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Then let me be the first to tell you. CAN-SPAM is likely to make spam worse. It was written by the DMA, designed to legalize their spam runs. It specifically tells companies "It's OK to spam, as long as you do it this way".

However, I'm not the first to say this, by a long shot. Using google, I can find numerous articles to that effect. Here are a few.

http://www.mailutilities.com/news/archive/163/2378 .html
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/43363
http://www.vnunet.com/news/1151902
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/01/09/canspam_me ans_we_can_spam/
http://www.wordsoup.com/word/archives/001243.html

There are many more examples.

Id be happy to accept all mail from www.*.mail if I could be sure it wasn't spam.

So would I - the problem is that's a *HUGE* 'if'.

Here's what will happen if the .mail domain gains widespread acceptance:

Spammer (say, someone like Monsterhut) will buy one of these domains. Spammer will set it up, then immediately start spamming with it.

Then, when they get a warning from the registrar, they'll file a lawsuit against the registrar, claiming that they're not spamming, and they'll get a preliminary injunction against the registrar, stopping them from following through on the suspension.

The lawsuit will take a year or two to wend it's way through the courts, during which time, the spammer happily continues spamming.

But don't take my word on this - it's already happened - go read about it for yourself.

To get around the fact that people will start adding a "whitelist exception" to block this particular .mail domain, the spammer will go and get another domain (and another, and another), and start all over again.

The end result? The .mail domain becomes useless.

Yes, it would be nice to have a domain you can guarantee isn't spam, but (to paraphrase Suzie Derkins,) as long as you're dreaming, you might as well wish for a pony.

No added value? You remember Clair? The guy that sent an email to his buddies about a night out, only to have it forwarded around the world? Yeah, well... every day people send confidential or embarasing email/documents. Heck, there's a couple times I wished that I could restrict who could read what I sent.

There's definitely added value here. Unless you're waiting for the next halloween document leak from Microsoft.

Isn't this the same company that employed Skylarov. Were we all defending a mass Spammer?

Elcomsoft has indeed sold a number of products which are indefensible spamware, specifically a program IIRC called "Advanced Email Extractor", a Web spider that extracts email addresses from Web pages. Elcomsoft spamware is largely distributed through mailutilities.com which in many ways seems to be a front, and is certainly very circumspect. That site's policy states that they will refuse to provide technical support to those who use their software to spam ... but it is easy to lie.

Are Elcomsoft products used to spam? Doubtless. Are they also used for other things? I don't know.

Does this mean that Dmitri Sklyarov is or was personally an author of spamware? We can't tell. I'm not sure how large Elcomsoft is, but it probably has several programmers, and Sklyarov may not have worked on these particular products. He certainly worked (works?) for a company that profited from spamming, though.

If Sklyarov wrote spamware, does that make him a criminal? Probably so in some jurisdictions; likely not in Russia. Does it make him crooked? By my count, yes: creating tools with the intent that they be used for lawless purpose is crooked behavior.

Does any of that justify his treatment by agents of the United States government? No.

It sounds like this effort will involve a tracing operation, digging in to find the systems, the software, and the people behind the spam.

What will the reward be for implicating the spam-enabling software vendors? One in particular that comes to mind is Elcomsoft. Will there be a $10K reward for dragging Dmitry's bizzness into court?

(note, the 'Advanced Email Extractor' tool linked to above used to be a link right on the elcomsoft.com web page, but that alternative 'MailUtilites' web page still comes up as one of the top five links in Google when you search on 'elcomsoft.' I suspect they're hiding their association with the 'mail utilites' product line to get geek sympathy. Spread the word, they sell tools to the spammers!)

Elcomsoft also has a fine line of spammer's tools.

They make products for the management of lists of email addresses, and also a fine product that is used to 'harvest' email addresses from web forums like this very site. Note that until recently that mailutilities.com link was prominent in the product lineup on the main Elcomsoft web pages.

They've been termed 'the spammer's mercenary' more than a few times for selling tools that the typical clueless spammer would never be able to come up with on their own.

The people who say 'kill the fucking spammer, die, die' should be working to destroy Elcomsoft, a company of hackers who work for 'the other side' on the spamming issue.

Fishing through their latest main website incarnation, I notice they've 'cleaned up' the site and there's no link to their email harvesting products directly from the elcomsoft.com web page, as there was within the last month. They've put up a firewall between their 'we're just cool hackers with password cracking tools' and their 'we help the spammers get to your mailbox' product lines. They're learning.

They used to sell (well they say they no longer do)

• Advanced Direct Remailer (bulk emailer) http://www.mailutilities.com/adr/
• Advanced Email Extractor (WWW email harvester) http://www.mailutilities.com/aee/

They used to sell (well they say they no longer do)

• Advanced Direct Remailer (bulk emailer) http://www.mailutilities.com/adr/
• Advanced Email Extractor (WWW email harvester) http://www.mailutilities.com/aee/

The most ironic thing to do in this case would be for everyone to send mail to them asking for more information on their adr mailing system.

Take down companies like this:

http://www.mailutilities.com/adr/

I dunno - hold an Afghan wedding there and get them bombed to shit...

Let us not forget that Elcomsoft is also the purveyor of Advanced Email Extractor, an email-harvesting program. Given that spammers are always screaming "free speech!", is it any wonder why Skylarov and his employers have used the free-speech 1st Amendment avenue to justify their actions? Pure co-incidence? I think not. Come to think of it, is Elcomsoft a Skylarov one-man-band, or do they have other programmers code their spamware? And in case anyone's wondering... no, I don't work for or support Adobe at all.

If this guy had had the tool (Advanced Email Extractor) that Elcomsoft**, and 'freedom poster boy' Dmitry has developed and sells, he wouldn't have had to scratch around and only send spam to a small list of email addresses.

Yep. Mister Poster boy, the guy the EFF considers their big hero, works for a company that produces an email-harvesting utility for extracting addresses from Websites and other online content.

Just lovely. And yet we all LOVE the little dude and want to make sure he's okay. Send in money to support his fight to sell his products in America.

** They appear to be hiding the 'Mail Utilities' site under a one way link away from ElcomSoft's main page. These fuckers KNOW what they're doing and they know it's dirty.

I have to ask then:

What is your feeling on the ElcomSoft Advanced Email Extractor tool? To quote from the sales site: Advanced Email Extractor (AEE) is designed to extract e-mail addresses from web-pages on the Internet (using HTTP and HTTPS protocols) and from HTML and text files on local disks.

It's a spammer tool, designed to harvest email addresses from weblogs like Slashdot so that spammers can use them.

It's also from Elcomsoft, the place where our little 'freedom poster boy' Dmitry works.

When the anti-spam people start hammering these fucks for arming the enemy, I will start taking them seriously.

How about the /. hero Dmitry Sklyarov, his company ElcomSoft makes bulkmailer and Advanced Email extractor as well as other tools to clean email address lists and localize them. His company has made lots of $$$$ selling spam tools.

For background information, here is the product that his company sells which spammers use to harvest email addresses.

Don't think it will happen? I bet, if freenets become more popular, someone builds a customized spamming laptop (802.11, long battery life - old 486 or Pentium subnotebook is fine) for this exclusive purpose and starts selling it on eBay. It wouldn't be difficult at all!

Just checked your URL. Even though the company he works for does stuff that none of us like, that doesn't mean he doesn't have rights. If I drink Coke, and you drink Pepsi, is it right for me to cheer when wrongful things are done to you?

But they have a link to their anti-spam policy (http://www.mailutilities.com/antispam). Here are some of the provisions:

"We reserve the right to refuse technical support and/or other services if you:

1. send unsolicited email; or
2. you hijack a mail server relay; or
3. distribute illegal information or materials; or
4. forge header information; or
5. put false of misleading information in the subject; or
6. fail to provide a means for unsubscribing from your lists."

Who else finds this amusing, coming from a company that makes something used to lift e-mail addresses to spam?

However, on July 16, Russian computer programmer Dmitry Sklarov was arrested by the FBI for writing a computer program and presenting a paper on it at a security conference in Las Vegas.

It's worse that Elcomsoft sells rather nasty spamware.

If it had been idealism, I would have been on the barricade right away, but this is a case of Elcomsoft's money vs. Adobe's money, and I think I'll limit my protest to underwriting petitions, and speak out against the use of PDF.

But you guys need to get rid of DMCA, it is clearly a significant threat to free expression, and I guess this is a good case to use in that fight. Just don't make heros of Elcomsoft.