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1) Set a technical standard for senders to classify emails in the header fields. Say, an X-header like "X-Mail-Classification: ".

Is this in addition to the "X-Priority" header that is abused by spammers?

Is this in addition to the requirements in various states that all commercial email shall have a subject line prefix of "ADV:", "ADLT:ADV", "ADV-ADULT", or "ADVERT"?

2) Set a similar technical standard for rating the adultness of websites. Make an HTTP header field, call it "Content-Rating"

Like the "meta NAME="Rating" CONTENT ="General" http header which is fairly common.
Or the more common:
"meta HTTP-EQUIV =" PICS-Label" CONTENT =' (PICS-1.1 "http://www.weburbia.com/safe/ratings.htm" 1 r (s 0) )'"
which happens to be safesurf. There are several organizations which provide a similar service.

3) Pass a bill in congress making it a legal requirement that all sites and emails MUST contain these headers, unless they fall in the "best" category

Spammer Rule # 3 kicks in at that point, and effectively defeats the purpose of that legislation. Review the state legislation at Spamlaws.com/state and count the number of states that require the subject line to state that it is an add. Then count the number that require the subject line to not be misleading.

4) Obviously once the headers are well-defined, and prevalent because of the legal requirement,

Current anti-spam legislation is clearly defined --- for individual states. Yet the amount of spam has gone up since the legislation was passed, not down.

Most current browsers can, and to take advantage of filtering systems such as that offered by SafeSurf.

My solution for email is to use RBLs like SPEWS --- except that SPEWS is way too tolerant of spammers, and spam supporting domains.

Wind under Thy Wings

Amber

Ultimately the only way to put a stop to spamming is a few civil trials (possibly criminal, too, wire fraud, etc.) and hang a few examples out to dry.

• Spamford Wallace:
  http://www.clickz.com/em_mkt/em_mkt/print.php/1871 971
  http://news.com.com/2100-1023-279546.html?tag=bpls t
  http://www.whew.com/On-Line_Spam/Legal/usa/web_sys tems_corp_v_cyber_promotions.shtml
  http://www.whew.com/On-Line_Spam/Legal/usa/concent ric_network_corp_v_wallace.shtml
  http://www.whew.com/On-Line_Spam/Legal/usa/bigfoot _partners_v_cyberPromotions.shtml
  http://www.whew.com/On-Line_Spam/Legal/usa/aol_v_c yberpromo.shtml
• Christopher Moss:
  http://www.whew.com/On-Line_Spam/Legal/usa/hotmail _v_vans_money_pie_inc.shtml
• Bulk ISP:
  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/13 4390118_spam12m.html
  http://slashdot.org/articles/01/12/13/149225.shtml
• CyberData:
  http://www.smallclaim.info/cyberdata/
• Print Doctor, Inc:
  http://www.smallclaim.info/printdoctor/
• Xavier Exotic Herbs:
  http://www.smallclaim.info/xavierenterprises/
• Jason Heckel:
  http://www.phillipsnizer.com/library/cases/lib_cas e285.cfm
• Gillman:
  http://www.spamlaws.com/cases/gillman1.html

Need more cases, look at SpamLaws.com Benchmark is conspicious by its absence in the above list. [ At least three states nailed him. ]

I think my point is clear. There have been successfull lawsuits by both private individuals, and mega-corporations, with fines / damages ranging from $500 to $2 000 000.

And the spam keeps pouring in.

Wind under Thy Wings

Amber

I don't think Congress should be regulating the Internet at all; besides the fact that any American laws have little to no effect outside of the US, letting Congress decide what information can flow freely seems like the start of a slippery slope.

Please define INFORMATION. I read this bill as simply outlawing a kind of fraud: false or misleading subject headers or transmission headers. (Read US Senate Bill 877.) What exactly is the objection to this?

Express your view of this legislation by writing a US Senator. If you have US Senate representation, please : write your senators Encourage others to write.

I find it vaguely amusing that the complaint accuses Spews and Spamhaus of interrupting and blocking "the internet traffic of lawful businesses and individuals."

Name one.

By preference, one that complied with each and every one of the various anti-spam laws in the US. Anyone on the plaintiff's side of the case who did not abide by those laws should be jailed for perjury, I think...

And some of the complaint-items worthy of particular derision:

4: Failure to provide proper and correct addresses to the public for Spews and Spamhaus. Pot calling the kettle black here, maybe? Just a bit?
21: If the IP-addresses and servers in question were your property at the time, all you have to do is prove it. Though I doubt that the business practises were legal anyway...
23: So? So have I. But they didn't block you; they put you on a list that individuals and ISP's used (and trusted) to block you. Sue all of the ISPs that use that list. Dare ya!
32: How many Americans will become unemployed? The owner/operators of the individual spam-companies? Boo hoo!
39: Oh? Really?

"Just hit delete"? Yeah, that will win you a lot of friends here boy.

Uy is doing a public service, in his state, Maryland, and in many others, people can SUE spamming creeps like Dr. Fatburn / George Moore, Jr. - the address to his business/home can be used to serve the court papers.

And there is no "dangerous line" being walked. One would assume Uy got the address info from either Fatass' website or the Whois lookup. Is ICANN going to be in a "spot of trouble" if harm befalls Mr. Moore?

(hint: NO!)

The law in question has been upheld in other federal circuits, and not recently. Take a look at Destination Ventures v. FCC

I'll bite Troll.

First, a full text search of Utah Code Annotated only pulls up the word "anal" in reference to children and rape. I assume those aren't the laws you call screwed up. Show me the law you are talking about, because I don't believe you.

Second, A full text search of all Utah state and federal cases brings up *not one result* for Universal Life Church, which means no case was tried involving it. The same for a full text search of Utah Code Annotated. Again, I don't belive you, so you will have to show me.

Finally, if you read the article and other posts here about the case, the reason he lost is fairly reasonable. Also, the clause exempting a previous business relationship is found in other state statutes, including Colorado, Delaware, and Ohio.

While your claims about Utah law are so far entirely unfounded, the message your post is stating pretty clearly is that you have some sort of emotional objection to Utah and the people there. I suggest you get over it, but the least you could do is verify your misinformation before spreading it around.

I'll bite Troll.

First, a full text search of Utah Code Annotated only pulls up the word "anal" in reference to children and rape. I assume those aren't the laws you call screwed up. Show me the law you are talking about, because I don't believe you.

Second, A full text search of all Utah state and federal cases brings up *not one result* for Universal Life Church, which means no case was tried involving it. The same for a full text search of Utah Code Annotated. Again, I don't belive you, so you will have to show me.

Finally, if you read the article and other posts here about the case, the reason he lost is fairly reasonable. Also, the clause exempting a previous business relationship is found in other state statutes, including Colorado, Delaware, and Ohio.

While your claims about Utah law are so far entirely unfounded, the message your post is stating pretty clearly is that you have some sort of emotional objection to Utah and the people there. I suggest you get over it, but the least you could do is verify your misinformation before spreading it around.

I'll bite Troll.

First, a full text search of Utah Code Annotated only pulls up the word "anal" in reference to children and rape. I assume those aren't the laws you call screwed up. Show me the law you are talking about, because I don't believe you.

Second, A full text search of all Utah state and federal cases brings up *not one result* for Universal Life Church, which means no case was tried involving it. The same for a full text search of Utah Code Annotated. Again, I don't belive you, so you will have to show me.

Finally, if you read the article and other posts here about the case, the reason he lost is fairly reasonable. Also, the clause exempting a previous business relationship is found in other state statutes, including Colorado, Delaware, and Ohio.

While your claims about Utah law are so far entirely unfounded, the message your post is stating pretty clearly is that you have some sort of emotional objection to Utah and the people there. I suggest you get over it, but the least you could do is verify your misinformation before spreading it around.

• David E. Sorkin, Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, 45 Buffalo L. Rev. 1001 (1997)
• Aronson v. Bright-Teeth Now, 57 Pa. D. & C. 4th 1 (Pa. Com. Pl. June 19, 2002)

• David E. Sorkin, Unsolicited Commercial E-Mail and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, 45 Buffalo L. Rev. 1001 (1997)
• Aronson v. Bright-Teeth Now, 57 Pa. D. & C. 4th 1 (Pa. Com. Pl. June 19, 2002)

The key phrase here is "or cause to be e-mailed". That would appear to make the advertiser liable, even if they hired some third party to do the spam run.

On that note, if you recently received unsolicited E-mail advertising "New Century Mortgage Corporation" of Irvine, California, and live in California, I would like to hear about it. Thank you.

I don't agree with Limbaugh's judgement, I think it shows him to be an opinionated ass. He seems to have forgotten the bit about the judiciarry only overturning legislative decisions with great reluctance. This is an example of exercising jusidical perogative rather than defending the constitution.

I was not aware that states could opt out of federal laws...

I suspect that what you are refering to is the fact that the Junk Fax law was struck down in the Nixon decision. The judgement is written by a complete ass and is full of pretty opinionated twaddle that hopefully the appeals court will strike down.

Unfortunately Limbaugh has one point that is quite likely to stand on appeal, namely that a blanket ban on junk fax is not the least restrictive measure that would serve the state's purpose since an opt-out list would be less intrusive. I don't agree but the argument may well survive.

Here's how to find out...

Consider this:
In these articles, you have just read the names and locations of spammers bragging about how they lined their pockets with profits from abusing ISPs' and every user's resources by massively junk-mailing "postage due" at everyone else's expense - so wouldn't your provider's postmaster and legal department (especially if the company has suffered a veritable, miserable "nightmare before Christmas" this year because of these spams), as well as the Federal Trade Commission officials processing the Consumer Complaint Forms, and usually agencies like your State's Attorney General (or in some states, even your personal legal counsel) be more than happy to go after those guys who have just admitted their spamming practices and actually identified themselves with all of their profits ripe for the reaping?
Sorkin's Spamlaws Site gives a good idea about who will certainly appreciate receiving all these pieces of information from the media reports and the spams you've received as a present for Christmas, probably to prosecute by 01/02/03 at the latest...
Providing profitable pointers about proven perpetrators might just be what the enforcement people prefer even over Santa himself showing up in their offices...
They'll know what to do and they'll know whom to sue.

In the last 34 hours or so, since the logs last rotated, my server has received almost 1000 spams and blocked the delivery of over 8000 more. I'll call that 6000 spams in 24 hours. This is just one mail server on a large campus with many different mail servers.

At $60,000 a day (dreaming) per machine a cluster of honeypots could wipe out the university's $11 million budget defecit in a week or two.

i am just curious what the laws are, well, there aren't any federal laws i suppose. spamlaws.com has a good summary of the last congress.

It just seems like there would be commercial speech issues that would ultimately uphold spam. States have passed laws though, right? there was that story on salon the other day about someone suing Elizabeth Dole for political spam. I just wonder if any studies have been done on the various state laws that have been passed, and which states those are. seems like a worthy study.

Maryland Internet Marketing LLC, George Alan Moore Jr, 300 Twin Oaks Rd, Linthicum MD, 21090-2154, 877-655-3438, 410-963-8226.

His domains include softwareincorporated.com and ultimatediets.com. He usually sells McAfee VirusScan. If he's spammed you since October, you can sue.

It isn't a crime in most places.

Condoning spam actually encourages spammers, not just to continue their business at everyone else's expense, but sometimes even to sue people who refuse to pay for receiving the pitches for their scams.
This means that as long as spam is considered a legitimate business, fighting it can be dangerous, even though it is spying out your personal data and usage patterns as well as inundating your entire families' inboxes (including those of children!) with UCE for all sorts of fraud and porn.

Fortunately the voices of reason are finally being heard, therefore much of this is changing:
Spam has just become illegal (article 13) in the entire European Economic Area.

Soon spam will swamp everything else. (...)
OK, spam is not a good thing, but aren't we getting a little carried away here?

The one point you're forgetting could actually be seen as implied in your own statement: Spammers spam everything, everyone, every address, everywhere, all the time. If it's legal, their numbers will continue to rise.

Digital convergence brings eMail addresses to phones, and pagers have also had them for a long time (now tell me how you click "opt out" on any of these!). If the phone or pager of a doctor becomes unusable due to this "perfectly legal activity", it won't be long before people are dying. If the same happens to the device of a firefighter, a hospital's or an airport's system administrator, people are dying all the same, in the name of spam.

If you think this threat is greatly exaggerated, Japan is a few years ahead in mobile technology (page 3), and with spam making up more than 80% of all messaging, their experience with what will globally become everyone's future of electronic communications is just devastating.

Make sure there will be a federal law against spam - and you'd better speak up before it's too late...

Your congress(wo)man is waiting for your mail.
Just now. And tomorrow. And all week/month/year through, until they finally stop the spam.

It's legalese, "fraudulent" being defined as anything that's demonstrably false -- get-rich-quick etc. This leaves all the "non-fraudulent" enter-now-to-win and marketing crap perfectly legal (but no less annoying). As long as people keep biting and buying stuff marketed through spam, it's not going to stop. There's some useful info on the various legal resources to spam here. The definition differs continent to continent, country to country and state to state.

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

An excellent point, and not one with which I disagree. I think federalizing anti-spam law would be a fantastic idea; this is exactly the sort of cross-border commerce that the federal government is designed to regulate. Congress has taken a couple of (aborted) runs at it, but hasn't managed to pass anything yet.

Granted, there is still the problem of conflicting national approaches..

And, as a technical matter, she is almost certainly breaking California law.

Is she conducting business in California? Yep.

Is she sending spam to California residents? Yep.

Is she using equipment located in California? Yep. (Here, she using both the equipment of the recipients and, apparently, servers in Berkeley.)

Has she included the "ADV:" tag in her subject lines, as required by statute? Nope. (She indicates as much in the article.)

Hell, she's all but admitted to violating California law.

If I were her, I'd be a little worried about little Chris & Craig's college fund. If she pisses off the wrong folks, she could find herself in court.

Perhaps (and perhaps not) abortion is immoral, unethical, wrong, etc. Well, so is spam, but spam also happens to be illegal . That's all the difference in the world.

Am I missing something, or is this a no-brainer? The Dole campaign's electronic mail is non-commercial, therefore the law doesn't apply.

Here's one location of the text of the law...

Sueing spammers, or ISPs, or those whom spam advertises is a waste of time (and money). Various theories have been tried. None have worked. The principle reason is because spam is, by law, considered commercial free speech. Sorry folks. That's the real world, not our geek utopia. As such, it is protected by the constitution. Read Missouri v. Blastfax. Because spam has already been found to be contitutionally protected free speech, any law restricting spam (or used in a case to try to restrict spam) must pass what is called the "Central Hudson test." One must prove that the government (via law) has a "substantial interest" in protecting the public from the offense. In order to prove that, you have to prove substantial harm or potential harm. Good luck. For example, it used to be illegal for tabacco companies to advertise in certain cases and lawyers to advertise at all... because the gov't was supposedly protecting the public. However, BOTH of those restrictions have since been overturned. Can you prove spam more harmful than cigarettes or ambulance chasers? The so-called anti-fax law has been determined in court to be unconstitutional. Why would anyone think it could work for spam? Examples of other approaches: 1) theft. Do the math. Spam costs the recipient maybe $20 a year, and that's if you are getting ripped off by your ISP. Not "substantial." Your time is irrelevant. Suing for theft of your time is like suing the guy who wrecked his car and made you sit in traffic for three hours. 2) suing your ISP. You have a contract with your ISP, you can only sue for breach of that contract. Do you really think your ISP is going to leave the contract open to that? 3) intentional affliction of emotional distress - try to prove intent here. They claim ignorance and you're out legal fees. 4) unfair trade practices - these laws are pretty cut and dried. You'd have to prove the spam was either fraudulent or misleading. Some spam might fall into this category, but not much. The only possible legal remedy for spam is a no-call sort of opt-out system. However, in states where no-call laws exist for telemarketing, they have not been effective at detering telemarketing calls.

As for what they are going to do with it--us not-so-paranoid people would expect them to use it to generate a "paper trail", a collection of evidence, for the location, apprehension, and prosecution of said spammer. We who are paranoid may worry about the government taking a sudden interest in us when they discover we exist, but I would tend to think that argument is well worn and a little unfounded anyway.

Nevertheless, it's always nice to see it happen when the public gets a startling revelation of what they really have at their disposal--lots of people simply don't know, and since they don't know, they can't very well take proper advantage of the tools afforded them as US citizens.

Now, if you go look at Spam Laws you'll see the US has been considering a few federal bills, but haven't gotten anywhere yet. But a lot of states do have laws in effect--whether these have had stood up in court is another question...

5. JURISDICTION. Transmitting or causing the transmission of unsolicited bulk electronic mail to or through an interactive computer service's computer network located in this state shall constitute an act in this state.

That legalese, I think, is sufficiently clear to stand by itself. That said, of course, IANAL.

On another note, Utah and Ohio are somewhat known for tighter legal control.
After all, they are among the states that get special mention on those satellite channels that give titillating promos for the porn channels.
And they're the states that were the reason for the "you may have other rights, which vary from state to state" you find in most license agreements; these states are the ones that have laws that specify that even a license that completely disclaims all liability can't be held up in court.
In short, if I agreed a little more with some of their more unconventional laws, I'd move to Utah in a heartbeat.

But FWIW, I have begun documenting my spams. Occasionally I do unsubscribe, but most I just send to the Federal Trade Commission. I figure that someday there might be a precedent, and I wouldn't mind making $500 per unsolicited email. :)
Anyway, I got the idea for spamming the FTC from here.

HTH. HAND.

http://www.spamlaws.com/state/

Funny thing is though, he's right! As anoying as it is, as much as I hate to admit it, spamming isn't really illegal anywhere yet.

Where are there laws against spam? I belive there is some minor state level legislation in Oregon or Washington or something?

Here's a list. There are also laws against trademark infringement (which many spammers engage in), trespass to chattel (which many ISPs could use against certain methods of spamming), ponzi schemes (I still get a lot of those), etc. I currently have a spammer using my email address as the From address in his/her spams. So I get all the bounces, not to mention many of the angry complaints. That's clearly illegal, as it is trespass to chattel at the very least (probably many other laws). But I don't have the money to sue them in court, and you can't sue John Does in small claims court, and you can't even begin investigating who the spammer is without a subpeona. Then on top of that, they're probably using computers outside the U.S. jurisdiction anyway. I really don't think laws are going to help. But at this point I'm willing to let the government waste my tax money trying. Then maybe after a few years of that failure we can start spending our time and efforts on solutions which will actually fix the problem.

But just says there are laws and we need passport doesn't make it so.

Wait a second... We don't need passport. Passport is a bad implementation. It's a horrible implementation. But we do need a better way to sign up for things over the web. We shouldn't be using email addresses as a unique identifier for people. It's just not a good solution.

As for examples of what I am talking about, I live in Texas which resently enacted an "Opt out telemarketing" approach, basically for a couple bucks you can get on a state conrtolled "do not call list" which ALL telemarketers are required to buy, if they call you and you are on the list, they get like a 500 dollar fine, suffice to say I used to get several calls a day, now I get NONE!!!

I've explained this in another one of my posts, but I'll briefly get into it again. These laws work for telephone calls because it's easy to trace telephone calls. They won't work for email because it's very difficult and expensive (and in many cases impossible) to trace email. Most of my spam doesn't come from legitimate companies. Next time I get a chance I'll go through my mail and put up a website with statistics on exactly where my spam does come from.

Weren't there laws put in place to stop this kind of thing? Somebody needs to take some action to stop this crap. I am really getting sick of those "get rid of your debt today" spam messages in my box. I'm about to set up a rule to reply "But I don't have any f***ing debt you spam eating a**hole!"

Does this new bill mean (if it were in the US) it would have to be xenu.prn?

As the Usenet thread points out, does this mean the Democratic Underground would have to move to democraticunderground.prn?

What's ICANN got to say about all this, since (I thought) they turned down .sex, .xxx, and .porn?

(Nevermind, scratch that last part.. I couldn't care less about what ICANN has to say about this.)

This seems to me to be one-upping the legislation that tries to redefine SMTP . Yikes.

Spam laws

Especially

Summary of US State spam laws

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

Spam laws

Especially

Summary of US State spam laws

Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)

Nice to know that they're going after a California Corporation. California Anti-Spam Laws are based on the fax spam laws. Doesn't seem that MoFo is trying to set precedence. Just make some dough...

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.

The idea of charging spammers for their spam isn't entirely new. A few people I've spoken to people on USENET claim include a disclaimer in their signatures, charging $500USD for unsolicited mail

Don't forget that many states have laws that entitle spam recipients to this same amount. You still have to take them to small claims court though and possibly even go through a collection agency. (Heck, I live in a $500-a-pop state...with the amount of spam I get, I could easily afford to hire a full time staff to handle everything from going to court to contacting the collection agencies).

I am attempting to do the same. I recieved a spam a couple days ago that caought my attention. They had copied an image from my homepage and used that in the spam they emailed me.

I sent them back a letter demanding $110 for my time wasted. $100 for 'legal fees' and $10 under colorado law for each unsolicited commercial email.

Hopefully if enough people do this, spammers will be more careful to who they send emails. Either that or spammers might start something like the RBL except it would be a list of spam-unfriendly recipients. That'll be the day...

but if they do nothing, I can at least take them to small claims court and attempt to get at least $10 out of them, according to colorado law

(b) In any such action, the prevailing party other than the originator of the unsolicited commercial electronic mail message is also entitled to recover as part of the judgment a civil penalty in the amount of ten dollars for each unsolicited commercial electronic mail message transmitted in violation of this article.

What chances I have of actually ever seeing this money, I do not know, but I'm trying to do a bit to make them stop.

What was interesting about this spam, is the fact that they harvested an image from my home page, and put it in their UCE, to catch my attention. And well, it worked. Spammers these days are getting smarter.

Anyone who has a few extra minutes should write up a canned reply to send to all the spam email you get. For those of you who are lucky enough to live in a place where there is a law against spam, you could possible get some cash out of a spammer if you take them to small claims court.

There have been a few cases where spammers have been forced to pay up, so if enough people start doing it, they just may be a little more careful about who they send unwanted email.

What was interesting about this spam, is the fact that they harvested an image from my home page, and put it in their UCE, to catch my attention. And well, it worked. Spammers these days are getting smarter.

Anyone who has a few extra minutes should write up a canned reply to send to all the spam email you get. For those of you who are lucky enough to live in a place where there is a law against spam, you could possible get some cash out of a spammer if you take them to small claims court.

There have been a few cases where spammers have been forced to pay up, so if enough people start doing it, they just may be a little more careful about who they send unwanted email.

So MoFo.com is going for the amx the law will allow, they might even get attorney's fees out of it (Section 5, sub f, sub 2).

Agreed. You can cite U.S. state-specific violations from this page. Remember, it's just as easy for them to ignore e-mail as it is for you to ignore spam, so send a postal letter to your representative or senator.

Although there is no federal law, some states have them forbidding unsolicited spam. For the details in your area, go here.

I know that the State of Washington has a state do-not-call list/do-not-email list. Basically if you put yourself on this list and a company calls your or spams you, they are held liable to pay a fine to you. I remember reading somewhere how a guy is making ~5000 a year from suing spammers. Here are more legal information sites

Ahh, but if they spame nicely then they will have valid return-email addys, won't they? Or optimally, an X-UCE header, or some such.

Or, as the California and Colorado state laws require, the Subject header begins with "ADV:", although this is incompatible with some other spam laws.

I still think per-address-pair hash cash is a better solution; see the LAPO hash-cash demo applet for a simple hash cash generator implementation.