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Norway Bans Spam
nordicfrost writes: "Everyone in Norway has aquired a law-given right to say "no" to spam. This is also happening in other countries like Germany. The spammers have to check that the people they send advertisements to aren't on the "opt-out" list, a list centrally operated by the government's National Data Register. This means that anyone sending me something I haven't requested, faces fines and up to six months of jail time." Recently a spammer got one of my addresses and is spamming me 10 times a day. Forged everything, random everything, many different messages, only a similiarities in the subject line to tie them together. At least I can filter it, but I'd love to see this ass get 6 months of jail time, especially if he's doing this to thousands of others.
Spam is certainly very annoying, but is it sacrificing too much of our Internet Freedom to let governments fine and even jail people for spamming? I mean, everyone always talks about freedom on the Internet, keeping it unregulated, etc. Why should this be different? This is a huge regulation. Who is to say exactly what spam is? And what would prevent the state from jailing me for sending a friend an unsolicited email about a product i recently saw and thought he might like to buy? A little far-fetched, I admit, but this just seems like a dangerous road to go down. I say turn the filter on and keep government out of the Internet.
Hi!
Everybody hates spam. Everybody thinks spam is a pain in the neck. Everybody thinks spam should go away. And those inclined to expect the government to do everything for them will--not surprisingly--tend to expect the government to protect them from spam.
Which may be a good thing, except for one little detail. If the government is going to protect you from "spam", the government is going to define what "spam" means. And you may not be happy with that definition--because as sure as the fact that the sun is coming up tomorrow, any government is going to figure out a way to protect itself with its definition of spam.
Remember "Junk Fax"?
Back when fax machines first appeared it didn't take office supply companies, delis, and a horde of other advertisers to figure out that they could send you virtual flyers with a local phone call--substantially cheaper than paying for postage.
Lots of people objected to junk fax. Lots of legislators climbed on the bandwagon--junk fax came to be viewed by politicians as an easy target: nobody was in favor of (euphemism) "unsolicited commercial fax."
Then a funny thing happened--except that it wasn't funny at all if you are old enough to remember watching it on CNN. Students in the People's Republic of China staged a demonstration in Tianamien Square in Beijing that quickly became a serious challenge to the authority of the Communist Party. At first the authorities dismissed this as an annoyance--but as the protest continued, the government got more and more scared. The government ultimately crushed the protest with tanks and machine guns--no one in the West knows yet how many students were killed.
What was significant about the "uprising" was that the Chinese government was right about one thing: the PRC kept insisting that the protest was being directed by "outside agitators". They were right--Chinese dissidents, in the U.S. as graduate students, were directing the protests across China from an office in suburban Boston--via fax. The PRC finally figured it out, and blocked phone traffic from the Boston area--but they never figured out concepts like call-forwarding, etc. The students were able to communicate with very little restriction right up until the end.
In the aftermath, the Communists decided that "the people" needed protection from "unsolicited fax". They required every fax machine to be registered. They enacted laws spelling out draconian punishments for unregistered fax usage. They tried their damndest to prevent anybody ever doing this again.
Now the Internet is here.
And try as the Chinese Communists might, they're having a tough time preventing people from getting information. The PRC has worked diligently to block access to foreign news sites, foreign chat sites, etc.--especially anything published in Chinese. I'm certain that one dimension of the PRC's reported enthusiasm for Linux is that they can be certain that the U.S. doesn't have a trap door in their computers--and that they can install a trap door of their own. (Somehow, I'm sure the PRC will--what a surprise!--forget to distribute the source code of their distros.)
But they can't block e-mail.
I have mail in my in-box from a young Chinese man. He and his wife are deeply fond of my mother--she and my late stepfather helped them escape from China in the immediate aftermath of Tianemien Square. They are still actively in touch with friends and relatives back in China--by email. And if the need ever arises, they can maintain those communication links: through open relays; through "anonymizer" relays; through throwaway accounts--in short, using exactly the same techniques as the spammers.
We live in a free society--with the advent of the Internet our freedom of expression and (if only virtual) assembly are practically limitless. It doesn't work that way everywhere in the world. There are places in the world where defaming the Imam earns you a fatwa--a price on your head. There are places in the world where refusing to pledge allegiance to the Dear Leader and embrace the "scientific truths" of Kim-Il-Sungism means that your family doesn't get food rations, and is left to starve. There are places in the world where billions of people are "protected" from "unsolicited fax" and other such dangers.
Those places all have governments that would be more than happy to "protect" their citizens from "spam."
Yup. Spam is an annoyance. By golly, I have to press that Delete key four, sometimes five times a day. And I'm sure that having the government decide what email I can see, and making sure that I only see "unsolicited" mail from people they approve of, will make my life so much more enjoyable. So much more buoyant--so much more vibrant--so much more liberating. At least, right up to the point where I want to send or receive messages the government doesn't approve of.
Thanks, but...
For me and my household--we'll just use SpamCop, and the Delete key.
Full translation, the wording may not be perfect, but it's a long article and I'm not going to bother reading it yet another time.
Stop the e-mail adds.
By: Jon Martin Larsen
From now on, in Norway, nobody are allowed to send advertisement to your e-mail, unless you let them. Of course, it requires more than an EU adjusted law to stop the flow advertisement on the internet.
RECIEVES SPAM: Jan Ingvoldstad (28) are a student doing his main subject in computer science, and he recieves between thirty and fifty spam mails per week. Last weekend he got 17 such messages.
Make sure you trust who you give your e-mail address to. If you participate in newsgroup, mailing lists or competitions og gaming sites, then you are specially vulnerable.
The unsolicited mail which are sent to your e-mail are refered to as Spam. It has gotten it's name from an old Monthy Python sketch, where a bunch of viking constantly interrupts and sings Spam, spam, spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam.
The spam is distributed by more or less unscrupulous businesspeople which hopes to sell services and product. And their way of doing it is to fill your e-mail.
In many countries this is allready illegal, and from the 1st of march will Norway have one of the strictest regulations in this area. Other countries are Denmark, Finland, Germany, Austria and Italy. A new marketing law which is more suited to EU becomes operative and makes it illegal to send advertisments through e-mail or SMS (Short Messaging Service) unless the consumers has given their explicit permission up front.
Anyone that breaks the prohibition, will explain onesself to the consumers ombudsman. the sentences in the new marketing laws are also a lot stricter. You now risk getting large fines or up to six months in jail. Or both.
Norwegian companies and companies who markets themselves in Norway can be held responsible if they send you spam, provided you haven't explicitly requested it up front. "The consumer gets more power." concludes chief information officer Anne Nyeggen in the Data Inspectorate. "The new marketing law overlaps and surpasses the personal information law(NOTE: In Norway, it's hard getting personal information and you also need clearance for keeping databases) when it comes down to rights, and it results in a much stronger protection against advertisments and sales through e-mail and SMS."
"We think this is a kind of marketing that enters into the private areas, and thusly we think the recipients should give their permission in advance", says Harald Hilton. He is counceler in the consumer branch of the Children and family departement.
Some companies are allready following the lines of the new law. These are mainly compaines that operates partly or completely on the internet. One example is the new telephone directory on the net. You have to register to recieve information, and the e-mail address are your user name. The service is closed to accomodate the demands from the Data Inspectorate demands about protecting private information and to hinder abuse.
This means you have to identify yourself to get access. Telenor Media have been given permission to verify your identity by requesting your social security number and checking this against the national register. You are also explicitly asked if you want your e-mail to be available to others, both for private and for businesses. You are also specifically queried about if you wish to recieve unsolicited e-mails.
But Norwegian law does not govern the internet. When you are surfing the net, you have to watch out. If you find you are being massively spammed, it might be because you were careless.
When you are surfing on the net, you can easily be tempted by offers and links. You're surfing along, maybe downloading an image and you click on another link.
Don't be surprised if someone has a small data mining script on one of the pages. Such a program would attempt to gain access to your e-mail address through your browser. The address is stored, then sold, and sold and sold to everyone that wants it. And that's how you get offers from the strangest places about all kinds of weird things.
From their website: http://www.sneakemail.com - Neat.
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CitizenC