H.R. 3113: Spam Bounty Hunters Wanted

belgin writes: "According to this ZDNet article, the U.S. House Commerce Committee is considering a law that places a bounty on illegal spammers. These bounties would be paid to ISPs and individuals who track down and turn in spammers. Specific types of spam mentioned by the article include fraudulent spam and spam that attempts to falsify its origin. Fun to think about if you've landed on one too many spam lists, but a little scary in 'leads to ...' department." The bill, called H.R. 3113, or the Unsolicited Electronic Mail Act of 2000, would impose Federal law in the form of what seem to be common-sense restrictions on electronic junk. But belgin is right -- what consequences might laws like this have that we don't want to trade for, even in spam? Would private solutions be better in the long term?[updated 18th May 2000 13:45GMT by timothy] Not to be confused with last year's H.R. 3113.

Comments

Private solutions? Sure, they're waiting for you!

[Frater 219]

Ummm.....If there are viable private solutions to this scourge, then why haven't we seen them already?

There are viable private solutions to spam. See the Mail Abuse Prevention System. Using MAPS's lists to filter your incoming mail will significantly reduce the amount of spam you receive. No, it will not eliminate all spam -- but neither does any "solution" to a social problem entirely eliminate that problem. (Certainly law is not a perfect solution to problems -- otherwise, why do we still have murder, theft, and copyright violation?)

(One of the great things about MAPS is that the more participants, the better it gets. If you use MAPS to filter your mail, then report spam you receive back to MAPS appropriately, you will be helping to improve the service -- thus reducing your future spam intake and everyone else's.)

I am not sure if a private solution would work in this situation because of the "free speech" arguements and also of the multi-juristdictional nature of the problem.

It's funny you should mention those -- because those are, in fact, two problems with law-based solutions which do not affect private solutions.

"Freedom of speech", as protected by the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights and the U.S. Constitution (among others), is more accurately described as the freedom to use your own resources, including your voice and your property, to speak your mind. It does not justify your use of other people's property to speak your mind. That, however, is what spammers do -- they use my mail server, without my permission, to spam me, my users, and others. In the civilized world we call that "theft of services" -- just as if I owned a printing press and you crept in by night and used my press to print up your leaflets.

The legal trouble, then, lies in defining "permission". Some would argue (and have argued) that by connecting a mail server to the Internet you are implicitly granting everyone permission to use it as much as they want, for whatever purpose they want -- including spamming. The opposite extreme is to hold that only explicitly solicited mail is granted permission -- which would rule out a lot of perfectly legitimate mail. Both of these are IMHO ridiculous extremes. A legal attempt to stop spam, however, must deal with these issues in defining spam. Veer to far towards the first position, and you violate property rights; veer too far towards the second, and you violate freedom of speech. A private attempt to stop spam can define permission extensionally -- i.e. by example. This is exactly what cooperative, voluntary systems like MAPS's lists do. The lists are made up of addresses associated with actual pieces of spam received and reported by participants.

You also mention the "multi-jurisdictional nature of the problem". This, too, is a problem solely for legal attempts to stop spam, and not private ones. Private cooperation among ISPs and among users may easily ignore governmental borders -- indeed, it already does. MAPS participants come from all corners of the globe.

For all those anti-government folks, I am surprised to see that a creation of a civilian anti-spam force is so distrubing to you.

What's so "anti-government" about bounty-hunters and more laws? That's about as "anti-government" as any other case of stool-pigeonry.

As a Libertarian, I object to government meddling in private affairs. I also object to crime (i.e. the violation of people's rights), and I consider spamming to be criminal, regardless of whether or not government thinks it is. Spamming is a violation of the property rights of those spammed, and of the owners of mail servers that relay and store the spam. I support people taking private action to protect themselves from crime, insofar as they feel the need to do so, and can do so without violating others' rights in the process -- and that is exactly what MAPS and similar systems do.

If you are emotionally dependent on government to protect your rights -- in other words, if you are unwilling to protect them yourself -- what rights do you really have?

what consequences?

[geekpress]

The ./ summary hints at some potentially scary future as a result of the precedent set by this bill. Well, we already have worse incentive programs. Thanks to DARE, kids turn in their parents for smoking pot. Compared to that, the precedent set by hunting down spammers seems pretty benign.

Nevertheless, any program where people are rewarded for turning in other people for alleged misdeeds has a KGB aura to it, no doubt. But why should we be so suspicious if the misdeed is, in fact, A Bad Thing?

Well, we should be suspicious if it is only A Bad Thing and not An Evil Thing. SPAM is a pain, but it's just not on the same level as rape or murder. There is a real difference between giving someone an incentive to turn in their rapist neighbor vs their spamming neighbor. The law ought to see a difference between the magnitude of those two acts, rather than lumping them together as "lawbreakers."

Then again, if they'll let me hunt them spammers with my shotgun in hand, to hell with the precedents! :-)

-- Diana Hsieh