E-Mail Patent Roundup From The NYT

griffjon writes: "This NYT article details a new patent on getting spam to offline e-mail readers with popup ads and banners more annoying than your average spam. Fantastic. Also contains a funny patent about e-mailing stolen computers to retrieve them." I love the system that would let a predetermined e-mail subject line "initiate a predetermined security response, either locking the display screen so nothing would appear, showing only the name and contact information of the owner or erasing the laptop's hard drive." That one sounds foolproof, eh? (freeregistrationrequiredofcourse.)

Comments

You need to FIND the stolen computer first.

[itarget]

I'd love to know how they'd expect us to find a stolen machine in order to issue the "kill" email to it.

It's going to be on the net with a completely different ISP (if at all), and the new owner is not likely to access your email account even if the password is available; most ISPs I know of block POP3/IMAP connections that aren't coming from their own subnets.

Unknown IP address, no email connection, no points of contact... so how's this kill email supposed to be anything but a timebomb waiting to go off on the legitimate owner?

I'm just glad I don't have such an embarassing patent under my name. =)
---
Where can the word be found, where can the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.

No end to spam

[ibot]

Spam's not going anywhere. Get a fast internet connection and set up rules to delete and live with the few seconds a day it takes to delete the spam that gets left out by the filter.

Founder's Camp

Re:No end to spam

[B1]

Of course, this couldn't possibly be a troll...no way...

I too am for DeCSS, but I have trouble seeing how anybody could be pro-spam.

The big problem with spam is that the cost is borne by the recipient and their ISP, not the originator. This isn't like the bulk-rate mail you get in your mailbox (paid for by the sender). This is like getting telemarketers on your cell phone while roaming.

Here's how it works...

The spammer gets their hands on a mass email program which fakes his Email address and message headers, finds an open SMTP relay, and fires away--whether he sends 100 or 100,000 Emails to carefully harvested Email addresses or randomly generated hotmail addresses, his cost is the same--the cost of a throwaway ISP account or stolen passowrd--negligible.

The recipient pays for their ISP connection (possibly hourly), and outside of North America, he also pays toll charges for his phone line. After paying to download an inbox full of spam, the recipient now has to delete the spam by hand, or install anti-spam software/filters and hope the spammers haven't found yet another way around his filter. Multiply that by 1000 or 100,000 recipients and you're talking about a lot of wasted time, bandwidth, storage, and money.

The recipient's ISP pays for mail server processing and storage capacity, a good portion of which is wasted on:

• Storing spam in the customer's mailbox
• Possibly running a spam filter on every incoming Email message
• Sending bounce messages for all the spam sent to bogus / random Email addresses

...not to mention the staffing resources wasted investigating cases of spam.

In many ways, spammers are the parasites of the internet. They move from throwaway account to throwaway account, stealing service and wasting resources, to deliver their message to people that do not want to read it, or pay their ISP to store/deliver it.

These guys need their rights protected? What about *MY* rights? Why is the burden on me to set up filters or admit defeat and change my Email address just to get off a list?

I concede that anti-spam legislation must be drafted carefully, because poorly written legislation could inadvertently take away rights of legitimate Emailers. We shouldn't *NEED* legislation for this kind of thing, but we can already conclude the honor system isn't working.

Never mind banning spam...What solution would you propose that would allow spam, but offset the costs of spamming back from the recipients to the original spammer? And how much less spam would we see afterwards?

P.S.
Your position is pro-spam, but your Email address doesn't show up in your messages, where it might be harvested by spammers...why is that?

Re:No end to spam

[phantomlord]

If you want freedom of speech online, and advertising is speech, then what the hell are you thinking? How can you think that Spammers should all be attacked, and made illegal, when you think that DeCSS should be free, because it is speech?

I'm no lawyer but the difference is that people(Americans anyway) have the right to free speech as protected by the First Amendment because it is vital part of individual freedom to allow them to speak their mind about any topic they wish. Businesses are a created entity allowed under law and have no inherent rights - only what the government grants them. The question is then, does government grant the same freedom of speech to businesses that it does to individuals and furthermore, why should/shouldn't it? Someone will probably argue that it is a person working for the business which is actually speaking BUT the key is they are speaking for the business, not for themself.

Re:No end to spam

[Frymaster]

people(Americans anyway) have the right to free speech as protected by the First Amendment

I can see how that relates to Spam... wasn't it Jackson who said "Give me Liberty or Give Me All Teen XXX Babes Live!!!!!"?

Not as bad as it sounds

[po_boy]

The patent doesn't describe a way to email people ads, it describes a way providers (like Juno) can make you see ads when you're using their email client, but don't have connectivity. It pretty much grabs a tarball of ads when it can and them shows them to you whenever their client is running.

I understand that many people consider that spam as well, but that kind of spam is at least controlled more easily.

Here's the abstract of the patent:

A system for providing scheduled messages to a remote user in a batch oriented system. In a preferred embodiment of the present invention, a user creates and/or reads electronic mail locally. While the user creates the electronic mail, a message is displayed to the user on a portion of the local monitor, the message preferably changing in accordance with a local display schedule and stored on a local storage device. The message is preferably targeted to the particular user. When the user is ready to transmit the e-mail created and/or receive e-mail addressed to him, the user's local client establishes a connection via a modem with a remote e-mail server system. The remote e-mail server system not only receives the e-mail transmitted by the user and/or transmits e-mail addressed to the user, but also updates the user's local messages in accordance with a distribution schedule. After the e-mail and message updates are transmitted, the user's local client computer is disconnected from the remote e-mail server system.

By the way, I wonder why they included via a modem in there. It seems like an unnecessary limitation.

Re:Not as bad as it sounds

[stevens]

A system for providing scheduled messages to a remote user in a batch oriented system.

Can't we at least find prior art for this bit? usr/bin/fortune ring a bell? :-)

Actually, this seems too obvious to be properly awarded. Consider if you were given the following requirements:

• must display ads, and cycle every x seconds
• must not rely on persistent network connection

Under such circumstances, would not any reasonably competent programmer be able to suggest downloading several ads while online and cycling them via a timer in the local program? How flipping obvious do these have to get before they're not considered 'inventions'?

This stuff gets my goat because it makes a mockery out of true inventors.

Steve

Web cam...

[chowda]

If it had a Built In Webcam (tm) you could tak3 pictures and send 7hem to y0u.

or what ab0ut a fing3rprin7 l0ck? so identific4ti0n c0uld be sent to the p0lic3 when the attempt to 0pen 1t h4pp3n5.

What if it had lazerz and 5m0ke b0mbs!! wouldn7 that be c0ol? I c4n get s0me p4r7z 4nd h4x0r 0n3 70g37h3r 0u7 0f 5p4r3 m07h3rb04rdz 4nd 9unp0wd3r!!!!!!! 7H47 WUD B3 1337!!!!

wow... I should go...

These can't be legal....

[redtoade]

and here's why:

US Code Title 35 (regarding patents)

"Sec. 103. Conditions for patentability; non-obvious subject matter
(a) A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made."

If you all would stop whining, and put together a letter to the patent office detailing why this is obvious to us (since we ARE in the trade), you might be surprised that they pull the damn thing!

Sometimes you don't want to catch the theif

[thogard]

Years ago I set up a unix box (at&t 3b2) to auto dail its own number very few days.

The box was stolen. When I spoke to the police, I mentioned that it would dial if it was hooked up. The phone company helped out and the police found the person who had the machine.

It turns out the only ones that knew it was stolen were the police and the insurance company.

Re:Stop publicizing the non-reg links

[radja]

I never paid for newspapers I read for free in a coffee-shop, newscafe or bar. I dont see why I should start now. so I'm getting for free what I always got for free. If NYT didn't intend for the non-reg servers to be used they wouldn't have them.

//rdj

End Spam Fast!

[Greyfox]

All you have to do is configure procmail to reject any E-Mails not encrypted to your public key. If everyone did this, mass E-Mailing would require enough hardware to make spam unprofitable and the RBL would block the spammer out within the first couple of thousand addresses in his list, if one was so foolish as to try.

Top Five:

[SlashGeek]

Top five reasons that Spam should be banned:

5. Vegitarians shouldn't have to deal with meat products getting mailed to them.

4. Handeling pork products violates many religions.

3. Nobody really knows what the hell "SPAM" stands for anyway.

2. Spam is the leading cause of traded lunches in elementry schools in the US.

And the #1 reason Spam should be banned:
Spam, like its E-mail counterpart, has very little wholesome content, and is mostly junk fillers.

I hope the patent stands!

[stevens]

I hope many, many means of spamming are discovered and patented! Then there will be:

• a disincentive for others to use that way of spamming, and
• organizations (spammers themselves) suing other spammers to stop spamming in certain, infringing ways!

I say, let the spammers make it as hard as they can for each other. No skin off our nose, and it may actually reduce the amount of spam out there.

Steve

Wow! What a useful feature

[anticypher]

The ability to send an email to a computer, have it erase its hard drive, send out additional emails so you know it was successful, and then stop the machine from working.

Oh, wait! We already have that :-)

Its called M$ Outlook.

I understand Pitr is working on a linux port this week :-)

the AC