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http://www.cauce.org/2010/11/kidnapping-theft-and-rape-are-not-cyber-crimes.html

http://boingboing.net/2010/10/26/good-news-of-a-kind.html

The 'C' stands for commercial in coalition against unsolicited commercial email. But thanks for the link love. Neil Schwartzman Executive Director CAUCE The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email, North America Inc. http://cauce.org/ http://twitter.com/cauce

I have little sympathy with companies sending marketing email getting branded as junk emailers they are sending Unsolicited bulk or bulk email.

This effects real people as well. Getting blacklisted is a way of life for me online because of my name. Yes Spamer really is my surname/family name. If you have any doubts try searching for me on uk directory enquires / electoral role

Its gotten me accused of being of being a joe-job for trying to do my job as the postmaster for a domain.

Its gotten my email addresses blacklisted, it's gotten me blocked from creating accounts on web-sites including utube and my local newspaper.

Professionals should start call junk email Unsolicited bulk or bulk email instead of using slang.

I have little sympathy with companies sending marketing email getting branded as junk emailers they are sending Unsolicited bulk or bulk email.

This effects real people as well. Getting blacklisted is a way of life for me online because of my name. Yes Spamer really is my surname/family name. If you have any doubts try searching for me on uk directory enquires / electoral role

Its gotten me accused of being of being a joe-job for trying to do my job as the postmaster for a domain.

Its gotten my email addresses blacklisted, it's gotten me blocked from creating accounts on web-sites including utube and my local newspaper.

Professionals should start call junk email Unsolicited bulk or bulk email instead of using slang.

Sheesh! Slashdot has gotten really lame.

"Other anti-spam workers" is none other than John Levine, Ph.D, co-author of the BEST SELLING INTERNET BOOK OF ALL TIME (I kid you not) "The Internet for Dummies" (Now in its ninth edition). Some of you cretins need to read it.

In Commonwealth of Virginia v. Jeremy Jaynes Dr. Levine served as an expert witness for the prosecution. His testimony helped send Jaynes to prison for nine years.

At the second annual Conference on Email and Spam Levine presented a technical paper on his experiences with greylisting.

Dr. Levine is the chair of the IRTF Anti-Spam Research Group. He's a founding member of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email. He runs the Network Abuse Clearinghouse.

"Other Anti-Spam Worker" indeed.

Take a good look at Blue Security's product. I think you'll see that it's little more than an HTTP DDoS tool. BlueSecurity claims that it's okay to DDoS spammers, and that they make very sure that only spammers are DDoS'd (although their careful not to call what they do a DDoS).

I'm given to understand that they moved their hosting to Israel when Verio terminated their service for violations of Verio's acceptable use policy. Verio doesn't allow folks to host denial of service tools on their network (nor will any normal ISP do so).

Someone should ask BlueSecurity about their legal threats against Everyone's Internet for attempting to do the same.

These are not nice people. The only difference between them and the normal crop of script-kiddie miscreants, is that they have found venture capital.

The courts have already ruled that the sending of spam itself is protected by free speech, so long as you do not falsely advertise or advertise that you will provide something that is already illegal.

But they're STEALING RESOURCES to do so. It would be as if some vandals took over CBS and started selling their own viagra and stuff. SPAM is illegitimate not because it advertises, but because it uses YOUR RESOURCES to do so. Your bandwidth, your servers, etc.

Free spech has nothing to do with this.

>2) Make it illegal to have ANY financial relationship, direct or indirect, with spammers no matter their origin.
Doesn't that go against the basics of a free market system? What would be the grounds for doing this?

If you're earning money from ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES (which is assured by item 1), then you're a criminal. Period.

I'm suggesting this because the European Union ALREADY ruled any kind of unsolicited advertising, illegal. It's the E-Privacy Directive Proposal.

If it was done, it can be done.

(OK i admit it, maybe I have some technical flaws. But just contact the EuroCAUCE guys. They obviously know what they're doing).

... If we were serious about airplane safety, I'd say make the cockpit a SEPERATE compartment with no access from the passengers. ...

And the author of the article is just repeating what the spammer is telling him. Here, I just now actually RTFA:

The moniker [spammer] isn't one Cunningham, or anyone else in the business of bulk e-mail distribution, is fond of, understandably so, as he claims to send only legitimate e-mails. Bulk mailing, he said, has been lumped into the same category as illegal spam, which sports spoofed e-mail addresses or peddles in a variety of unsavory markets like porn and Internet scams, such as the Nigerian spam scam.

And the author clearly doesn't understand why this is so. The short version is: it's about consent (having permission from each recepient to send the email) and NOT content (it doesn't matter what you're sending if I didn't ask for it).

"The anti-spam community and media tends to like to blame us for all of it and if you notice, a lot of the time the so-called spam-related cases were, in fact, not spam related but scam related," Cunningham said in an e-mail interview. "Notice how they try to say spammers are the culprits? It's another scheme to put a bad image to bulk-mail marketing; I investigate and turn in every single bit of these types of e-mails and operations I come across, as I cannot stand them either."

One more quote from page 3:

Like many others, Cunningham takes the stand common among both legitimate bulk-mailers and illegal scammers alike: If you don't like it, delete it.

Thus the spammer is claiming that if the CONTENT of the spam is not illegal, then there's nothing wrong with spamming.

The author is no doubt correctly reporting what the spammer said, but even with quotes Ray Everett-Church and others (and missed giving good links such as http://cauce.org/, did not IMHO adequately represent anti-spam concerns.

CAUCE is the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email. A few years ago, when they just formed, they recommended using devnull@cauce.org as a "black hole" address that would not result in superfluous bounces. I've been using it ever since in USENET postings.

JP

Seriously, though. If any reasonable person on a jury in a court of law thinks that it's sexually explicit, then that's good enough.

Don't you think we should at least require a majority of them? By the way, the FTC requires the label "[SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT]" on all e-mail which is "sexually oriented."

The problem with this kind of law is the significant risk of the law being thrown out as being too vague. If someone is tried under that law in Salt Lake City, "sexually oriented" might be interpreted to mean a picture of a woman wearing a skirt that doesn't cover her knees. A Los Angeles jury might decide that "sexually oriented" is nothing short of photos of full penetration. Is a text ad for a site that sells lingerie "sexually oriented"? How about an ad with photos of women in bikinis to advertise www.ladies-swimwear.com? Is that "sexually oriented" or is it a site about beachwear fashion?

It's not the government's role to decide what is, or is not, sexually oriented. They should simply make sending spam, or paying a third party to send spam, illegal. They should pass a law like Virginia's, which entitles a recipient to damages from the spammer if they win in a civil suit. They should require that ISPs investigate spam and take action within 48 hours of receiving notification, reporting back to those who filed the complaints about what, specifically, was done, and whether they know the identity of the spammer (so that people decide whether it's worthwhile to get a court order to sue the spammer). They should shut down the connections of those who send spam (I don't care if it's someone's moronic relative who clicked on an attached virus that turned their system into a spam relay).

Spam is theft. Period. It is theft of bandwidth, theft of storage, and theft of CPU time. It's not a free speech issue. It's not analogous to physical junk mail. It's not like telemarketing. Laws can be effective whether spam is sent from with within the US or offshore. If you disagree with me, then go here and read so that you don't waste your time and ours with old, tired, discredited arguments.

From that one line, it's clear that you don't understand what spam is. So I feel no need to learn all the new terminology (U?E and such) that you just made up

UCE is not "new terminology".
Spam means diffrent things to diffrent people so in order to have a coherent dialog it is absolutly nessisary to make it clear what you mean.
To many people "spam" is ALL commertal e-mail. It is a perfictly valid deffinition and one many spammers and anti-spammers use.

The US legalized "legitimate" spam with the CAN-SPAM act. Bulk mail with forged headers is a criminal offense. Bulk mail using stolen resources is a felony. The FTC is very soft on spamcrime. There have been no FTC actions under the CAN-SPAM act whatsoever.

Wait until Kerry is in. We may have some progress under the next administration.

Well it's a good thing there is an international effort then isn't it?

However, since the majority of spammers are Americans in the United States, an American law that has the right form and the right enforcement should be able to dramatically reduce spam. Unfortunately, the US has neither.

Well it's a good thing there is an international effort then isn't it?

However, since the majority of spammers are Americans in the United States, an American law that has the right form and the right enforcement should be able to dramatically reduce spam. Unfortunately, the US has neither.

No, dipshit, I'm not making this up. Here's a mental experiment, since you're obviously in denial. If you run a web site, and you accept sign-ups for a mailing list, then anyone can enter any email address. If you do not confirm that that person is in control of that email address and wants to receive your mailings, then you are sending UNSOLICITED BULK EMAIL to that person, which by anyone's definition is spam. If I enter your email address and the website doesn't confirm it, then they are spamming you. That is by definition, there is no wiggle room. If you did not ask for it, it's spam. And the question is not "Could this happen?" but "When will this happen?" If you do not practise confirmed-opt-in then you WILL have email addresses on your lists that did not want your mailings which means by definition you are a spammer.

Your complaint about "having to sign up multiple times" is complete bullshit. There is nothing about the process that would require you to sign up more than once. You enter your email, the site sends a confirmation email, you hit reply, and you are on the list. ANYTHING ELSE MAKES THAT SITE A SPAMMER.

http://www.pan-am.ca/spammyths/rants/27jul2002.htm l
http://www.cluelessmailers.org/glossary.html
http://www.spamfaq.net/spam-evils.shtml#opt_in
http://www.monkeys.com/spam-defined/
http://www.euro.cauce.org/en/optinvsoptout.html#do uble
http://www.spamresource.com/nadine/default.htm

CAUCE's response to the law can be read here.

A copy of the final version of the law can be found here.

According to CAUCE, the law was passed without any public hearings. What a shame.

CAUCE's response to the law can be read here.

A copy of the final version of the law can be found here.

According to CAUCE, the law was passed without any public hearings. What a shame.

CAUCE's response to the law can be read here.

A copy of the final version of the law can be found here.

According to CAUCE, the law was passed without any public hearings. What a shame.

I support groups like CAUCE in spirit, but IMO spam is not a political problem. It is a technological problem of ancient protocols that are long overdue for an update. So if Yahoo or some other big player chooses to promote a custom protocol, let's hope that it is functionally equivalent to AMTP.

Of course, I foresaw all these things back in April. It's flattering to see that Yahoo is reading my Slashdot postings and taking heed, and only provides more support for my quantum theory that our universe is constructed from my perceptions. :-)

-Gonz

Does it really explicitly say the FTC is prohibited from indicating how spam must be labeled?

I had the same question after reading the blog entry. Apologies in advance for the length of this reply, but I wanted to cite the portions of the bill that I think are relevant (as opposed to just declaring "yes" or "no" without providing any supporting evidence).

Technically, I believe the blogger is correct in this assertion, but after reading the full text of the bill I suspect the prohibition isn't quite as stupid as it initially appears. (For those who wish to follow the bouncing ball at home, a PDF copy of the actual bill is available here.)

The prohibition shows up in Section 13(b) of the bill:

(b) LIMITATION.--Subsection (a) may not be construed to authorize the Commission to establish a requirement pursuant to section 5(a)(5)(A) to include any specific words, characters, marks, or labels in a commercial electronic mail message, or to include the identification required by section 5(a)(5)(A) in any particular part of such a mail message (such as the subject line or body).

So yes, there is a prohibition against defining identification labels in the bill.

But context is important here. Section 13(b) is placing restrictions on the preceding paragraph, 13(a), which states:

(a) IN GENERAL.--The Commission may issue regulations to implement the provisions of this Act (not including the amendments made by sections 4 and 12). Any such regulations shall be issued in accordance with section 553 of title 5, United States Code.

So Section 13(a) gives the Commission authority to start making regulations based on this bill immediately. But some sections of the bill weren't intended to be implemented immediately, and instead call for the Commission to do some research first and report back to the House and Senate with recommendations.

Section 5(a)(5)(A), the part which the Commission is explicitly not authorized to implement yet, is the portion of the bill that would require "clear and conspicuous identification that the message is an advertisement or solicitation". Obviously, before companies can comply with (or be prosecuted for failing to comply with) regulations related to 5(a)(5)(A), the Commission will have to specify exactly what qualifies as a clear and conspicuous identification.

And indeed, down in Section 11(2), we find that the commission has been tasked to come up with a report on how this identification is to be performed:

Sec 11: The Commission shall transmit to the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce [...] (2) a report, within 18 months after the date of enactment of this Act, that sets forth a plan for requiring commercial electronic mail to be identifiable from its subject line, by means of compliance with Internet Engineering Task Force Standards, the use of the characters ``ADV'' in the subject line, or other comparable identifier, or an explanation of any concerns the Commission has that cause the Commission to recommend against the plan.

So it seems to me that Congress is leaning towards using an 'ADV' tag in the subject line to identity "legitimate" UCE, but that they're really not sure how any of this email stuff actually works, so they stopped short of making this a requirement in the current bill. Instead, they're telling the Commission to go off and get familiar with the relevant IETF standards, figure out if 'ADV' or some similar subject-line tag approach could be done without breaking anything, and have the Commission report back with either (a) rules on a workable method for identifying UCE from the subject line, or (b) a danged good explanation why this can't be done.

Rather t

For those of you interested, the bill is S.877

CAUCE (Coalition Against Unsolicited Email) opposes this bill.

The bill isn't "Can Spam" in terms of canning spam. It's "Can Spam" in terms of "You Can Spam. Sure. Go ahead." It's opt-out, not opt-in. Prepare to have your mailbox flooded. Legally.

Sec. 105 (a):

(4) PROHIBITION OF TRANSMISSION OF UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL ELECTRONIC MAIL AFTER OBJECTION- If a recipient makes a request using a mechanism provided pursuant to paragraph (3) not to receive some or any unsolicited commercial electronic mail messages from such sender, then it is unlawful

(5) INCLUSION OF IDENTIFIER, OPT-OUT, AND PHYSICAL ADDRESS IN UNSOLICITED COMMERCIAL ELECTRONIC MAIL- It is unlawful for any person to initiate the transmission of any unsolicited commercial electronic mail message to a protected computer unless the message provides--

On the other hand, Sec. 105 (b) (1) (A) (i) and (ii) make it illegal to use address harvesters or dictionary attacks to send spam.

I'm also worried that Sec. 105 (e)'s restrictions on sexually explicit advertising will be struck down as unconstitutional, and may have adverse effects on the rest of the law.

No, legislation is good if it's well thought out. CAUCE has always suggested expanding the TCPA Junk Fax provisions to junk email, and honestly that's a good solution. That lets civilians file their own legal action against spammers and the companies they advertise for $500 a pop instead of creating some huge worthless beaurocracy to deal with it.

Eh? Are you talking about email? I don't "click on" anything when I read email. You are missing the point by something approaching several Astronomical Units: By the time spam hits anyone's inbox, the damage has already been done, several times over. And that is BEFORE the mail is even opened, read, deleted, or ($DEITY forbid) "clicked on" - the disk space and bandwidth of several ISPs have already been illegally appropriated to get it there.

And you must have been living under a stone if you think that selectively publishing one's email address will do any good against the greater problem.

You need to learn a little more about spam. May I suggest CAUCE?

you can sign up at their How Can I Help page, and apparently it costs nothing to join.

If you're not in the U.S., you can sign up to their international chapters:
EuroCAUCE - Serving the entire continent
CAUBE.AU - Serving Australia, New Zealand, and all of the Pacific Rim
CAUCE Canada
CAUCE India - Serving Asia and the Indian subcontinent

I'll be signing up today.

Back in the day; when the debate about allowing comerical interest on the Internet fired up, many predicted that today' situation would be the outcome... *soft crap destroying the backbone and .com(ers) diluting the content to the lowest common denominator.

'Any legislation that permits all of America's estimated 23 million small businesses to legally send everyone at least one email cannot be considered anti-spam. And any bill that limits a consumer's recourse to clicking an opt-out link 23 million times isn't going to make our lives any better. ....

Opt-out laws have let the problem grow to the state it is today; no one in Congress can supply an adequate explanation as to why opt-out at a national level will make any difference. Opt-out in Korea has been an unmitigated disaster and their legislature is rushing to repair the global damage their opt-out law has done to their Internet economy. California's opt-out law is being scrapped. And the European Union knew better than to waste time with a discredited approach and went straight to opt-in.'

At least this law allows ISPs to prosecute spammers, and it does not block class action suits from multiple spam recipient consumers (AFAICS). Also the damages of $500 per message is a lot better than the proposed Texas state law's puny $10 per message.

But consider these facts: there's 23 million small businesses in the US. That means a lot of "I would like to opt out" mails you'll be sending. Multiply that by however many possible addresses you can receive mail at: foo@domain1.com, foo@[211.11.22.34], foo%domain1.com@domain1.com, root@domain1.com, postmaster@domain1.com, foo@forwardingservice.net, foo@perl.org, foo@users.sourceforge.net, etc. etc. etc.

Then there's the "tagged addressing" concept, where you "tag" the addresses you give out with additional text to identify who you gave it to, e.g. foo+amazon@domain1.com, foo+slashdot@domain1.com. Each of those is a different "e-mail address".

Better get those typing fingers in shape :(

As much as I hate to say it, I'd rather not see an anti-spam law on the books....

What I would not mind seeing, however, is a system of torts that would allow users to take on spammers the same way that people get to take on telemarketers and junk mailers who do the same things.

You understand that what you propose is pretty much exactly the sort of legislation that groups such as cauce have been proposing for years?

Also, it may be just a consequence of my massive ignorance of the law, but I'm finding the distinction you make between "anti-spam law" and "a system of torts..." a bit subtle.

--Bruce Fields

EU has already made unsolicited commercial email (UCE) illegal, see article 13 of the Directive on privacy and electronic communications (2002/58/EC), after intense lobbying e.g. by EuroCAUCE.

The directive must be implemented by the member states by 31 October 2003.

(I just wrote statement [in Finnish] to the Finnish ministry of transports and communications on behalf of Electronic Frontier Finland of our proposed local implementation of the directive (which at the current form would allow ask-permission-spam (i.e. you would be allowed to send spam to ask permission to send more spam. :( )))

Quote from CAUCE: There is no "Double" Opt-In. There is Confirmed Opt-In and there is net-abuse.

Spam is already illegal within the European Union.

Of course that doesn't significantly cut down the amount of spam we get over here, because it's nearly all from either the USA or China. (Yes, a small fraction of it really does originate from China.)

One of the real problems with these civil-law solutions ("collect $500 for each spam") is that it's only feasible if you happen to live in the same jurisdiction as the spammer. Otherwise you're left struggling with an alien legal system - and let's face it, all legal systems, more or less deliberately, always favour natives against foreigners.

If I as a European resident receive spam from someone in Florida (which I do, regularly) - what exactly am I supposed to do about it? Fly to Florida, find a lawyer and file suit there? And then what am I supposed to do when the court dates come up, and when they keep changing.... I have a real job to hold down here, ferchrissakes.

This is why I, personally, am in favour of laws that are enforced by someone else - someone whose job it is to do it. Failing that, a good alternative would be a bunch of self-appointed activists who knew the legal systems, who could make a living out of hunting down spammers and getting their $500 a time. I want to be able to forward my spam to someone like that, and let them claim the money on my behalf. If they could see their way to giving me, say, 10%, I'd be quite happy with that...

http://www.euro.cauce.org/images/flags/eu-flag.gif

Read this from the CAUCE website:

UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email)is the leading complaint of Internet users. But junk e-mail is more than just annoying, it costs Internet users and Internet-based businesses millions, even billions, per year. Junk e-mail is "postage due" marketing; it's like a telemarketer calling you collect. The economics of junk e-mail encourages massive abuse and because junk e-mailers can get into the business very cheaply, the volume of junk e-mail is increasing every day.

I just do not agree with this comment. Is there anyone from a business who can testify to billions of dollars lost to spam?
(Personally, I don't mind spam. It only takes a few seconds to delete)

I don't get it.

They (CAUCE) complain that it shifts the burden onto the consumer to be a member of the opt-out list (which is free, and easy to get into). The complain that we are treating the symptoms and not the cause.

Bull. It costs the spammers money to even SEE the lists, and they face $500+ penalties if they don't check and mail first. Hence, this is a real financial deterrent (at least in those states). This artificially raises the transaction costs, which gets at the cause (that is, email is cheap and free).

Instead, CAUCE wants it to be like junk fax laws wherein no one can send you email without having established "a business relationship" with the recipient. I see too many ways of twisting this around in court that would prevent legitimate email from being sent to people when your first contact with them would be through that medium. It would scare people away from just sending email notes because they won't know how it'll be interpreted at the other end. I can envision paranoid use policies sprouting up in IT departments all over our fair land. Nooo!!!!

What is unclear is whether both the spammer and the spammee (sp ?) have to be in the same state (or in states with similar laws) for this to be effective. In that case, all the spammers will just base their operations in Florida where half the GDP comes from MLM and other scams.

Perhaps further investigation is necessary.

While the DMA does oppose HR 718 (as does The Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail CAUCE), they are in support of HR 1017, the Anti-Spamming Act of 2001.

Essentially, from what I gather, the DMA opposes HR 718 because it gives the ISPs the right to define their own spam policies and enforce them legally (as opposed to allowing individuals to determine what spam they would like to opt-out of).

I pay for a post office box, so sending me junk mail is exactly the same as sending me spam.

If I send junk mail to your P.O. box, who pays for the postage? Me. Not you. It is not analogous in any way.

When someone sends you spam, your ISP pays for the bandwidth, storage, and servers that receive it. Then they pass those increased costs on to their users -- including you.

I don't have the time to explain the basics to you, so just read the information at the links shown below:

Refutation of the "free speech" argument
Refutation of the it-does-not-cost-the-recipient-anything argument
Refutation of the postal mail analogy

Just because you don't like one sort of free speech does not mean that it should be made illegal.

Don't be an inflammatory ass.

I pay for a post office box, so sending me junk mail is exactly the same as sending me spam.

If I send junk mail to your P.O. box, who pays for the postage? Me. Not you. It is not analogous in any way.

When someone sends you spam, your ISP pays for the bandwidth, storage, and servers that receive it. Then they pass those increased costs on to their users -- including you.

I don't have the time to explain the basics to you, so just read the information at the links shown below:

Refutation of the "free speech" argument
Refutation of the it-does-not-cost-the-recipient-anything argument
Refutation of the postal mail analogy

Just because you don't like one sort of free speech does not mean that it should be made illegal.

Don't be an inflammatory ass.

I pay for a post office box, so sending me junk mail is exactly the same as sending me spam.

If I send junk mail to your P.O. box, who pays for the postage? Me. Not you. It is not analogous in any way.

When someone sends you spam, your ISP pays for the bandwidth, storage, and servers that receive it. Then they pass those increased costs on to their users -- including you.

I don't have the time to explain the basics to you, so just read the information at the links shown below:

Refutation of the "free speech" argument
Refutation of the it-does-not-cost-the-recipient-anything argument
Refutation of the postal mail analogy

Just because you don't like one sort of free speech does not mean that it should be made illegal.

Don't be an inflammatory ass.

Hey Cauce!

Bought a good senator lately? What, no you say?? You need to. This grass roots thing isn't owning your own senator. Buy your US congressperson today!

cluge

This might be very slightly offtopic, given that we're talking about a spam archive here and not about the mechanics of spam itself, but I'm curious.

This story is about someone who tried a little experiment: she wanted to see if the "click here to unsubscribe" link in most spams REALLY worked. So she tried the link and got INUNDATED with MORE spam.

Anyone have experience with this? A friend of mine agrees--she says that hitting the "Unsubscribe" link just verifies that your address is in fact a real and active one.

I always thought that was bullshit, because spammers don't seem to care whether addresses work or not (see The Story of Nadine. Any comments?

--Theresa

Here's a Spam Primer. The Coalition Against Unsolicited E-mail offers plenty of information as well.

It bothers me more than I can say - that the whole spam debate has now been hijacked by spammers. I've even seen the DMA described as 'legitimate marketers'. God help us.

But even that isn't as disturbing as the fact that erstwhile
real spam-haters are accepting this redefinition of what spam is, and what is objectionable about it.

For me the issue is really very simple. There is speech by humans, meant for humans, and there is speech by machines, just trying to shout loud enough to make a human hear them, and one type really is worth more than the other. The Internet has become the scene of that great battle described in The Terminator, between robots and humans.

And currently the robots are winning.

1. $1,000.00 USD guarantee that companies will abide by OUR rules and your information will never be sold or given out.
2. 100% True Opt-in
3. Nobody EVER sees any information you've signed up with other than the marketing preferences you have specified.
4. You will receive a flat fee per email received.
5. AND/OR you can specify a charity to receive all or part of the per email income.
6. Opt-out 100% completely at any time and have your account deactivated or destroyed.
7. Preferences:
8. 1. Allow you to be very specific about the types of material you will receive.
   2. You can also specify the maximum number of emails you will receive in a month.
   3. Block specific companies from contacting you.

1. $1,000.00 USD guarantee that every person that receives your marketing information explicitly signed up and was verified to receive it. (No pissed off customers!!!)
2. This WILL cost you more than the fly by night spammers charge.
3. You WILL reach a targetted audience.
4. Your advertisements will also be available from this site for a duration of time you specify up to 3 months.
5. All emails must be approved by us before being sent out. (No pornography or scam related material allowed.)
6. Nothing is sent out before payment is received. (This allows us to keep dishonest companies from signing up and not paying up.)
7. Users have the option to give you feedback on your advertisements.

1. Cauce: Coalition against unsolicited email
2. Spam Laws and Regulations
3. Spamcop: SPAM Reporting
4. Spampal: Windows Filtering Software
5. Spamhaus: Track the worst spammers

1. $1,000.00 USD guarantee that companies will abide by OUR rules and your information will never be sold or given out.
2. 100% True Opt-in
3. Nobody EVER sees any information you've signed up with other than the marketing preferences you have specified.
4. You will receive a flat fee per email received.
5. AND/OR you can specify a charity to receive all or part of the per email income.
6. Opt-out 100% completely at any time and have your account deactivated or destroyed.
7. Preferences:
8. 1. Allow you to be very specific about the types of material you will receive.
   2. You can also specify the maximum number of emails you will receive in a month.
   3. Block specific companies from contacting you.

1. $1,000.00 USD guarantee that every person that receives your marketing information explicitly signed up and was verified to receive it. (No pissed off customers!!!)
2. This WILL cost you more than the fly by night spammers charge.
3. You WILL reach a targetted audience.
4. Your advertisements will also be available from this site for a duration of time you specify up to 3 months.
5. All emails must be approved by us before being sent out. (No pornography or scam related material allowed.)
6. Nothing is sent out before payment is received. (This allows us to keep dishonest companies from signing up and not paying up.)
7. Users have the option to give you feedback on your advertisements.

1. Cauce: Coalition against unsolicited email
2. Spam Laws and Regulations
3. Spamcop: SPAM Reporting
4. Spampal: Windows Filtering Software
5. Spamhaus: Track the worst spammers

You'll probably get ignored, since S.1618 never got passed.

It's fake, and therefore, mention of it automatically marks it as spam in my filters.

According to the Australian Coalition Against Unsolicited Bulk E-Mail, Australia currently has mild opt-out spamming provisions, most of which are based on a voluntary code of conduct rather than legislation. Perhaps you were thinking of Europe, where there are opt-in rules which could be considered a sufficient deterrent to spammers.

Even so, would Australian laws apply if the spam originated from outside of Australia?

"Someone let me know if this DOES happen.. I'll be wanting a European email address the minute it occurs :)"

You might want to take a look at the The European Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email if you're really that interested.

Of particular importance is the Proposal for a directive concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector (PDF) which says:

Moveover, electronic mail for direct marketing purposes other than at the request of a subscriber (so-called 'spam'), will be covered by the same type of protection as exists for faxes. This means that spamming will be prohibited except with respect to subscripers who have indicated that they want to receive unsolicited e-mails for direct marketing purposes.

He's right - it isn't. But it damn well should be.

If ever there was a sentence that motivates you to support anti-spamming groups, the spammer's words above should be it.

If I didn't ask for it I don't want it.

I joined up just now. You?

Investigate your state laws here: http://law.spamcon.org/us-laws/index.shtml

Some of the states allow quite significant damages, for example, California law allows "damages of $50 per message, up to $25,000 per day, or its actual damages, whichever is greater."

If you are in a state with anti-spam laws you could really lay a hurtin' on them, and might even collect some dough in the process. (Although, given that we know they are unscrupulous, collecting will not be easy.)

Here are some other resources:
http://smallclaim.info/
http://www.spamcon.org/
http://www.aboutspam.com/
http://http://www.cauce.org/about/resources.shtml

Given What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org), I don't think submitting it to Slashdot as an article is even worth the e-mail.

I'll post it here just for reader enjoyment. I think it's better than many of the stories which WERE posted!

______

Spam "protection" - a modest proposal

by Seth Finkelstein
April 1 2002

The problem of Spam, i.e. junk e-mail, has been plaguing the net for years. This article makes a modest proposal for spam "protection", in terms of a novel economic analysis leading to the benefit of all concerned.

In economic terms, let's consider why there's profit in spamming (sending large numbers of unsolicited emails). This is due to the "cost-shifting" nature of the spam process. It takes very little effort to send a large number of e-mails. But e-mail is not free (as in beer). In effect, the spammer shifts the expense of the advertising campaign, from the seller, onto ISPs and users:

1. The ISP must pay (in resources) to distribute the spammer's ads
2. The user must pay (in time) to delete the spammer's ads

But what does this sorting organization do? Its only task is to try to identify spam from real mail. That is, it is paid to try to identify mail sent from spammers. However, since it is in an adversary relationship to the spammers, the spam-gangs have every reason to try to avoid such identification.

There have been some proposals to facilitate identification of spam by legally requiring labels. But that involves government and law. In fact, it's compelled speech! Instead, since the free market is the solution to all problems, the only proper course of action is to provide spammers with an economic incentive to identify themselves. After all, spam identification is the exact product being sold by third parties, so why pay a middle-man? If one is going to pay, for maximum market efficiency, why not pay the source?

In this scheme, the user pays a mailbox "protection fee" to an umbrella group, let's call it the "Spamafia". In return for this "protection", the "Spamafia" provides the user with a simple mailbox checking system which can be run over mail messages. Because this system works in a manner akin to passing items over a net barrier, it might be termed a "racket". So, the "racket" tests each piece of mail. Those mail messages which originate from members of the Spamafia each contain a certification token. In the process of testing the mail, this token is sent back to the Spamafia, and so redeemed to the individual spammer for a small fee, say a penny or so. In return, the user is given assurance that this message is certified as spam, and so can be automatically deleted without fear of losing legitimate mail. In essence, the spammer is given an incentive to also obtain a small amount of money from each smart user by being straightforward, rather than only trying to obtain a larger amount of money by fooling just a few suckers (and annoying everyone else).

The beauty of the system is that everyone has an incentive to participate. The spammers get more money, as the spams can generate income now from both the suckers, and the nonsuckers paying mailbox protection fees. There's no reason to evade spam-detection, in fact the opposite. The more people signed up to the protection racket, the more certification tokens are redeemed. The smart users get to have a workable mailbox, rather than one filled with junk. And they have the "peace of mind" that the mail being deleted is not important. It's the magic of the market at work.