Slashdot Mirror
Anti Spam Bills Continue
Brian D. writes "Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M.'s has a great bill -- $500 penalty for each piece of spam a company sends. It passed overwhelming in the House last year, but this year businesses are being persuaded to "take off the gloves" to kill it." It makes interesting points, for example differentiating between spam, and spam with bogus headers (for which I think a $500 is to light. Punishment should be sweet and simple: launch spammers into the sun).
Don't worry, if you only worked for the company, we'll only send you to the moon, not all the way to the sun.
If you are paying per e-mail you receive, paying for extra bandwidth from spam etc. Go get yourself a new ISP
And you call us ignorant. Who do you think pays for all the bandwidth that spammers use on the Internet backbone? ISPs. Who do you think pays for those ISPs? Us ISP users.
It doesn't matter whether ISPs bill us directly for the amount of bandwidth used, because we end up paying for it when they have to charge us extra to upgrade their connections just so we can receive all the damn spam that assholes like your ex-employer send out.
Personally I disagree with anti-spam laws, because there are better technical solutions; but people who don't understand how spam costs us money are far more ignorant than those who call for laws to protect them.
When your telemarketer calls me, you pay the long-distance fees.
When you send me bulk postal mail, you pay for the printing and the postage. (Indeed, bulk postal mail ends up subsidizing non-bulk mail, since it comes pre-sorted and thus costs the Postal Service much less.)
When you send a messenger around town who hangs a leaflet on my doorknob, you pay for the printing and the messenger.
When you send me spam email, I pay. I pay in ISP fees, which go to defray the costs of bandwidth consumed and disk space taken up. When you spam my work account, my employer pays. When you spam a public university or government account, the taxpayer pays.
You have every right to put your message out to the world at your own expense. You have no right to put it out at my expense, my employer's expense, or the taxpayer's expense. Spam is theft -- or, more accurately, spam is piecewise mailbombing; and mailbombing is a computer crime.
...but they just keep bouncing off the case of my Enterprise 4500 server. It's turning into quite a mess in there.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Fill in the blank:
"A $500 is to light as a _______."
A. CmdrTaco is to "ispell."
B. Dirty green paper is to luminescense.
C. CowboyNeal is to a social life.
D. Jesse Berst is to a competent technical reporter.
E. All of the above.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
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Poliglut
What I really hate about spam is the fact that they provide this statement at the end going on and on about how this mail conforms to bill such and such, and if you want removed, just send an e-mail to remove@blaablaa.com.
So I send an e-mail, and of course a minute later get it bounced back because it's an unknown address.
How do you fight that besides sorting through headers and writing to abuse@blaa.com or whatever? Even if they pass some $500 fine per piece of spam, how can you enforce it?
--- witty signature
Nearly everyone here seems to have defaulted to the view that anti-spam laws are a great thing. Why is this? What if it were a law related to content filtering? What if it were something like the DMCA?
Face it, government intervention and legislation on the internet is bad. Very bad. You can't have it both ways. If you allow the government to say what's okay and what's not okay to e-mail, then you give up freedom. Just because spam is annoying and everybody hates it doesn't change this. We need to handle these matters our own ways, and many are already doing that (spam filters, organizations that provide black list services, etc.).
Don't fall into the trap thinking that the government is the solution. I'm sure most of you can imagine what a nightmare enforcing something like this is anyway (forged spam to get someone else fined, whatever).
It is quite likely illegal to demon dial them, so I would not suggest it. What I have my computer do instead is filter spam and, for messages containing toll free numbers, call them and play the Spam skit. One message inviting me to call equals one call from my computer. That seems fair to me. One spammer apparently spammed me enough to get sufficient calls to actually call me back and (he claimed) start doing a phone harassment investigation on me. I called him back and told him to go for it! If I only call (once) when I'm invited to call, I don't see a problem with it. If it comes to a legal battle, I'm quite willing to nail this jerk and set a precedence for email harassment.
Dear Rob,
This is to inform you that you are inviolation of the DMCA for using the SPAM(tm) product image in association with the term SPAM when refering to UCE, thereby circumventing our techonological means to prevent unauthorized association. Our technological means are as follows: we told you not to.
Federal law clearly states that if you do not cease and disist this association you have no chance to survive make your time.
Love,
Hormel Foods
I suggest something equally gruesome, and much cheaper. Weld the spammers into 55 gallon drums weighted down with cinder blocks and drop them into the sea above the Marianas Trench. For a little more, you could add a little window through which the spammer could watch the sunlight diminish and die and they plummet into the icy depths.
Commentators here could have fun speculating as to whether the pressure or asphixya kill the spammers first.
Stefan
Your right to free speech ends at my SMTP server.
Congress may make laws restricting your ability to trespass on my property for the purpose of 'excercising your freedom of speech' without violating the first amendment. Many anti-spam claims are based on the concept of 'trespess to chattel', all we need to do is codify that.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
Of course, when forged headers are used (as is mostly the case) you rely on the cooperation of the ISP to obtain the users identity.
Or use SpamCop to parse the headers and automatically route the spam to the abuse department of the ISP where it originated.
Will I retire or break 10K?
According to Hormel Foods' SPAM Trademark Policy, "We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE, although we do object to the use of our product image in association with that term." Hormel just doesn't want SPAM Luncheon Meat to be confused with UCE.
Will I retire or break 10K?
We've been seeing major problems with email protocols for years now. SPAM and forged headers are just some of the many problems that the current infrastructure possesses. It seems to me that a new secure mail protocol could be developed that would solve many of these problems and keep all the medalling Feds out of everyone's business.
I'll be watching my inbox for this if this law is passed.
Get rich quick!!! New anti-spam law passed. Recieve up to $100 per unsolicited email you collect.
Here at Shark, Leech and Parisite incorporated we specilize in prosecuting cases of unsolicited email. For $39.95 we will send you our patented unsolicited email collection system. By creating multiple mailboxes and exposing the addresses in public places you soon will be a magnet for bulk e-mail. Using our system you gather the offending messages and ship them off to or legal bot. Once every 20 minutes the bot generates a lawsuit and delivers it to a random court some where in the US. Should a lawsuil be succesful you will receive your check for the total award(after we take out costs and expenses).
Relpy to Johncrapper24601@hotmail.com if you feel recieved this message and error or would like to be removed from our list.
By signing on to the internet today you have indicated your consent to recieve this message. This is not "spam" because we say it is not.
I think I need to patent this business model!
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
Of course, when forged headers are used (as is mostly the case) you rely on the cooperation of the ISP to obtain the users identity.
Cauce has a pretty good tutorial on examining mail headers for useful information, if you're interested.
^]:wq!^M
Can I file a complaint agains a US citizen violating a US law outside of the US?
^]:wq!^M
I get so-called "Spam" quite frequently. I, frankly, don't really see the problem with it. It's just people wanting some help. For instance, yesterday I was contacted by two 18-year old college freshman that were becoming models. They just wanted me to give them feedback on some pictures they took. I went to their site and not only were there pictures of them, but their friends too. I guess college girls are really into amateur photography these days. So I responded to the girl's email (her name was Justine) and gave her some feedback (for instance, I suggested she not let her friends make pop-ups and things on her site (they must be in an HTML class together, I guess). I also suggested that she urge the photographer to use better lighting.) Unfortunately, my email never reached her, I'm not sure what went wrong; it seemed like a valid email address (free_warm_pr0n_4u@yahoo.co.uk). Oh well, I hope that Justine reads this message so she can get my feedback.
I personally enjoy receiving "Spam", as it allows me to help out other web designers with their sites. In exchange, I get to learn about interesting young woman (with some amazing talents). Even better are the ideas people send for me to earn money. Tell me that the human soul isn't a benevolent one, when every day I get mail from people looking to help me earn free money.
God Bless America.
iluvpr0n.
I admit it. I worked for a company that spammed people often. They got alot of business from it thus they continued to do it.
Some of your arguments are flat out IGNORANT though. First off anyone in the US that says "I have to pay for ISP access so I shouldn't have to pay for spam" is talking without thinking. If you are paying per e-mail you receive, paying for extra bandwidth from spam etc. Go get yourself a new ISP. If you can't figure out how to FILTER your mail, then read that HELP FILE. If paying for access is what you are saying is the point, then get a P.O. BOX and file charges against all the unsolicited mail you recieve at that box since you have to pay anually for it(the P.O. Box).
People continue spamming for 1 reason. They get results. I know of a long distance company that gets 75% of its customers via SPAM. Why would they want to stop that?
If you read the numbers its not that many people that really are concerned about SPAM. The ones that are ANTI SPAM are just vocal about it.
Do I like spam? NO
Do I want the government to regulate it HELL NO!
You people talk through both sides of your mouth. You say no to more gevernemtn except when it helps your cause.
Razzious Domini
Razzious Domini
I could be a GREAT KARMA WHORE if I could just shed the few morals I have left.
"Punishment should be sweet and simple: launch spammers into the sun."
What did the sun ever do to you to recieve such a harsh punishment?! If you want to banish them to some place of no return, send them to Detroit.