My house is private; my telephone and emailbox and snailmail box should be also. It is not okay to harrass someone just because there's no law against it.
  • The precedent is already set. The US has long since acknowledged that sometimes speech is more than just speech, sometimes it does something else also.

    If I break into your house for the sole purpose of telling you why Dove soap is better than Ivory, it's illegal even though all I'm doing is speaking to you. I can't yell "Fire" in a crowded theater, because I am in effect causing the deaths of everyone who gets trampled.

    So yes, I _do_ want the government to regulate spammers. If they want to stand out on a street corner and explain how to MAKE.MONEY.FAST, that's fine. But not in my house, not using my telephone, and not on my computer.

  • #3 kills it. Someone send yet another MMF message to 1 million addresses culled from Usenet and the Web, and then when called on it they say "Everyone I sent it to can reasonably be assumed to be interested in a way to make money. The message was about making money. My post is not spam because all the recipients have a common thread of interest related to the message I send, hence it doesn't meet part 3 of your definition, and I dare you to prove otherwise.".

  • #3 is useless.

    All these people post to the "U.S. Cat Lovers Club", which relates to my ad for how to train your cat to write perl scripts.

    All these people are on the internet, which relates to my ad for CRAZY COMPUTER BARGAINS.

    All these people run web pages, which relates to my ad for how to make your site get 1 million hits a day.

    et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...
  • The spam ruling --- or not ruling, perhaps, as it's unclear from the article and wasn't too much more clear in der Welt am Sonntag this morning --- is a secondary issue.

    The real issue is the lead in the article: the EU has set rules for where businesses should be regulated. This is _considerably_ more important than it appears at first glance to an American.

    Consider the fact that it is illegal in Germany to possess nazi paraphernalia, and it's certainly illegal to _sell_ it. So what happens if someone in the Netherlands, where as far as I can tell it's more or less legal to do anything, puts up a website selling Nazi flags? Can he be prosecuted under German law?

    Until yesterday the answer was YES. Now the answer is no ... he can only be prosecuted if he violates Dutch law.

    This problem has echoes in the US in cases where proprietors of pornographic web sites in California have been prosecuted for violating the community standards of southern states.

    It's been a good week for sanity on the part of government: US encryption restrictions were tossed, and the EU put forward an unusually intelligent ruling that says that on-line companies exist in the place out of which they are operating and are not subject to the laws of the country in which the client of the company lives.

    [Intelligent readers will note that this means that rogue companies can operate out of somewhere like, say, Aruba. That is true ... but that is better than the chaos which would ensue if everyone were subejct to the laws of every country, and the only way to prevent it depends on a worldwide regulation of the net that I think few of us would welcome ...]
  • I think you just needed to wait a while until
    the right people had read the posts and changed their scores. :)

  • EuroCAUCE (Score:3)

    by HugoRune ( 20378 ) on Friday May 07, 1999 @04:26PM (#1900291)
    The EuroCAUCE website [cauce.org] is at: http://www.euro.cauce.org/
  • Sure, spam is irritating...

    But do we really want to set the precedent of governments restricting the internet in this way? After all, whether you like it or not freedom of speech is freedom of speech. Once you begin applying "censorship" and restrictions, you're on a slippery slope that will be difficult to escape from.

    You can't shout "Free speech for everyone!" in one breath, and then in the next breath allow them to do something like this because it's convenient and you maybe won't have to press the delete key on your mail client as many times a day...

    Keep sight of what's important...

  • Unsolicited commercial email - normally it is quite clear if the intent of the spammer is to try and sell you something, legit or not. I find it difficult to imagine a case where it would not be clear if the sender was trying to make money somehow (although there may be some borderline cases but I can't think of any).

    But there are other types of 'spam' that don't fall into this category, eg the "hello friend i want to convert you to my religion" variety. I don't want to get that crud either.

    But perhaps banning email that is (mass-sent && (commercial || a_scam) && unsolicited) would be sufficient to lower the quantity of unsolicited unwanted garbage to acceptable levels.

  • The "opt-out" solution isn't a solution (Score:5)

    by BeanThere ( 28381 ) on Friday May 07, 1999 @04:09PM (#1900294)
    Nothing wrong with the idea of consumers being allowed to "opt-out" of receiving junk. Except that it just plain and simply does not work, and I suspect that in five to ten years the European Parliament will be realising that they have made an awful mistake.

    Firstly, there is no guarantee at all that a spammer will remove you from his/her list. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case for most spammers.

    Secondly, it requires effort, time (and consequently money) from the consumer to figure out how to get their email address removed from a spammers list. This would be OK if it was just a small handful of lists ever, but most spammers seem to each have their own "remove" list, and with each new spam mail I get, there seems to be a new address to reply to to "remove". So in reality consumers would probably be doing the "remove me" thing several times a week. Also, many of the "remove me" email addresses are simply bogus addresses.

    A centralised "remove" database does not work either. The majority of spammers ignore this information, since they don't really give a rats ass if you don't want to receive their junk. Some spammers may use this information to *create* lists.

    Most spammers will NOT remove you from their lists if you reply and type "remove" - on the contrary, replying often simply lets the spammer know which email addresses are active. Thus it is "unsafe" to "hit reply and type remove", so I do not do it.

    As for "legit" companies, well, legalising spam, including the opt-out approach, also allows basically any company with access to your email address to spam you. So you can be sure that every few days yet another company will have "purchased" your email address as part of some spammer database and will be sending you advertisements for their products. The consumer will have to opt-out of every single one of these.

    Companies have NOT shown in the past that they can be trusted wrt privacy; rather, they have shown quite the opposite (very large companies like Intel "consumer is the enemy", Sun "you have no privacy, get over it", and that other one have demonstrated they don't care about consumer privacy). Do you trust a company with your email address to not sell that information? Do you trust a company to delete your email address completely from their database? Do you trust companies not to 'exchange' information about consumers buying habits, etc etc?

    Lastly, all the "usual" anti-spam arguments also apply, for example that most of the burden of cost is carried by the unwilling recipient of spam, typically through time and increased ISP costs.

    Spam, all types of it, should be plain and simply illegal.
  • It's the EU that has passed this law. Half of the European countries isn't in the union.
    (And barely half of the countries in it follow their laws :)
  • :: The only way spam is going to end is if all
    :: ISP's start levying fines against anyone using
    :: their system to send spam.

    You have now made it dramatically more expensive for ISPs to stay in business. I guess we can deal with there being only five ISPs for the whole net....

    :: IMHO, it should be illegal to obtain an email
    :: account (and hence the ability to send email)
    :: unless billing information is provided.

    You have now dramatically increased the cost of providing a free email account. They will cease to exist.
  • "Spam, all types of it, should be plain and simply illegal. "

    How?

    How is it to be made illegal?

    Who will enforce this law?

    How will they enforce it?

    I do not mean these as rhetorical questions.

    I do wonder how a mechanism like this would work.
    Do we want governmental forces shutting down providers? Do we want end-to-end audit trails on all email? How would we prevent a rogue hacker from sending 'fake' spam advertising a legitimate site to get it shut down? A few hackers could take down slashdot.org linuxmall.com cheapbytes.com etc. with little effort. Unless we're ready to accept a spam-free police state, I don't see a way out.

    There's probably little unregulated spam in Singapore.

  • Spam vs. Junk Mail (Score:3)

    by ItsBacon ( 32095 ) on Friday May 07, 1999 @06:57PM (#1900298)
    Spam should fall under the same regulations that "junk mail" and telephone solicitations do in the U.S. People who receive spam should be able to report to someone if the particular message is advertising something illegal or obscene. Spam should also have to show truthfully where it originated from and who sent it out. Spammers should have to maintain lists of people who do not wish to receive their spam and fall under heavy penalties if they send spam to people on that list. We will always have to live with spam, just as we have to live with snail-mail advertisements and telephone solicitors, but there should be enforceable regulations in place to control spam.
  • Or better yet, give them free Access time.
  • Actualy, the big problem is NOT the DMA. The DMA (For those of you who don't know) is the Direct Marketing Association. Belive it or not, THEY _DO_ have rules, including VALID opt out. I know that the BIG players in the DMA ( Readers Digest, Time Inc (AKA American Family Publishers Aka Ed McMahon), and Publishers Clearing House) all DO listen to the central Opt out repositories that the DMA runs. They don't want to piss people off, and it costs big $$$ to send out one of their mailings (Something like $3 - $4 EACH piece of real mail). If you are willing to go through the effort to get on the list, they don't want to spend that kind of money mailing you.

    How do I know? Friends in the business

    Charlie
    (Now if we could get the fly by nights to listen)
  • I agree with your position re the DMA and SPAM - the DMA is wrong about this. My friends in the industry agree

    Charlie

  • I am sure it's Watson99@aol.com (Score:4)

    by Bubblehead ( 35003 ) on Friday May 07, 1999 @03:50PM (#1900302) Homepage Journal
    But they rejected pleas to ban spam altogether, despite an impassioned plea from British Liberal Democrat Graham Watson, who complained that he had received 42 pieces of junk email this week and called it a "bloody nuisance."

    I am sure he's on AOL...

    Even though spam can be anoying I would have been really worried if incompetent European politicians would try to regulate it (I have to know - I'm from Europe). Judging from what happend in the past (e.g. CompuServe blocking porn newsgroup sites because of Germany), they do more harm than good anyway.

  • Hi there


    You can find links to email addresses on;
    http://www.europarl.eu.int/groups/en/default.htm


    Regards,
    Rob [mailto]
  • Hi there


    I have got a link to my spam policy [webster.nl] in my signature.
    I don't know whether this actually helps, but the measures discribed in it certainly do. The junkmail went down from one per day to one every few weeks.


    Rob [mailto]

  • "Bloody nuisance" is exactly what spam is. :P

    Let's see ... what have I gotten this week? A healthy mix of Make-Money-Fastish stuff, porno site ads, and "you too can become an instant success with spam!"

    Bloody nuisance, indeed.
  • Except for the times that you shoot yourself in the foot by alienating your customers. I don't support any business that spams me, and I'm pretty sure that a good portion of my geek (and non-geek) brethren feel the same way.

  • Spam is illegal in Germany and will stay that way (Score:4)

    by cic ( 205902 ) on Friday May 07, 1999 @05:17PM (#1900307)
    I certainly doubt that this forms any
    "pro-spam" regulation.

    UCE is a form of advertising that is not legal
    in Germany, which is part of the EU.

    Maybe I am getting the details wrong:
    Basically, if my competitor uses UCE for
    advertising, I can have my lawyer send
    him a letter asking to stop it, to send back
    a written statement that they will stop using UCE
    and are happy to pay me cash if they do it again.

    Of course, THEY have to pay my lawyer.

    Apart from this, there is a law regulating the
    processing of person-related data. Most of the
    time, they pretty much must have violated that
    to get your email address. (The law does not
    apply to persons doing this for private reasons)

    So, you can still send spam if you are doing
    it for private reasons. ("REPENT NOW!" or somesuch)

    But then, this will constitute a violation of
    the policy of your online provider - off you
    go.

    I have received spam from german companies
    exactly twice. Both had their account revoked
    at once, and had to pay the cost of the sysadmins
    to do the cleanup. (Actually, they had to pay
    the time the sysadmin needed to revoke their
    account, too.) Both were not done via bulk-mailing
    software, but were commited by newbie users
    who did not know better.

    I have never received spam from other countries within the EU - it's only you US folks who can't get your companies to behave :-)

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