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Anti Spamming Act 2001 Proposed
JiveDonut writes "Our friend Rich Boucher (D-VA) along with Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) have introduced the Anti Spamming Act of 2001. An article can be found at the Roanoke Times site. Penalties include up to 12 months in jail and fines of $15,000 or $10 per e-mail. Bi-partisan support to reduce spam. At least the parties can agree on something." 30-40% of my mail is junkmail (most of which is caught and filtered). I'd like to know more details, but this could be great if done properly.
I'd have to agree, we don't do enough to them. One thing to keep in mind, the people who are true spammers are only a handful of people, compared to the general internet using populace, and they have very specific, obvious habits with regard to internet account signups and cancellings, and their traffic patterns could be detected and logged if ISPs want to. All we have to do is mandate that ISPs, when notified that someone is spamming through them, notify the FBI or US Marshalls or some law enforcement agency given jurisdiction, and then the law enforcement agency take it from there. I think that we should make them financially responsible for ALL of the bandwidth they consume, disk space they use, and electricity their crap uses, and THEN take it out of their hide.
This all wouldn't have been necessary if we'd taken the first spammers and dragged them out into the streets, beat them bloody, tarred them, and rolled them in AOL CDs or something, something which would make news everywhere and really act as a deterrence...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Look at the way it handles spamware:
"E) intentionally sells or distributes any computer program that--
`(i) is designed or produced primarily for the purpose of concealing the source or routing information of bulk unsolicited electronic mail messages in a manner prohibited by subparagraph (D) of this paragraph;
`(ii) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to conceal such source or routing information; or
`(iii) is marketed by the violator or another person acting in concert with the violator and with the violator's knowledge for use in concealing the source or routing information of such messages'"
This is about as benign an anti-software law as you can get. It only criminalizes software that is produced "primarily" for forging addresses, that has only limited commercially significant use otherwise (so you don't need to worry about general email tools), and that is marketed specifically for this purpose by the distributor or his agent.
In other words, this isn't criminalizing sendmail and a shell script; this is only going after programs which the seller markets as spamware and don't have any other value. This is lightyears more sophisticated than the $*@#! DMCA.
http://freshmeat.net/projects/charities.cron/
Don't fucking call me asking to change my long distance service
God spoke to me
And the bad part of that is?
"If there is nothing you are willing to die for, then you are not really alive." Myself
Spam is a random denial of service attack on everyone's email account.
No I don't like spam, but its still a technical problem at its core. We're not seeing the 'true cost' of spamming, at least system admins and ISPs aren't. Bandwidth, diskspace, cpu time, etc. The internet community has been spoiled by promise of 'mail all you want.' I don't see why there aren't caps on email messages per month to lower internet access costs and offer premium accounts to mail crazy users.
I know we're heard close open relays a million times, but even that doesnt seem to help when free email accounts are readily available. Keep spam and spam lists legal but make the law force them to put a string in the subject like or somesuch for quick and easy filtering straight to the garbage or bulk folder. Let legitimate ISPs offer their services and sell expensive premium accounts like 100,000 emails this month = $1500.
If this was done we'd see legitimate business using spam and the fly by nights take off and people might actually scroll through their 'bulk' folders looking for deals from Sears and Crate and Barrel, etc and consider spam more like mail coupons instead of the crap it is today.
Do we really need to make it criminal to send someone an unsolicited email? Why can't people deal with this themselves? Lots of people already filter their mail, and plenty of ISPs don't handle mail or filter it for you already if it is from some known spammer.
Lastly... the sad truth about spam... IT WORKS! if it didn't work and nobody ever actually bought a college diploma, the people sending the spam would give up.
The last thing is country needs is more laws... how about moving towards what all those politians have promised: SMALLER GOVERNMENT.
...but one part of the article makes me doubt it's effectiveness:
" It would make it a criminal offense to fraudulently use another individual's e-mail address to send spam, or to continue sending spam after being notified by a recipient not to do it anymore."
In other words, they are trying to make spam lists *opt-out* instead of *opt-in*...so anyone can send you spam if they want to, but they can't send you any more if you tell them to stop. Problem is, spammers rarely send spam from the same address more than once or twice, and almost never honor unsubscribe requests.
Also, if the article is being true to the wording of the proposed law, and the law really does make it illegal to "fraudulently use another individual's e-mail address to send spam," then it would still be perfectly permissable to send spam from a *fake* email address, as long as that address doesn't belong to an actual individual. I could send as much spam as I want by making up a completely different fake email each time, and advertising different crap. Who's going to really take the time and effort to find out if bob@fakeaddress1.com telling you to make millions by calling 1-800-CHEAT-ME and joe@fakeaddress2.com telling you to send this letter and a buck to ten other people are really the same person? Is the FBI going to investigate every single piece of spam that gets sent every day to determine it's origin, so that if someone asks to be unsubscribed and then gets a different piece of spam from another address which ends up being the same guy, they can fine him $10? Yeah, right...
DennyK
You are defining the legality of a message after you receive it. This is arbitrary.
I did nothing of the sort. I called the idea of changing e-mail addresses when you get spam a flawed idea.
True spam is indistinguishable
Wrong again.
What part of BULK e-mail are you not understanding? What part of one message sent to one person unsolicited VS a 1,000,000 messages sent to a 1,000,000 people are you not understanding?
Good thing I don't write e-mail warez.
That is special. You are special. Would you like a medal?
Good thing I don't use Linux - too easy to be a 1337 spam hack
*shrug* That's nice. I didn't know that using Linux caused you to use numbers instead of letters for spelling. Another reason to not use one of the 180+ versions of linux then eh?
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
I don't think so. HR 1017 appears to mandate OPT-IN; although, the wording is not clear and taken out of context:
"the term 'unsolicited electronic mail message' means any substantially identical electronic mail message other than electronic mail initiated by any person to others with whom such person has a prior relationship, including prior business relationship, or electronic mail sent by a source to recipients where such recipients, or their designees, have at any time affirmatively requested to receive communications from that source; "
But I like the other one better. Actually, given that I have my own domain name, I like the other one a LOT better (Let's see, at $1000 per spam).
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
I for one do believe that the work of artists should be protected by copyright, and enforced if the artist wishes it to be enforced.
I am a supporter of small government, probably halfway between Libertarian and conservative Republican. (and I'm feeling increasingly drawn to the Constitution Party.)
But anti-spam laws are necessary because mass unsolicited bulk e-mail is THEFT. It causes serious problems for internet infrastructure. If spam was legal and generally accepted, then pretty much every business would spam. EVERY BUSINESS! Can you immagine what your inbox would look like if EVERY BUSINESS had the right to send you e-mail whenever they wanted? YIKES!!!!!
Boucher is from MA
CmdrChalupa, who finally changed his sig (drop -FlogSpammersNow- for my real address)
Personally though, I think you're a bunch of whiney bastards. Just deal with it. If you get too much spam, stop frequenting porn sites, and signing up for stupid crap. How about not using AOL?
Or not posting on Usenet. Running a website. Responding to e-mail.
Oh, wait, that isn't how this "Free" country works. Our real freedom is that we're free to give up our freedom in the most mindless fashion possible.
If I beat you up I'm just practacing my freedom.
If I call you at the middle of the night and call you names.. every night... for a year... I'm free to right?
If I throw a brick through your window.. burn a message in your lawn.. It's my freedom to do so man.
It's not? Of course it's not...
Becouse my freedom ends at the tip of your nose.
When my actions impact you... then you have a say.
If you say no... then I gotta go...
I don't actually exist.
pretty easy to see how the US mananges to lock up one quarter of all the prisoners in the world. Spam fer crissake. The Canadian Post Office delivers 10x more to my po box daily than the net delivers to my isp mail box in a week. Get a grip down there. Lighten up.
I have to go to your homepage to find your e-mail address
I didn't do that to avoid being spammed. I admit that I did that to advertise the presence of my homepage, in the hope that someone may find out what I do, get interested in it and maybe hire me for a project.
As an example, when posting on Usenet, I use my real email address. By the way, munging the email address is considered a major faux-pas in the German part of Usenet.
But having your own domain aren't you immune from much of this? Filter, filter, filter.
As pointed out by many others, filtering is no cure. The moment a message arrives at my mail server, it already created the additional traffic that I have to pay my ISP for. I could filter it so that I do not see it, but I'd still have to pay for it.
That's why I prefer not to filter, but instead to file a complaint against the spammer with his ISP.
It was a strange kind of honour when I found out that all of my public email addresses were listed in a "do not spam, will complain" list that some hacker found on a spammer's computer and posted on the net.
------------------
------------------
You may like my a cappella music
It seems to me that 12 months in jail is a bit stiff a penalty for sending spam email. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big proponent of spam, I just don't believe the punishment justifies the crime.
The case that started the 'Free Bernie' movement comes to mind. Our community was outraged because he was put in prison with rapists and killers for 'just' commiting computer crimes. (Among other things - such as being held without access to documents relating to his case, and being held without trial, but those don't apply here) If someone sends me spam, feel free to fine them for everything they have and their left arm, I just don't think sending unsolicitated email deserves becoming some guy named Bubba's bitch.
Personally though, I think you're a bunch of whiney bastards. Just deal with it. If you get too much spam, stop frequenting porn sites, and signing up for stupid crap. How about not using AOL?
I don't do any of those things, and I still get lots of spam. I've been using the internet for more than a decade, and the amount of spam I get steadily increases despite all my efforts to prevent it. These days I even get spam in foreign languages for products only available on other continents.
As far as I can tell, the "just delete it" argument is just putting your head in the sand. Immense amounts of time and money are already wasted on dealing with it. How bad does it have to be before you acknowledge a problem? 10% of your total mail? 30%? 50%? Or even 90%?
Left unchecked, spam will continue to grow as a percentage of real mail. Eventually, it will reach a level where even you will demand action. Why not stop it now?
But then who defines 'spammer'. Spammers, imo, are people who disagree with the federal government. Come on, spammers aren't rapists or pedophiles or deadbeat dads.
Junk mail isn't life threatening. Just make it illegal to forge headers, and when spammers are forced to use regular headers, we can filter them that much more easily. And then it won't be so bad, right?
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Two ways:
1) Government finds someone in the U.S. doing spam; it goes after them.
2) An individual finds someone in the U.S. or not doing spam, sues them under the civil liability provisions of the bill, all their U.S. assets are attached and used to pay the damages (esp. if they don't show up to court).
Although not every fly-by-night spammer will have U.S. assets, they could never visit the U.S. or operate a U.S. business, their assets in banks owned by U.S. companies might be seized,etc. You'd have to be a pretty small-time operator to be completely secure from U.S. jurisdiction.
http://freshmeat.net/projects/charities.cron/
Not only is it unenforceable in the case of spammers ("Hey, look a bogus FROM line. We'll have to prosecute these guys. If only we knew who they were!"), but it makes it illegal for individuals to use software like Freedom 2.0 from Zero Knowledge Systems to protect their identity or send protected email.
Please remember that who you communicate with is just as much a privacy issue as what you say to them. Give up on the first part, and you may as well give up the whole game.
Gee, let's give the government a tool to force open all of our private communications. What a great idea!
These politicians are NOT doing us any favors. They push these bills for their own reasons and then try to rationalize it by painting a veneer of public service over them.
It's a lie and a trap; don't trust them.
Now I hate spam as much as anyone but look at it like the crap I find in my mailbox everyday. It's just one of those things that you learn to deal with (As Taco mentioned...) with filtering.
That said...think about this (I'm not being paraniod, just throwing this out, wondering what others think) if this law gets passed and they start going after the smart spammers who do what they can to hide thier identity. How are they going to go after these people? More than likely with the same controversial tacticts that have been discussed here before. This may not be thier intention, but when the people whose job it is to stop this get going, they are going to want thier job to be as easy as possible. Will this include "Wire Tapping" suspected spammers email?
We have all seen lists of what Carnivore will/is supposedly looking for, i.e. bomb, gun, anarchy, etc...why not add "work from home", "be your own boss" and others to the list?
Will there be a commision that defines what is spam and what is not? What if companies started putting in the fine print something like "...by agreeing to this you also agree to alow COMPANY_X to send you email with store information" or something along those lines. That was a lame example, but I am sure some sleazy lawyer could figure out a way to fool people into aggreeing to accept spam.
I would love to see less spam, but stop for a second and think about 5 years down the road after this bill is enacted.
Remember it, write it down, take a picture, I dont give a fsck!
is the biggest waste of the 21st century. In an ideal world I'd like to see Congressional hearings in the United States investigating the practices of commercial advertising overall.
The practices of telemarketters especially should be a major focus of this investigation.
The common factor extends to panhandlers: "Pay, pay, pay, and I'll leave you alone" {Or will they?]
FWIW, my ratio of paper junk to substance is greater than my email,and a burden, reflected in increasing taxes, to the recycling authorities who have to deal with it. [Unread]
An intersting corollary:
At approximately the same time, bigspending advertisers [translation: major global multinationals} are complaining that banner ads on websites are a waste because only two people out of a million click'em, and neither one buys anything.
Perhaps this means the pavlovian certaintainty of advertisers so unquestioned in the second half of the last century is dying, along with equally-outdated capitalist myths.
We live in interesting times. The commies threw out their bullshit artists in 1989 [1991 in Russia itself} In America, we still have ours.....for the time being.
give me a
If it's too much to hit the delete in your mail reader, it's time for you to find a mail reader that's easier to use.
I don't get much spam today...
But there was a time when I got a huge amount of it.
If I got as much postal junk as I got spam in those days the post office couldn't deliver my lagit postal mail.
One spammer desided it was cute to send me e-mail once an hour until I responded. I deleated the e-mail for about a week so he switched to once ever half hour.
Also junkmail pritty much funds the post office.
Spam however is a freebe to the spammers. If you charg spammers even so much as a postal rate they'll stop.
I don't actually exist.
Legislation is a BAD THING.
Everyone complains when the Federal Government gets too involved with your business, but as soon as someone pisses you off you call for Congress to fix your problem for you. It's called "transferred responsibility".
Responsibility = Authority.
Some people may understand that this is why that big chunk of cash is taken out of our paychecks. Because our great-grandparents transferred the responsibility for their own welfare to the Federal Government. Every piece of legislation like this unlocks a door that can then be opened wider without your consent.
What is the legal definition of spam? How will this be enforced? Do you realize that Law Enforcement may later use this to justify Carnivore and other invasions?
Be careful what you ask for
My other sig is a Haiku
"Penalties include up to 12 months in jail and fines of $15,000" pssst.. 12 months = 1 year. Penalities include up to 1 year of jail time. Come on now.
I guess this is the end of spamcrpytion...
That gem is a good one, it reminded me of one I received yesterday, at the bottom of some SPAM for a pron site...
(if i sent this to the wrong person, i'm really sorry - I have a lot of people who wanted to know when the site was ready and I must have gotten some addresses mixed up)
yeah, I'm so sure.
Thank God we wont have to eat all that "spam" up now.
Diplomacy is the art of letting people have your way
where in the constitution does it say that we, or more specifically those bastards in congress, can make laws that restcict one's freedom just because their actions make someone else's life inconvenient? i'm sure lots of people are inconvenienced when protestors gather at the state capitol building, but does that mean we should restrict their freedom of speech and public gathering?
I agree. If you dont like the junk mail just /dev/null before it
filter it out. Heck if you use procmail on the
server you can dump it to
even hits you desktop.
Now if you can not use procmail on you mail server maybe you should think about that problem first.
If you give this a thumbs up that keep your darn
mouth shut when they close down you website
because someone does not like it showing up on
their web search.
I am a republican not by choice, but rather by lack there of.
spammers should be put on their knees and shot in the back of the head.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
...It would make it a criminal offense to fraudulently use another individual's e-mail address to send spam...
Could you define fraudulently? Without consent? Forged? Guessed? How do you fraudulently use an e-mail address?
I'll tell you what. I'm sick and tired of hearing the whining crap from the freaking babies out there about Spam. These are the same people who will get their snail mail and throw out 3/4 or more of it because it is junk. Their junk snail mail cost us money also! The bulk mailer people get a DISCOUNT for mailing bulk, junk, mail. Who pays for the difference? You and I do every time they jack up the postal rates so stop your freaking crying about SPAM. Spam dose not kill trees, use up fossil fuel to be hauled around or clog our refuse dumps etc, etc. Filter it either with software or the delete key. Same as you do with you junk snail mail.
UN-solicited email, or Spam as you cry babies call it, is used the same way as junk snail mail. It works! Just like mailed fliers work. It is called sales and sales makes the economic world spin. Those who cry about Spam do NOT understand sales. But I don't expect many people to understand sales because only 10% of the work force is in sales. The other 90% of you support us. So get a life and holler about something real like censorship.
you have all that spam, taco, becuz we all put your email addresses when providing info for various downloads and pron adverts.
In addition to the previous post, telemarketing has significant costs for those who do it, so there is an incentive for them to be judicious in who they call.
Spam has very little cost for those who do it, which means every single unscrupulous person and business out there can do it as much as they want, currently. Laws are really the only way to fix that. And as pointed out, telemarketing also has plenty of restrictive laws.
Personally, I think telemarketing should be banned as well, but overall it's not as big a problem as spam. For one thing, if you have caller ID, it's fairly easy to block telemarketers -- if the phone # dosn't show up, don't answer it!
Watch the lobbyists descend on Washington, or better yet, spam them!
Each congressman should be given an AOL account for a week and then we'd see a much more stricter law being passed!
Slashdot Hypocrisy at work?
What these list sellers are doing is selling a list that states or implies that you enjoy or at least don't mind receiving SPAM.
Fight Spammers!
I wish they'd include snailmail as well in something like this. Spam is easy because its so cheap, which makes it bad, but it doesn't leave near the impact of the tonnes of trash matter that have been mailed to me over the years... It takes me longer to discover that something is a credit card application than it does to delete that 'live hot nudes' email that keeps coming in, if you want to talk loss of productivity, etc etc.
That's entirely false. If you read the bill, it only prohibits forging addresses in the case of bulk unsolicited email. How often do you conceal your identity in sending bulk email to people with whom you've had no prior relationship whatsoever?
http://freshmeat.net/projects/charities.cron/
-Dan
This would solve a lot of my problems. I've presently being spammed by two companies (EDirectNetwork.net and GroupLotto.com) who refuse to remove me from their spam list. If anyone knows a way I can threaten them with legal action under current laws, I'd love to hear it. I'm about ready to start shoving 70 Mbps down their throats.
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
There should be penalties for list sellers.
People shouldn't be able to freely share information with each other?There should be the contact information for the list sellers.
So anonymity should be available to everyone else, just not those filthy spammers?
It always strikes me as hypocritical that people who say that they're for freedom, who defend network intruders as people just wanting to explore (or that they're doing them a service by showing them their security holes!), don't hesitate for a second to throw all those values out the window just so they don't get inconvenienced with extra email. Just so you know, I'm not characterizing the poster to whom I'm replying, just pointing out the general mood.
I'd love to see what happens if Kevin Mitnick started up his own spam service. There'd be soooo many confused script kiddies.
Cheers,
This article reeks with clueless people attempting to explain what they don't understand. How is sophistication related to sending more emails?
There is no question that spammers have become more sophisticated over the years. The first spams were stopped with simple filters (e.g., blocking certain phrases, header fields, or originating networks) and the culprits were easily tracked down. Some even wrote books about their efforts. These days spammers use a variety of techniques to mask spam as normal mail and to make it harder to track them down.
This sophistication allows them to deliver more email by bypassing simple filters and by evading accountability for their actions.
Sure try bringing someone over from a third world country to prosecute them for sending spam.
That won't happen, of course. But your analysis is too simple. First off, most of the spam I receive appears to be for US-based companies; I frequently talk to spammers who say, "but there isn't a law against it."
Secondly, developing countries often look to developed nations for legal models to follow. If we don't have laws against spam, China will hardly take the lead.
Having laws here also allows us to exert pressure on the operators of foreign networks. "It's against federal law" sounds much better than "we think it's not nice" or "it's against our AUP".
Surely it is up to the recipient of mail to simply junk that which he/she does not wish to read.
In my experience, you only get spam mail if you have registered with some website or other, which is asking for trouble really.
Anyway, who decides what is and is not spam ? It seems very subjective. I don't think this new bill is constitutional either, since it clearly abridges my rights to freedom of speech. Just because you don't like what I am saying does not mean I cannot say it. Or does it ?
What do others think ?
I know! Let's start a Mass-mailing initiative to get people to vote for this bill! That's bound to work!
UGH! My step mother is getting all that grouplotto junk as well, 15+ a day. Since her ISP refuses to do mail filtering, I made her a mail account on my private qmail server which does tons of filtering thanks to Michael Graff's qmail addition at flame.org and she's been happy ever since.
It's sad that I even had to do that though, it should NOT be required.
Matt
Don't take life so seriously; it isn't permanent.
Great! Now all I have to do to get my competition in trouble is send SPAM `for' his corporation.
Second, one does not need to go to pr0n sites, sign up for stupid crap, or use AOHell to get spam. Posting to Usenet with an unmunged address is enough.
Third, I pay for my email address. I have the right to keep my address useful to ME, and not to every two-bit hustler with a LOSE.MONEY.FAST scheme. A mailbox that's 99% spam is no more useful than a /. discussion that's 99% idjits blithering about petrified actresses.
--
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
Dude, I posted that to rec.humor.funny a while ago. ;-)
"Let me open these blinds so the snipers can see in." - Kevin Giffhorn
>I'm sorry, but spam is no different. Speach is speach
Wrong.
Unsolicited dead tree mail does not come postage due. Email spam costs the sender nothing; the entire cost is borne by the recipient. Email spam is theft, dead tree mail may or may not be annoying, but is not theft.
BTW, it's SPEECH. And freedom of speech does NOT include forcing me to pay for it.
Concealed Handgun License Courses in Plano, Texas
Hmm..somehow you didn't refute my claim that email spam is no different than junk mail.
Spam costs ISPs money Junkmail generates postal income.
Spam is free to the spammer junkmail costs the mailler.
Laws exist regulating junkmail and postal fraud.
Spam is mostly fraud... often violating existing laws.
You have the USPS postal carriers who have to make more pickups because of junk mail
You have a mistaken idea of how junk mail works.
Junk mail is sent out in bulk (all at once) to get a bulk rate.
The bulk mailler has to bring the mail to the post office himself. He brings it into the back and sorts it into the delivery bins.
I don't know how much assistence he gets but from my understanding it's minimal.
On the pick up... the postal office drives out to pick up and deliver mail no matter what. A lack of mail to pick up dosn't save them. Nither dose a lack of mail to deliver.
So if they deliver you nothing in the shipping busness it's called "shipping air" it still costs reguardless of the fact that nothing gets delivered.
So the more the post office has to deliver the better off it is. A lack of traffic costs the post office.
With e-mail exactly the reverse is true.
E-mail never "ships air" if there is no e-mail there is no traffic. When there is traffic resources are used. E-mail generates no income so the delivered e-mail is all loss...
I don't actually exist.
No... we don't want unsolicited commercial email.
There's no expression of free speech there, it's just crap. And they hide their origins. No commercial company should have to hide there identity.
I have to disagree with this. The bill is a *GOOD* bill, precisely because it's scope is so limited. Essentially what this does is enable the community to police itself, without getting into too much government big brotherism. By providing the community with a means to identify spammers, the community is aided. Those who defy identification can be hunted down by law enforcment. I really like this Bill.
C//
I would expect it to be less than 1%. Indeed, if you actually look at some usage logs, you'll probably find that all email and news traffic don't come to a tenth, or anywhere close.
Most net traffic is pr0n or MP3 trading. Other web traffic is the next largest draw. Email and newsgroups are at best a distant fourth.
So, let's say that SMTP and NNTP traffic is 10% (which I suspect is rather high) Then even assuming that 30-40% of news and mail traffic is spam (which I highly doubt-- for me it's less than 5%) then we're only talking 3-4%. I suspect the actual share of mail and news traffic is less than 5% (we are talking plain text here) and the percentage of spam is more like 10%. In that case we're talking a half-percent of bandwidth usage, not 10%.
If you're careful about who you give your email address to, spam really isn't that big of a deal. I've had the same email address for three years now, and I get less than one piece of spam a day. The trick is to just not give out your personal email address to people you don't trust. Set up a second email address to give to web sites and other public places. And change that every year or two if it starts getting bombarded with spam.
Furthermore, if the bandwidth usage is as large as you claim, ISP's themselves will start shutting spammers down, and will begin to institute measures to prevent this abuse of their networks. No ISP wants to waste precious bandwidth on a usage that's going to piss off their upstream providers.
This idea means licensing them so that they are properly registered, meaning that they can be billed for use of service, etc. and jail those not properly licensed. and also means that we can send bill collectors and tax collectors hunting after them.
The bottom line is that IF we can make it profitable to go after these guys, someone will make a business of it. We just go to figure a way how.
Then we get to use the scum of society, such as bill collectors and tax collectors, and turn them to some good, going after spammers. And we can use the money collected to subsidise the cost of the Internet.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I thought i'd share this gem with you.
I received unsolciited advertising mail and this was at the end:
This is not a SPAM. You are receiving this because you are on a list of email addresses that I have purchased for marketing.
----
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
where in the constitution does it say that we, or more specifically those bastards in congress, can make laws that restcict one's freedom just because their actions make someone else's life inconvenient?
Restricting my freedom to buy stuff and stick you with the bill certainly makes your life more convenient, but it's quite inconvenient for me. Since I'm sure there isn't a hypocritical bone in your body, I'll expect you to be sending me your credit card number any minute now....
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Ha!
I don't see how this can really help us - I mean, 70-90% of the spam I get is from country codes out side of the US.
70-90% of the spam I get has a faked reply-to address. Are you sure you understand what you are looking at? Besides, goatse.cx isn't really hosted in the Christmas Islands.
On a lighter note, I recently had a message on my answering machine, which was a voice recording from a senator urging me to contact my local representative to tell them I was in favor of a particular bill.
:)
From what little I could tell I was NOT in favor of the bill.
I thought that it was ruled illegal for a telemarketer to leave a message on your answering machine (at least in New York).
And to top it off, the message got cut off, half way through the phone number they wanted me to call
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
But you have no right not to receive junk mail.
You have the right not to read it and to throw it away. The same applies to e-mail.
E-mail is NOT the same as using a bullhorn. It is the same as mailing an advertising circular.
KFG
Huket on fonix wurced four mi.
I'll be more careful in the future, in the meantime, go eat a peech and chill.
KFG
If you don`t like Spam don`t use E-mail If you don`t like Telamarketrs don`t use a phone.
"Don`t worshop me like a god, Worshop me as your god."
Bob Goodlatte -
Senator Clinton -
Louis Wu
"One of life's hardest lessons is that life's lessons are hard to learn."
In my experience receiving lots of spam, regardless of the country codes on the emails, most of it points back to companies in the USA. Any American law should cover emails sent by or on behalf of any American company. This would not only protect us from American spam sent directly from an american email server/address or hiring an american marketing firm to do the actual spam using it's own email servers/addresses, but will also protect us from that company emailing us directly themselves using overseas email servers/addreses under their control, and also protect us from american companies from spamming us indirectly by hiring overseas marketing companies to do the actual spamming using their own overseas servers/addresses (or even american servers/addresses controlled by such marketing firm). (Enough babble in that last sentence??) What I envision is not just protection from those directly responsible for the email in my inbox, but also protection from anyone indirectly responsbile. So that no matter how many times the manufacturer/service company changes marketing firms, I should never again receive an email about that product or service, so long as that product/service company resides in the USA.
In addition, we in te USA should be allowed to tell the American marketing firms we don't want spam related to ANY of their past/current/future marketing clients, regardless of product or service, as in a global opt-out that pre-empts default "opt-ins" to any marketing lists created after we request removal.
Now, this likely wouldn't apply for protecting Americans from overseas product/service companies, or overseas marketing/smapping firms, but considering the distribution of spammers residing in each country, it should at least reduce the amount of crap in my inbox quite a bit. But I'm sure there's enough loopholes in any implementation of any law to keep spam going regardless. (like that loopholed injunction against MS packaging their OS and MSIE products together)
Who do you think will go up against the wall first when the revolution comes? MS or known spammers?
Damnit get a clue! We can't let this happen. You cannot censor anyone, ever, even if it's the rat-bastard spammers. By supporting something like this you're allowing the man to take another step at total censorship. I hate all the spam too. I really do, I'd like to find some of these assholes and really hurt them but I don't. I'm the kind of guy who pretends to be interesting in the telemarketing calls just to keep the caller busy for as long as possible. I'm the guy who tells Time/Life "sure you can send that Year in Revue" book I'll gladly put it on the coffee table but I'm not going to return it nor am I going to pay for it. When they say there's no obligation I explain that there is indeed an obligation. I must take the time to package the book up and ship it back or write out a check and send it to them. Either way they are obligating me to do something I don't want to do and they don't have that right. (They've stopped sending those books BTW) These are the types of techniques that can be used to make them stop. If it's not cost effective then they'll quit.
/. is going to shut down for a few hours due to a move to a new facility. They smartly decide to send every registered /. user an email warning us of this. Cool... not spam right? But what if at the bottom of this email there's a sig that says: "Visit VA Linux Systems for all your computing needs" ?
/. made up this outage as an excuse to spam us? I'm sure someone can come up with a better scenario than this. But here's the point.
/. and confiscate and hold their equipment for years while the investigation goes on. But hey they're just spammers right?
What exactly is spam? Let's say
Now is it spam? Maybe
Who decides what is spam? The courts? That's a great fucking idea let's hire some more lawyers and corrupt ourselves even more. Or lets setup a government task force. Of course how could the task force monitor our emails for spam? Are they going to just have us forward any emails we don't like to them so they can track down the senders and take action? Now that's not a very efficient method is it? So their next step will be to setup even more carnivore type of monitoring stations all in the name of saving us from those horrible spam messages. People like CmdrTaco might even be ok with it, given enough time and after enough conditioning. Think of all the tendonitis insurance claims and wear and tear on our keyboards/mice and bandwidth this will save worldwide. The task force will have to have a very broad range of powers in order to be effective. They could bust into
There is only one way to fight spam and that is to ignore it. If spammers weren't getting results then they would just stop. Unfortunately too many people read the spam, click on the link and spend their money.
The other way to fight spam is to fight back... figure out where the spam came from and ping fuck them to death. Yes their ISP would loose revenue from the downtime but I bet after the third of fourth time, the ISP's would beef up and enforce their agreements quite a bit. Of course to fight back like this is illegal anyway and no one would think of breaking the law.
Censorship is censorship even if you're censoring assholes. Who knows your ideas might be unpopular 5 years from now and then you'll fall victim to a law you promoted.
G
Hmm..somehow you didn't refute my claim that email spam is no different than junk mail.
While it's true that spam can be a drain on sysadmins' time, what about all of the time spent by people on real junk mail? I would argue that it's much greater than the amount of time spent by sysadmins. You have the USPS postal carriers who have to make more pickups because of junk mail, more gas burned by driving the junk mail around, more trips to be made by driving the junk mail around. Once I get the junk mail, it takes me a few seconds to throw out the junk mail. Multiply that by everyone who gets the junk mail (not just the sysadmins, I might point out), and multiply that by the several times a week that junk mail arrives in the average mail box.
And still that's only part of the story. Once I throw it out, there is still all of the extra time that it takes the garbage men to do their rounds (not much per individual house, but multiply it by all of the houses they go to). Then there's all the gas that's burned in driving it to the landfill.
But wait, there's more. What about all of the paper that was used in printing the junk mail? Surely we could use it for something more productive than that.
And then, think about all of the space that's taken up in the landfills by the paper. Granted, it's biodegradable, but it's still taking up space.
I'm not trying to take away from the problem of spam. All I'm saying is that the government isn't playing it straight with its citizens. It condones certain types of spam, as long as it is a beneficiary of it.
They're putting dimes in the hole in my head to see the change in me.
90% of my spam comes from US spammers. It is true though that most of them hijack foreign mail servers ("relay rape").
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You may like my a cappella music
A huge proportion of spam that I receive arrives at my mail server from foreign machines, but more often than not, the foreign machines are merely open SMTP relays that have been used to try and obscure the original source - (usually a UUNET dialup customer), in addition to using a forged From: field.
Even if the spam originates from a foreign machine, the service they're offering is quite often located in the US. If they advertise a website, or the spam includes a submission form, it's relatively easy to locate the ISP that's hosting the spammer's site. Quite frequently, this is a violation the ISP's AUP, and a notification to the ISP will result in the spammer's site being removed (thus all their spamming efforts were wasted!).
There are utilities such as spamcop which are designed to assist in identifying the true source of junk emails. I generally do things by hand (traceroute, etc...), so I can't say whether or not spamcop is any good - just thought I'd mention that it exists.
Strags
While I'm all for taking spammers out and having them shot, it just hit me that I've (we've) been a bit hypocritical about the topic.
Consider: I (we) hold that it should not be illegal to break into computers, it should simply be impossible (and the only way to make it impossible is to allow people to try, knowing that at least some will report their results to the community).
I (we) believe it should not be illegal to break encryption. These activities should also be encouraged to aid in evolving the technology.
In both cases, most people are taking the easy way out (legislation) while we're voicing our opposition and insisting that in the long term, any legislation would be detrimental to the industry. Besides, we're the ones breaking into computers and breaking encryption. Well maybe not you personally, but there's certainly a very loud bunch of us who are quick to voice their indignation when another geek gets in trouble for practicing those activities.
Now, however, the shoe's on the other foot. We are the recipients of the all dreaded spam! We complain loudly and bitterly. We cheer righteously when laws are passed and even louder when those laws actually manage to punish the hated spammer.
I'm just not so sure anymore. I'm now thinking that a wiser course of action would be to follow our own advice. The same sage advice we offer when we are the perpetrators and others are the victims: "Don't create new laws, create better technology".
OK, the penalties are light, it will be impossible to inforce (prove that it was SPAM) and better yet, it leaves a gaping hole for larger companies to take out smaller companies. (I can just see Microsoft claiming that VAlinux SPAMMed them with a newsletter and sue).
But how about this:
There's a proliferation of "distributed computing" client going around. How about the distributed anti-SPAM device. A small program that sits on everyone's machine, when a person receives a SPAM he enters the email/web address into the program. With more advanced email clients (like outlook) they could just file the spam to a special folder. Once the address is logged in the program, it sends it to a central server. If the server detects the same subject/address combination in X percent of it's registered clients, or Y number of times, it sends the "SPAM" signal to all the clients. at which point the clients generate an email to the address given and SPAM it with millions of messages (all garbage, with garbage addresses)
Ok, the idea might need a little work, but after two or three anti-SPAM bombs to spamming companies, they (or their computers) might stop.
--
He had come like a thief in the night,
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes
Spam is not merely a disturbing inconvience, it is theft. They steal the bandwidth and resources you pay for. Junk mail does not. Telemarketers pay for the phone call. Spammers use your bill. Thus they are stealing. This doesn't have squat to do with free speech or anything else. It's theft, and that should be illegal ( and will be as soon as gov types figure out what is going on). So get over it. As for vigtilatism, when someone keeps stealing your stuff, and the law doesn't do anything, what other choice do you have?
A block of the response is below, the reason I'm replying to you is that there is an unsubscribe process different from both of those I have seen(I tried to include the rest and the lameness filter blocked it), perhaps maybe one that can get myself and your step mother out of the evil clutches of grouplotto, and the rest of the email is, well, terrifying. They include their prices and various features of their "service"(guess what you call it depends on which end you're on)
"// this is the most hacked, evil, bastardized thing I've ever seen. kjb"
What really gets my goat is the spam's that say they are selling targeted lists of email addresses, with everyone opt-in. Well, if that's true, then how did they get my name? I'm no opportunity seeker, and I sure as hell didn't opt-in.
Spammers get and pay for lists of e-mail addresses, then use *someone elses mail service to spam. If the inital spamming does not take the server down, the flames will.
Thats like the Religous finatic breaking into your house and making $900 in phone calls.
The Gedden
Furthermore, how effective are anti-telemarketing laws? This is the same concept: anti-telemarketing laws allow you to "opt out" by telling the telemarketer to quit calling.
I've had situations where I've told telemarketers to quit calling and they don't. They just get more and more aggressive.
Sure, the laws are a deterrent to legitimate companies. I worked for a telemarketer who made their opt out database (DNC list, do not call list) a really big thing. But how many spammers are running legitimate companies?
I'm sorry, but anti-telemarketing legislation has been very ineffective, I wouldn't expect anti-spamming legislation to do any better, especially when it is framed in exactly the same manner.
My journal has hot
You are a troll right?
I don't sign up for stupid crop nor do I frequent porn sites.
However, I use usenet, have my own domain (with an whois entry), run several web pages. All these are the main sources for email address collectors.
Just look at your article. You have to munge your email address to avoid being spammed. You call that freedom? Let me guess, you are wearing Groucho Marx glasses when leaving your house.
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You may like my a cappella music
There are several bills working their way through Congress. And there's one that addresses spam in SMS messages. You can read about it here. If you want to see a list of several bills pending in Congress, CAUCE has a page describing them.
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
Excellent. Let the spammer slime rott.
Spammers make it next to impossible to start up free web based mail clients which support under 100 people. As soon as a spammer gets a whiff of what you have they rape your servers until die. Then, like locust, they move on. You wind up spending more time protecting yourself against spammers than you do with the web client.
I hope the bill is more intelligently written than that. The above description legitimizes the 'opt-out' defense. It also has no penalties for companies like Ebay and Amazon that don't forge mail addresses. And since many spammers use throwaway dialup accounts, they could start using the true mail addresses of these accounts and be within the law.
Worse, the above description includes lots of mail that isn't really spam. If you send an email to Digital Convergence protesting their policies regarding the Cue-Cat, isn't that an 'unwanted and unsolicited email'? (Hopefully you'd be exempt if you didn't forge the from address.) The idea of bulk seems to be missing.
I hope the law is not as stupid as this article implies. But I've never had high hopes for government anti-spam measures - in the end they'll be just another tool used by the rich and privileged to protect their position.
Well, the reason that most people (including me) probably hate the ruling is that Napster doesn't store anything illegal on their servers. They only allow other people to share illegal contents. It's like saying that public SMTP servers should be forbidden because they can be used by spammers.
The trading itself, however, should be attempted to stop IMHO. Just like spammers should be stopped.
Monkey sense
The so-called "Anti-spamming Act" (HR 1017) was introduced a full month *after* the much better "Unsolicited Commercial Electronic Mail Act of 2001" (HR 95), in an apparent attempt to weaken antispam law.
Goodlatte's copycat "Anti-spamming Act" (HR1017) takes away service providers' rights to enforce their policies: The "Unsolicited Commercial Email" act (HR95) preserves that right..
The "Anti-spamming" act gives spammers free run of your server, until you explicitly tell them to stop. The "UCE" act lets admins proactively keep spam off their system. (Note: Goodlatte's Virginia constituency includes AOL, which has fought hard for the right to spam for several years, and which pushed to defeat last year's HR3113.)
(Both bills allow end recipients to sue, both require valid sender information, both penalize forgery. Both ostensibly mandate opt-out -- i.e., you have to tell the spammer to stop before they're forced to -- but HR 95 allows service providers to supersede that issue by setting their own policies to equal opt-in.)
Don't be fooled. Rep. Goodlatte's "Anti-spamming" bill is a mandate to spam: The "UCE" Act (HR95) is the real thing.
But don't take my word for it. See what others have to say:
- US legislation pages for The Suespammers Project
- US legislation pages at spamlaws.com
- Suespammers discussion list
--Tom Geller, Founder and Administrator, The Suespammers ProjectTom Geller
Can't we? I've been under the impression that if all e-mail had some sort of positive ID then this would all be solved. Anything with an ID would easily be filtered as spam or non-spam, and the rest would just be filtered out of your e-mail... I think this would be the only real solution because it would put requisites on spamming that would make it easy to filter. The only problem is finding an apropriate way of creating an ID and the security needed to stop forgery of them.
-HobophobE
-HobophobE
Nothing laughs forever.
- There should be penalties for list sellers. Otherwise, you have to notify each spammer.
- There should be the contact information for the list sellers.
- There should be penalties for SPAM service companies -- companies that do spamming for others.
I don't trust the remove information on any spam. Even those it's the old way of confirming email addresses, it is still used. The newer way is with web bugs in html email, src="xx.com/sucker.cgi=victim.address.Fight Spammers!
I don't see how this can really help us - I mean, 70-90% of the spam I get is from country codes out side of the US.
Anyway, basically all this does is make it illegal to hijack someone's email address to send spam, and to remove someone from the spamming list when asked. But, if you're like me, I never reply to spam - that's the one way that the spammer knows that the address is live.
Net gain to most net users = almost 0.
Think about this bill for a second. CmdrTaco, I understand your email is 30-40% spam. I sympathize. However, but passing these bills, you're opening the gates for the government to pass other internet restrictions. Think about what you're doing first.
The right legislative approach is to extend the existing law prohibiting junk faxes to E-mail. That's a successful law, and would work.
how will such a law deal with spam from out of country? (USA)?
samrolken
Spamming is not an exercise of freedom of speech, it's misappropriation of other people's property. I'm sure the Make Money Fast asswipes would like to break into my house and paint their pitch on my living room wall, but I'm not going to sit still for that, either.
The first admendment is about people saying what they want to say at their OWN expense, not ANYONE else's.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
How will this be enforced? I imagine it would require additional enforcement people on the local / state / federal level; this is one expansion of government I would approve of. But, how can it be enforced on spam coming from outside the USA? I can see professional spammers setting up accounts elsewhere to continue spewing forth their trash.
"Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning." Bill Gates Yeah Right!
People pay money to advertise in the mail.
Spammers get to advertise at other people's expense.
--
Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
The spammer should be forced to hire someone to build a filter against his spam, and maintain that such that he filters no one else so his filters are less dangerous than censorware.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Personally though, I think you're a bunch of whiney bastards. Just deal with it. If you get too much spam, stop frequenting porn sites, and signing up for stupid crap. How about not using AOL?
Oh, wait, that isn't how this "Free" country works. Our real freedom is that we're free to give up our freedom in the most mindless fashion possible.
I've convinced myself, this is a good idea after all!
It's a lost cause. If people hate something, no amount of logic will appeal to them (trite point, I know). I get 50% spam myself, even with mailfilters, and it takes no more than 3 seconds a day to ignore all of the irrelevant messages. People should have enough going on in their lives that the "spam problem" seems comparatively unimportant. Or at least if they need real enemies, they should hunt down those kids who tormented them in high school.
I think spam should be illegal: that gives ISPs and others a good justification for filtering it out. But once you start talking harsh penalties, you are giving some pretty clueless people with a distrust of anything digital some pretty strong weapons, weapons that can easily be used against you. Jail time for sending E-mail? Give me a break.
Spammers are usually selling something...
100% of those who sell something must provide some sort of contact information.
Thats your trace.
There is a sereous consern however of fraud spam. This isn't new.
Just give false contact information. This is used to frame an innocent as a spammer.
Spammers like to do this to known spam hunters.
I don't actually exist.
I get unsolicited dead tree mail every day. The right to send me such mail is garunteed under the Constitution.
I'm sorry, but spam is no different. Speach is speach.
What'll be next? Making it illegal to say Hi to someone without their permission first? Think his is extreme, it'll never happen? At Antioch college it is agaisnt the code of conduct for a husband to kiss his wife without explicitly asking permission first. It's a slippery slope people.
And consider this, how is anyone supposed to GET permission to send e-mail without e-mailing to ask permission? Do we all need to walk around carrying " opt in cards " that have to be hand signed before the sender can send us mail?
Anti spam laws are a cure much, MUCH worse than the disease that will limit us all and see totally innocent people prosecuted and have their lives destroyed.
Banning forging headers might be a step in the right direction, but only if it can be done in a way that presents no double standard with respect to snail mail laws. It would be pretty easy to write an anti spam bill that would do the equivilent of making it illegal to send someone a postcard saying " Guess Who?" on it. Is that what we really want?
Speach is speach is speach. You want to keep trading files over Napster, distributing DeCSS, posting derogetory articles about Scientology, fighting patents on abstract ideas?
If so, then spam stays.
KFG
We need a war to distract us and our elected officials from even considering such frivolousness. How can anyone equate the innocous though irksome act of sending unrequested email with a criminal act requiring a one year sentence? If receiving a little email we don't want or having to install an email filter is the only price we must pay to preserve the 1st Admendment untainted, then we must certainly count ourselves most lucky. I find it ironic that the same page presents censorship to conform to local laws in essentially a bad light while unnecessary censorship is presented as laudable. As for me, I like getting spam! Keeps my middle finger fit from typing 'd' repeatedly. And who knows? Maybe some day ill want to 'Find anything out about anyone' or purchase some of Dr. Nygun Van Hump's Miracle HGH tonic. What was that quote from Lawrence of Arabia? ...Young men fight wars and old men make the peace. The virtues of war are the virtues of young men: passion and hope for the future while the vices of peace are the vices of old men: fear and mistrust. It must be so...
Hmm..somehow you didn't refute my claim that email spam is no different than junk mail.
I'm glad to do it, then. There are two big differences.
One difference is in how the cost is paid. The sender of junk mail pays 100% of the cost of creating the junk mail and delivering it to your door. Spam is parasitical; most of the cost is paid by the recipients.
The other difference is that spam costs a lot less per unit to send, suggesting that we'll get a lot more of it.
Spammers and junk mailers both do what they do because the money they receive in sales allows them to pay for their unsolicited garbage. Because paper mail is expensive, you need a reasonable (e.g. > 1%) response rate to make it practical. Despite that, about half of my paper mail is junk.
Spam, on the other hand, is orders of magnitude cheaper, especially when you make others pay most of the cost. Response rates for spam campaigns thus are orders of magnitude lower, meaning that a lot more spam has to be delivered to put a dollar in the pocket of the spammer.
This suggests that spam, left unchecked, will be a much larger percentage of your inbox than is true for junk mail. Because of this, I think spam requires special legal treatment. The laws should at least be equivalent to junk faxes, but I favor stronger ones.
===
You do have a point with the ecologic costs of junk mail. But this is a problem endemic to our system of pricing; the true cost of resource depletion, polution, and disposal is hidden from consumers. Better to solve that problem directly, rather than solving this one tiny symptom.
The text of this bill is available by searching http://thomas.loc.gov for "spam".
(thomas.loc.gov is the first site that I've encountered that not only uses temporary URLs for search results and uses POST forms for searching, but also won't accept the form if I tell my browser to GET it instead.)
The shareholder is always right.
...of this act being the best of all possible anti-spam acts? Slim to none. But I guess it is a start in the right direction. Hopefully this will reduce my spam...
Please don't mistake this for flame bait.
But, it seems like there are some major double standards going on on slashdot. Legislation to kill spammers is ok but legislation to prevent people from steal^H^H^H^H^H sharing music is not. Spammers should be fought with technology not laws.
So many slashdotters scream for smaller government and bitch whenever the government passes a law dealing with technology but applaude them when they pass a law that they like. Please people, make up your minds (Esp. you CmdrTaco).
-crispy
<SIG>
I think I lost my work ethic while surfing the web. If you find it, please email it to me.
My sig has a broken link in it.
So before jumping on the bandwagon, check for the right to private action and a reasonable penalty per email...
Geez! This is 2 articles in a row that have messed up Rep. Boucher's name! This guy is doing something "good" for us, the least you could do is get his name right! You started out calling him Dick Boucher last time!
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
firstly, i'd like to say that this will only work if it's introduced globally - which it obvously should be.
secondly, we need a generic spam law - not just for email. we need something that prevents all kinds of nusance email, junk mail, telemarketing sms messages etc...
maybe some kind of email authentication system is needed for email to prevent spam at the application level?
well, at least it's a start...
i was angry:1 with:2 my:4 friend - i told:3 4 wrath:5, 4 5 did end.
i was angry:1 with:2 my:4 friend - i told:3 4 wrath:5, 4 5 did end.
i was 1 2 4 foe i 3 it not 4 5 did grow
In general telemarketers pay money to call you. Maybe not to you, but they pay the cost of call and the salary of the person making the call. SPAM on the other hand costs nothing to send.
There are no-call lists for telemarketers. There are restrictions on the times calls can be made.
The same with collection agencies. Collection agencies must be registered. Employees of those agencies who do not use their real name, must have a listed alias.
In both cases, the calls are traceable in some manner. Not the same with SPAM!
Fight Spammers!
If you aren't familiar with the concept, read this.
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
The Democrats and Republicans need to get their anti-Spamming message out to the people of the internet. They will use spam to accomplish that.
I'm sorry, but spam is no different. Speach is speach.
This is blatantly wrong. Good anti-spam laws focus on behavior, not on content. Even an empty message can be spam.
Consider a real-world example: If I have a political message, I can hand you a copy of it on the street. I can tell it to you as you walk by. I can even stick a copy of it to your door. But I can't force you to listen, and i can't break into your house to convey it to you.
Suppose I buy the biggest megaphone I can find, and then I and my pals set up camp outside your house and read our political messages to you around the clock at 140 decibels. If it bothers you, you need not soundproof your house; you can call the police and have me hauled off.
In front of the judge, no amount of waving the Bill of Rights will get me off. Why? Because although I may have a right to speak, you have a right not to be forced to listen. The right to freedom of speech is a requirement that the government not impede communication between willing parties, not a right to make as much noise as you want just because it could be considered speech.
True spam is indistinguishable from your best friend sending you a message (unsoliticated!) about a business opportunity.
Wrong. Spam is unsolicited bulk mail. The word "bulk" is key. Also, prior relationships (e.g., friendship, customer who asked to be contacted) are generally considered to excuse the first spam, as it could be seen as a natural mistake. For more information, see the various spam definitions out there. E.g., at abuse.net.
Penalties for this are a joke and anyone in the justice system who is going to attempt to waste their time going after one spammer will spend more tax dollars taking them to court, then the justice system would gain via fines and jail times.
Nicer solution would have been to sanction ISP's, uplink providers, and hold them for some accountability with the actions generated from their networks. e.g.: Provider gets warning first 20 times then fines subsequent to every infraction thereafter. This would certainly piss ISP's off and force them to open their eyes and see their is illegal actions (spoofing emails, wire fraud believe it or not) stemming on their networks, which they would have to fix or else pay hefty fines per infraction.
Think about it for a second, this law sounds like it intends the greatest good for us who hate spam, but think about someone sending spam outside of the U.S., it won't have any effect. Just try attempting explaining to a jury of homemakers how someone used proxy A, to jump through proxy B to end up in Thailand in order to send bulk spam. It just won't work.
That must be a hefty load of spam. I've worked in enterprise environments of over 5,000 people, each receiving mailing lists stuff, spam, friends mails, etc., and am just annoyed by it, never once crashing my systems. She must be targeted or using some cheesy systems that spammers are crashing. Let's at least be honest about it, sure we hate spam but crashing your system
This article reeks with clueless people attempting to explain what they don't understand. How is sophistication related to sending more emails? It doesn't take a sopistacted user to search on google for "anonymous email" and "relay". Now had she mentioned illegally relaying to unauthorized servers, via nefarious means such as TCP/IP spoofing then I'd be impressed or more attentive to her story.
Sure try bringing someone over from a third world country to prosecute them for sending spam. Then again with the lax security abroad try obtaining log records from these sources, who's only income may be from spamming mind you, and you'll be ignored since they don't have to follow the U.S'. laws
360 degrees of Karma
Anti-Spamming Act of 2001 (Introduced in the House)
HR 1017 IH
107th CONGRESS
1st Session
H.R. 1017
To prohibit the unsolicited e-mail known as `spam' .
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
March 14, 2001
Mr. GOODLATTE (for himself, Mr. SMITH of Texas, and Mr. BOUCHER) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary
A BILL
To prohibit the unsolicited e-mail known as `spam' .
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Anti-Spamming Act of 2001'.
SEC. 2. PROTECTION FROM FRAUDULENT UNSOLICITED E-MAIL.
Section 1030 of title 18, United States Code, is amended--
(1) in subsection (a)(5)--
(A) by striking `or' at the end of subparagraph (B); and
(B) by inserting after subparagraph (C) the following:
`(D) intentionally and without authorization initiates the transmission of a bulk unsolicited electronic mail message to a protected computer with knowledge that such message falsifies an Internet domain, header information, date or time stamp, originating e-mail address, or other identifier; or
`(E) intentionally sells or distributes any computer program that--
`(i) is designed or produced primarily for the purpose of concealing the source or routing information of bulk unsolicited electronic mail messages in a manner prohibited by subparagraph (D) of this paragraph;
`(ii) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to conceal such source or routing information; or
`(iii) is marketed by the violator or another person acting in concert with the violator and with the violator's knowledge for use in concealing the source or routing information of such messages';
(2) in subsection (c)(2)(A)--
(A) by inserting `(i)' after `in the case of an offense'; and
(B) by inserting after `an offense punishable under this subparagraph;' the following: `or (ii) under subsection (a)(5)(D) or (a)(5)(E) of this section which results in damage to a protected computer';
(3) in subsection (c)(2)--
(A) by adding at the end the following:
`(D) in the case of a violation of subsection (a)(5) (D) or (E), actual monetary loss and statutory damages of $15,000 per violation or an amount of up to $10 per message per violation whichever is greater; and'; and
(B) by striking `and' at the end of subparagraph (A);
(4) in subsection (e)--
(A) by striking `and' at the end of paragraph (8);
(B) by striking the period at the end of paragraph (9); and
(C) by adding at the end the following:
`(10) the term `initiates the transmission' means, in the case of an electronic mail message, to originate the electronic mail message, and excludes the actions of any interactive computer service whose facilities or services are used by another person to transmit, relay, or otherwise handle such message;
`(11) the term `Internet domain' means a specific computer system (commonly referred to as a `host') or collection of computer systems attached to or able to be referenced from the Internet which are assigned a specific reference point on the Internet (commonly referred to as an `Internet domain name') and registered with an organization recognized by the Internet industry as a registrant of Internet domains;
`(12) the term `unsolicited electronic mail message' means any substantially identical electronic mail message other than electronic mail initiated by any person to others with whom such person has a prior relationship, including prior business relationship, or electronic mail sent by a source to recipients where such recipients, or their designees, have at any time affirmatively requested to receive communications from that source; and
http://freshmeat.net/projects/charities.cron/
The only real solution to the spam problem is via network user agreements and technology.
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich