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Senator Says Spammers Have First-Amendment Rights
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), while joining Rep. Gephardt (D-MO) in a discussion of how Democrats are the "guardians of the New Economy," noted that opt-out is better, because it gives companies their first ammendment right to contact you. I agree, companies do have a right to contact me. But they should be required to pay "postage" for that right. I think spammers should pay a penny per k to both me and my ISP. A 5k spam would cost a dime. Still less then a stamp, but it'd make me a few hundred bucks a month for my time, bandwidth, and hardware costs. Spammers take away my property and happiness. Isn't that a right too? And opt-out is a joke. I've opted out of countless things, but I still get a hundred+ spams a day. Thank god for mail filters.
- A.P.
--
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Sure. Why not?
In the olden days, we lived in villages or towns. There's only so many people who can _try_ to contact you in a village- and in fact there's case law where if someone in the village decided to bang on your door and shout in your windows 24/7, they'd be harassing you and the law would tell them to stop or be stopped.
The difference between now and then is technology and the expansion of possible contacts, and nothing illustrates this better than the Internet.
When every stupid peddler in the world can 'contact' MILLIONS OF PEOPLE with relative ease, the rules have changed. Any given peddler may or may not have a 'right' to 'contact' me, but the CLASS of stupid peddlers obviously do not have the right to perform a denial of service attack on my email account, or for that matter to consume many hours out of my day while I grovel through the thousands of emails to try and look for actual communications from people I need to talk to. Filters don't completely solve this, either. They don't scale that much better than hitting 'delete'.
I don't know exactly what needs to be done to give stupid peddlers the capacity to market to people (maybe *gasp* BUYING ADVERTISING?) but in a situation of hyperconnectivity, 'cold calling' is no good. They just hook up a big machine and cold-call EVERYBODY, just like the telemarketer machines that dial more numbers than the operators can handle. Technology brings the connectivity to a point where the old rules don't make sense any more. We need new rules better suited to the situation.
Why don't all slashdot readers send Ron Wyden some spam mail. You know, tell him how he can get rich by working at home, or how he can lose weight real fast.
Most of the spam I've gotten lately has been offering me merchant accounts for accepting credit card payments. Maybe if I forwarded one of them to Wyden, he could set himself up with a merchant account and accept bribes by credit card! Far more convenient than the old brown paper bag full of twenties!
Yep. I chagned, first to voicestream (Accually I had Verizion for a while but didn't like their service) for my phone service. Since I can't afford cell prices for my comptuer I eventially moved. Around Minneapolis there are three local monopoly phone companies that I know of. (Qwest, TDS, and sprint/united) There are also cable and satalite for computers, and wireless is coming. I'm sure not everyone has the latter option, but if you look you could be surprized.
Sounds like my cell phone. If you've got telemarketers calling your cell phone number all the time wanting to introduce you to the wonderful world of pay-per-play pornography over the phone don't you think you'd be a little perturbed as well considering you pay for calls you receive? Just like e-mail.
Well I agree with Social Security, but Federal Income taxes do *some* good.
If you drive on an Interstate Highway, most state highways and most bridges in the US, then your taxes are helping to pay for them and thier upkeep.
If you like your imported beer/food/cars/whatever, tax dollars are spent to keep the sea lanes open, the costal waters safe and make sure things are inspected at various Federal levels, with some of that Tax money.
Since 1945, Income tax dollars have gone to defending Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and the US so we can buy all these neat things and sell them fewer neat things than we buy from them.
I've always had to argue with people that saying "my tax money is wasted", because in most cases, people in the US get something back for thier tax dollars.
As for the Free Speech aspects of spam...I've got to think about that.
According to Senator Ron Wyden's web site (http://wyden.senate.gov/), he wants you to fill out a form rather than send an email as he get's too many emails and that will be the fastest way to get a response... hmmmm, I wonder if he get's too many spams. Judging by the source of his mail page, his email address is: senator_wyden@exchange.senate.gov. Of course, he has staff filtering emails for him. Too bad his personal email address isn't so easy to find... adding it to lots of spam lists might just change his opinion. He obviously does not care for individuals, just corporations, or else he would have been talking about "opt-in" lists, not "opt-out". Not only is he siding with corporate spammers, he's wasting taxpayer's money on staff who have to filter the spam from his inbox!
After trying various complicated ways of screening out spam before it hit my inbox, I now simply use a procmail filter which puts any email containing any of the following phrases into a 'spam' mailbox:
:-)
"remove" in subject line
"remove" in the subject
'remove' in the subject
removal instructions
remove in subject line
remove in the subject
to be permanently removed
to be removed
to be taken off
to get off the list
to get off this list
to get removed
to remove yourself
In a month of using this filter, it's reduced the spam I get by 2/3 (it caught 300 of the 450 spams I received in the past four weeks), and it hasn't yet accidentally marked even a single non-spam as spam. I add new phrases as I see new spam slip through the filter. (Next up: I need to add "S.1618" and "S. 1618" to the list.)
Each one of these is wrapped in a simple procmail recipe, as such:
:0
* B ?? to be removed
/home/brian/spambox
It's not the most efficient thing in the world, but it's simple and it works. I hope this idea is of use to others.
Furthermore, why is the only solution to party difficulties "bipartisanship"? As if they're the only two games in town.
:-)
Annoys the hell out of me.
-l
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Yeah, pretty much. I'd like to see Texas (where I live) switch over to proportional congresscritters. I need to read more on the subject, but last I read, the Founders were against a two-party system, but the States ended up encouraging it (intentionally or not) through the winner-take-all stakes that you mentioned.
Now if we just had referendum rights here, too...
-l
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Just double the size of the hash you want to compute every 18 months. Call it "Back's Law" and send a beer to Moore every 18 months while you're at it.
If we got rid of the small time spammers we'd get rid of 90% of the spam out there. Do you think it's companies like Yahoo and IBM that are sending you messages about the latest Britney Spears video?
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Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
Why can't some clever judge or lawyer find a way to stretch 47 USC sec. 227 to cover spammers sending unwanted "facsimiles" of the original of their email that they typed up to every address they can get their hands on? Facsimile meant a close approximation or copy of something long before there were wires to transmit them over, and the original intent of the writers of that law was to prevent cost shifting.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Naturally, the direct marketers are trying to control the debate by controlling the terminology, harping on the (deceptive) meme: Advertising is Speech.
I offer a counter-meme: Advertising is Pollution.
What is pollution? It's stuff that's introduced into an environment where it doesn't belong or isn't wanted.
Empty beer cans don't belong in the street. They interfere with the flow of traffic. They are an eyesore. It reduces the street's utility by getting in the way of where you want or need to go. They are also a health and safety hazard. Even if there weren't laws against littering in the street, social forces would operate to compel people to not litter. It is, as best, impolite; at worst, monsterously destructive to the environment and quality of life.
Advertising is nearly identical. It interferes with the normal flow of information. It's an eyesore. It reduces the utility of the info-sphere by interposing itself between you and what you want or need to know. It is also intentionally deceptive. Yet purveyors of advertising portray themselves as a necessary, indispensible part of modern captialist society, when in fact what they're doing is willfully polluting the info-sphere with stuff they know isn't wanted by anyone.
Tell me: How is cold-calling me at dinnertime trying to convince me to switch long-distance carriers a benefit to my household, the community, and society as a whole? How is stuffing my snailmail box with pulp paper coupons offering 3% discounts on crap I've never tried a good thing for me? How many lovely trees have been killed to print and mail this garbage which, in my case, goes straight into the recycling bin, unread? Why should I support wasting bandwidth to distribute deceptive scams and snakeoil, bandwidth that I could be using to lose at Quake and HalfLife?
Just as there are appropriate places for empty beer cans, there are appropriate places for Internet advertising. The social order of the Internet has unequivocally decided that advertising is pollution, and when it appears in unsanctioned areas, it will not tolerated. Period.
You have a right to speak. You have no right to pollute. Get over it.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Right on. Passing laws about spam just makes legislators think it's okay to pass laws regulating other aspects of online speech. I'd say it's worth a little extra annoyance to keep government net regulations *which are inevitably dumbassed* from being passed. The idea that we need the government messing in our private affairs because self-regulation is too hard (waah!) is just falling into the trap that keeps professional politicians in business. Either get a technical work-around, learn to live with spam, or simply stop using email. Just fer chrissakes, don't go whining to the government.
I guess it must be legal for me to call the senator at his house 400 times a day. IT'S MY RIGHT.
I guess that I can knock on his front door 400 times a day too. I just want to sell him some subscriptions to a pr0n site.
We need more senators like this, expanding the rights of Americans everywhere. Anyone know his address? I want to personally deliver a dump truck of spam and manure to his home address. That's my right too.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
If a person has the right to send spam, then honoring an opt-out list is purely optional.
I understand that we have a right to speak our mind in any forum, but there is no constitutional guarantee of an audience. It's pure crap that we have to pay for the priviledge of being an audience for garbage communications. It'd be one thing if the internet were provided to citizens free of charge, but the same way it's illegal for telemarketers to call cell phones, it ought to be illegal for spammers to contact those who do not actively seek advertisements. Apparently the first amendment doesn't apply to cell phones, setting the precedent for restricting unsolicited e-mail on the internet.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
And to think the Republicans are the ones who are supposed to be so pro-business.
Bet you don't get any more spam from the companies that you ``opted out'' from. Only problem is that those companies probably accumulate a list of opt-outs and sell it to some other company so they can spam you. ``Hey, Ted, how's it going? Nah. Wish I could but I can't. I have a golf outing. Say, I gotta list here of people who don't want our junk emails any more. Maybe they won't mind hearing from you. How much will you give me for it?''
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
What, you mean my internet access is supposed to be free? Those dirty cheaters at my ISP told me I have to PAY for it already!
But facetiousness aside, we ARE paying for it. It's often on a flat-rate basis (much like local phone calls and basic cable TV services) rather than a "per-packet" basis, but it is paid for. Spammers can use the same services - though I get the impression that just about every ISP has a service agreement that says [to paraphrase] "our service is not for sending spam, so don't do it or we'll kick you off". (I suspect ISP's who DON'T have this in their acceptable use terms in the contracts get blacklisted pretty quickly...)
---
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I have the impression that in the past year, US politicians and US political advisors looked at the spam issue and started to think of unsolicited email as their future tool in election campaigns.
Now, they are trying to make it legit. For political campaigns, of course. They may outlaw it for commercial spam, but there will be attempts to legitimize political spam.
And trust me, unless there is a real outcry against it, there will be political spam in the future. Already now, despite the fact that nobody likes telemarketing (do you?), the Bush campaign relied heavily on it, even used pre-recorded messages and questionable procedures that are usually considered a bad thing in telemarketing - and the Bush team later called it a valuable and working tool.
There have already been a few small incidents of US politicians spamming. Most of these attempts backfired, but from what I read, it appears to me that even after some "net oldtimers" protested, the political campaign teams did not actually think they did something wrong.
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You may like my a cappella music
Not Gephardt. Can't you even read the little blurb on /. (much less the article itself)?
As for happiness: there is no such right. What fools these mortals be. Even the pursuit of happiness you have no Constitutional right to, though Tom Jefferson liked the phrase as a substitute for the more controvertial "property".
Even if there was shown to be some compelling government interest in stopping spam, any law to that end would still have to deal with strict scrutiny from the courts. And in this case, technical means can deal with the problem. I think they can do so adequately now, but perhaps it is too hard for most people. Even so, they should do so fine in a year or two.
Let us regard the long sweep of time and realize how foolish it would be to sacrifice even a tiny chunk of our right of free speech for a few years of the security of slightly less spam.
You wouldn't believe how many times I've heard that. ;)
It great working at a company with a giant banner like that by the front door, though. And it looks ten times more evil in black on a red background.
æeee!
It works in combination with our Micropay server (connected with Paypal and eventually a number of other money transfer systems) so that the spammers can essentially pay you postage for sending you mail. We're about to release a Windows client (only days away), but a Linux one is in the works...
Take a look at the product sheet here for more info
æeee!
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Are people who instantiate Denial of Service attacks also protected by their first amendment rights? And what about 4th amendment rights?
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" (expanded to cover privacy in general usage)
Neither of these are even political speech. Anyone have their real email and home (Not office!) phone numbers?
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
If you are running a server that happily and consentually accepts the connection, then it's hardly force, is it?
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I agree that spammers have the right to send mail to anyone who is willing to receive it. And if you're running a SMTP server on the Internet and it accepts mail from anyone, then that means you're willing to receive spam.
BUT I also assert that using fake return addresses is a form of fraud, and the First Ammendment does not give you the right to defraud. If it does, then I'm going to start selling bridges and Florida real estate.
Don't fake your headers, and you're in the clear. Of course, the whole reason for faking headers and using open relays is to avoid accountability, because you don't want your "potential customers" to talk back.
The First Ammendment assures you're allowed to say it, but it doesn't assure that you're not responsible for what you say.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
And that's the appropriate answer. What's needed is improved filtering software, not more laws. They have the right to talk, but we don't need to listen.
More laws is usually a very bad answer. I think that this is another case were solving a problem by throwing laws at it is a bad answer. But private entities have the right to not transmit things. Private individuals have the right to not receive things.
Mail programs would also need to be a bit more intelligent. They would need to be able, e.g., to decide to not download large messages without explicit approval. It would be best if they were able to download the first part of a message and examine that before deciding whether or not to continue. Say, a 5KB chunk of the message. Anyone should be able to say enough in that space to allow the recipient to decide whether or not to download the rest.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
one penny to both the user and the ISP.
5k mail, 5 cents to the user, 5 cents to the ISP.
I found 2 quotes on similar issues, both apply here.
"[They] have come to court not because their
freedom of speech is seriously threatened but
because their profits are; to dress up their
complaints in First Amendment garb
demeans the principles for which the First Amendment
stands and the protections it was designed
to afford."
Federal Judge Stanley Sporkin , Turner Broadcasting v. FCC
And:
"Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen
to or to view any unwanted communication,
whatever its merit. . . We therefore categorically
reject the argument that a vendor has the right
under the Constitution or otherwise to send
unwanted material into the home of another...
We repeat, the right of a mailer stops at the outer
boundary of every person's domain."
No name to accredit it to, but: Rowan v. U.S. Post Office
Quotes taken from http://www.cauce.org/about/faq.shtml#censorship
Please support the effort to outlaw spam. See CAUCE for more information.
For a good time call www.sawkie.com
You agreed to accept whatever it sends you the moment you connected to it, just as you agree to accept ads by turning on a television set.
Is that true? Hope you remember you said that if you ever get DoS attacked, get a virus on your computer, or get your computer cracked. After all "the Internet is a public forum. You agreed to accept whatever it sends you the moment you connected to it.
-WintermuteSpam is NOT protected speech because of the following criminal and civil violations:
The First Amendment to the American Constitution does not in any way restrict legislators from passing other laws to protect the rights and property of other people. I cannot legally break into the home of prospective employers to read them my resume. I cannot legally deface buildings with messages I consider important. I cannot legally erect an advertising billboard on someone else's property without permission.
So why should spam be treated any differently?
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
I had a truly evil idea recently that might just work.
We can address the spamming problem by spamming the DMA. They list e-mail addresses on the Internet on this page:
http://www.the-dma.org/aboutdma/contactthedma.shtm l
What we can do is compose an anti-spam message and send it to all the addresses listed on this page. The following guidelines are needed for maximum effectiveness and legality.
The point of the exercise is to give the DMA a practical demonstration of the perils of an opt-out marketing campaign.
The DMA will eventually start requesting removal. Comply with all requests. At this time you will need a new message, with new From, Reply-To and Subject headers, and new content.
If enough people do this, we can disrupt the DMA's e-mail system, and give them a practical demonstration on the problems that unfettered spamming will cause.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
not true. Since sending email is effectively free, many spammers use the Rumplestiltskin Attack to guess email addresses. If your Hotmail email is something common like joe@hotmail.com, you will probably get more spam than mr_gerbik_23423487@hotmail.com.
cpeterso
> I think these senators don't comprehend the reality with spam; that is, 99% of it has false origin information and has an opt-out scheme that doesn't work or only results in more spam.
Yes, clearly these guys don't read their own mail, or else they'd know that you would have to "opt out" in a 1:1 ratio with the number of spam messages you get.
> Adam Back has an interesting proposal called Hash Cash.
I was thinking about a program that would compute my (mutable) e-dress from the current time and a secret key. I would change my e-dress on my end every day or so (more often, if necessary), and give the program and my personal key to my family and friends so that they could calculate the proper address at the time they launched the message.
If I built the program into a mailer, they could just enter the key into their database once, and then the mailer would automatically convert my nominal e-dress into my current actual e-dress for them.
This scheme does have a few problems. The biggest one is that it would make it impossible for people without your key to contact you, even for legitimate purposes. Another is that a down server might delay your friends' mail long enough for the destination name to change. Yet another is that it would make things hard for mailing lists, though in principle there's no reason they couldn't use the translation program; you would just include a key in your opt-in subscription message.
At any rate, it's the core of an idea. Maybe someone can work out a solution to the problems it poses.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> everyone I know are put in my white list and automatically get sorted in a "Safe Inbox".
.doc attachments, just to delete them afterwards.
The problem I have is that I'm still on a dialup connection, and I get tired of spending several minutes downloading huge HTML-saturated messages with
I guess I need to find/write a front end that will identify spam on the server and delete it there without ever downloading it.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I just think that the spam sent should have a proper subject/from address, period.
You should *absolutely* be able to respond to the owners using the same medium they used to contact you (email), and the subject should not be misleading in any way. If they are offering you cheap loans, the subject should be 'Cheap loan offer'. Not 'Hey bill, check this out!'
Where in the First Amendment does it say that a company/person has the right to invade my home/place of work with information I do not want?
IANACS (I am not a constitutional scholar :P), but 1st Amendment rights to free speech/press etc. is one thing, "freedom" to try to get you to part with your cash to purchase my product or service is another.
SPAM legislation shouldn't (and doesn't so far as I know) attempt to regulate unsolicited political, religious, philosophical, or just plain stupid content. I think there would be some genuine 1st amendment issues in the U.S. if it did.
A question:
- would it be the 1st amendment rights of the companies that would prevent us from legislating away their ability to send us junk mail in meatspace?
I think Taco's half-serious(?) suggestion to impose "postage" on UCE points to one of the root problems of UCE: damn little cost for the sender. Even if we could incorporate some of the opt-out facilities available to us with meatspace junkmail, i.e., contact the DMA (direct marketing assoc?) and basically opt-out of receiving junk mail from all/most(?) of their member companies, that doesn't address the thousands/millions of individual, fly-by-night companies, MLM schemers, etc. who can't afford the 3rd class postage to bludgeon the universe with paper junk mail but can sure afford to click the send button on their email client.
Legislators are wrong to think that opt-out insofar as it may work for paper junk mail and phone calls applies in the same way to UCE.
Several points.
First, I would be more than happy to get rid of a lot of the small-time spammers. I'd like to stop getting "30 million addresses!!!!!!!" spams sent from some teenager's basement. I'd like to get rid of the "I'm HOT and WAITING for YOU" spam. I think Hash Cash could help here.
Second, the argument that hardware gets cheaper and faster everyday doesn't negate any benefit of Hash Cash or similar schemes; I'll just charge more every year. Last year you needed 16 bits to send me an email, now I want 25 bits. (Based on Moore's law, inflation should be around 160% / year.)
Third, lets say I require you to use about 10 seconds on a decent current desktop machine. If you want to send me an individual email, I don't think you'd mind waiting the ten seconds. I certainly wouldn't. Once I find out you're not a spammer, I'll let you send me email for free. Now, let's say a spammer wants to send out 1 million emails, and that he's got 10 decent desktop machines solely dedicated to computing hashes. It's going to take him more than a week to send out his email, at which time his angelfire webhosting account and hotmail email address will be long gone.
Even if companies like IBM, Sears or Microsoft want to get a huge farm to compute hashes and send out spam, I'd be reasonably confident that traditional measures (i.e. phone them or email them and tell them to stop bugging you) would be effective.
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
However, I don't believe in making laws against spam. They'll always be outdated and interfere with legimate uses of email, since it can be very hard to define exactly what is spam. (Someone taking my address from a newsgroup posting and trying to sell me printer toner is spamming, but how about an email from a company I bought something from a year ago?)
Adam Back has an interesting proposal called Hash Cash. The idea is that if you want to send me an email, you have to burn some CPU cycles to compute a partial hash collision. I choose how many bits are required. Friends and family can send me email for free. I'll charge a few bits for the store I shooped at last week, and even more for people I don't know. If you're in ORBS or MAPS, perhaps I'll charge even more.
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
So if I overload a server with a bunch of IP packets, it's Denial Of Service. If I do it from a few different locations, then it's DDOS. But if those packets contain useless email advertisements, then it's speech and it's OK?
I don't know exactly what needs to be done to give stupid peddlers the capacity to market to people (maybe *gasp* BUYING ADVERTISING?) but in a situation of hyperconnectivity, 'cold calling' is no good. They just hook up a big machine and cold-call EVERYBODY, just like the telemarketer machines that dial more numbers than the operators can handle.
Including people who could not possibly buy their products in the first place. Because the stuipd peddler only peddles to people withing a few hundred miles of where they are. But sprews their junk to the entire planet.
Email spam comes from one-man operations - some dork who bought a CD of emails and spam proggies of Ebay for $10 - and his 486. Together, they pump out thousands of emails a day. It is the very ability to flood email boxes with spam for no cost that separates it from other forms of unsolicited communication.
Maybe a better analogy would be someone setting up a pirate radio station to hawk their stuff...
How can we honor both the first amendment and a right to privacy, to keep from being spammed? This really is quite easy, because of some of the inherent nature of spam.
The first amendment "right to contact me" is an illusion. No one has a right to contact me under applicable law, except in a traditional public forum. However, the government cannot, and should not be able to either: preclude speech on the internt, nor to impose an obligation to engage in speech of a particular type on the internet.
Most spam regulation is losing on at least one of these points. Either the spam regulation says that, because of the content of my spam, I cannot send it to you. Or the spam regulation says that, because of the content of my spam, I must send it to you with a message labelling it.
There is adequate authority, at least, to raise credible first amendment arguments in each case. Certainly enough to challenge legislation and slow down meaningful regulation.
BUT THERE IS A WAY TO DO THIS. Constitutionally, and effectively!
Instead of REQUIRING a label for spam, or BARRING the mailing of spam, simply make it a crime to MISREPRESENT how the message was sent.
First amendment law prohibits government regulation of truthful speech, but it CLEARLY permits regulation against false speech.
So we pass a law making it a crime to send spam designating the message as non-spam!
Why would that work? Because after that law is passed, we make it an internet convention to tag almost all mail as non-spam! If everyone does this, we can now filter for spam, at least the spam that is sent by people who are concerned about violating the law.
I'm working on a white paper now to spell out the details. And there are quite a few details. But the gist of this works.
Of course, it doesn't stop the traffic, at some level. On the other hand, it DOES stop the incentive to spam, and thereby allows stopping it at significant choke points.
And all it requires is the will of the net infrastructure to label non-spam as non-spam -- a process that can be made automatic and virtually trivial.
In commercial settings give out a different email address that map to the same mail box each time rather than having just one. You'll be able to tell if it was your mom or the phone company that got you on a spammers list.
I'm sure there's a business model in there somewhere.
Although I guess it SHOULD be a company's right to call me (I hate it, though) at least make them pay for it like every other means of bothering me without my permission.
He's not talking about limiting speech, just making them pay for their usage of the hardware medium they choose. They can come to my door for free and speak all they want. They shouldn't, however, be able to use the computer resources _I_ pay for to bother me.
IANAL, but I play one on
As for your other arguments, the mailbox is actually government property (even though you paid for it) so the money goes to the govt when they send junk mail. Also, it doesn't cost you anything to receive mail does it? There is a small upfront cost of the physical box, but after that there is no cost to you for the mail put in there. With email, every message uses resources you pay for (ISP, email address, your hard drive space) every time (small amounts, sure, but still it costs something every time). So, there is both an upfront charge (your computer) and a per message charge with email; that is the difference as I see it.
The garbage service is probably required wherever you live anyway (apt complex, housing addition, etc) regardless of the junk mail you receive or the amount you receive. If it isn't required, you can always dump it at the local bin behind the supermarket (don't even make an extra trip, just do it everytime you go shopping somewhere). That costs you nothing (if you don't make a special trash trip).
IANAL, but I play one on
Besides, there are many "free" ISPs out there that spammers can use. They can also borrow someone else's account or use one account for 50 people at the same time (firewall networking). You can't really do that with Telemarketing or Junk Mail. One email sent to 1,000,000 people only uses a very small amount of "their" bandwidth. Once it leaves their mail server, though, it uses the bandwidth of 1,000,000 people. Telemarketing and Junk Mail costs the company one "item" per person it contacts. Spammers are only charged one "item" per bulk email (possibly millions of people).
IANAL, but I play one on
I forgot to answer the question about whom they should pay. That is a very hard question, but I guess the only fair answer is the govt since they are using their resources for most of the email's journey. I don't want to get paid per SPAM, I would just be happy to make sure they paid a fair amount to SOMEONE for annoying me.
IANAL, but I play one on
So, if Opt-Out is the way to go, when can I opt-out of paying Income Tax and Social Security? Neither one is doing me any good. The government will have their First Amendment rights, while I'll have my Fourth and Tenth Amendment rights.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
This makes me glad I run my own mail server. All I want/expect from my cable-modem provider is a fat pipe to the Internet. All the spam in the world can go to foo@lvcm.com; it'll never show up on my machine. (Then again, I'm using a commercial account, so there wouldn't be much point in spamming it anyway.)
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
At any given phone, this might only work for a little while. I once tried this tactic against a group of gun-grabbers. Four calls got through before they started blocking calls from the payphone I was using.
I suppose you could go hunting for payphones and tie all of them up...with people who (for whatever reason) want to get through unable to do so, maybe this would still qualify in some small way as a kind of DoS attack.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
What this clueless congresscritter needs to learn is that spamming is NOT a free speech issue, it's a property rights issue.
MY computer, and MY fax machine, are not a public utility for "Make Money Fast" scammers to use at their convenience. I'm sure they'd love to break into my house and paint a billboard on my living room wall too, but I'm not about to let them do that.
If an advertiser wants to contact me, they can do it at their own expense by buying legitimate advertising placements.
This senator needs to be buried in an avalanche of letters.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
We just need to make corporations not-people again.
Sony has first amenedment rights? Sad but true. And wrong.
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
From: "Gephardt, Richard"
To: (me)
Subject: RE: test
Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2001 18:37:55 -0400
Thank you for your e-mail. I appreciate hearing
from you.
Due to the high volume of e-mails my office receives, I cannot guarantee a response to every message. However, if you reside in the Third Congressional District of Missouri, which I represent, and would like a written response, please resubmit your comments through
http://www.house.gov/writerep. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
If you reside in the Third Congressional District of
Missouri and wish to request Capitol/White House tours, or if you have a problem with a Federal agency, please contact one of my congressional offices.
St. Louis: (314) 894-3400
Washington, D.C.: (202) 225-2671
Festus: (636) 937-6399
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Because the DMA's lobbyists contribute more to campaign coffers than you and I can ever hope to.
> If you made Spam illegal how else would they meet attractive barely-legal teens in nearby colleges who need to meet men?
Funny, I thought that's what Congress was for.
The right to swap h0t t33n 1nt3rn pu55y for political favors is part of the package, is it not?
I bet some of those specific exceptions include pornographic pictures (I notice that my Fax Machine and my Snail Mail Box are not cluttered with Porn Pictures, but with non pornographic junk ads).
90% of the Spam in my inbox is something I consider to be pornographic.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Your niece probably doesn't get such spam because she simply hasn't been on the Internet long enough, or because she knows not to post her real e-mail address except when necessary. The spam-scrapers will pick up any e-mail address that they find on USENET or the Web, and they certainly do NOT go to the effort of checking whether the person at that address has visited porn sites before selling that list to a porn site.
It is entirely possible that DoubleClick somehow manages to correlate cookies with e-mail addresses, but if an email-list seller relied exclusively on data from DoubleClick he wouldn't get nearly enough addresses to advertise "1 MILLION E-MAIL ADDRESSES JUST $199.99!!!" Spammers get addresses from any source possible, not one particular source.
You sound disturbingly pro-spam, with your attempt to make it seem like it's the user's fault for recieving spam, and it gives you a nice ad-hominem attack against the original poster as well. The tone of your message implies: "Well, you wouldn't be getting all that spam if you weren't a PERVERTED PORN FIEND."
Spammers will spam anyone and everyone possible. They cannot and do not go to the effort of attempting to target their advertisements.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Heh. Look at Wyden's HTML... there's an e-mail address specified as part of the form action.
So that's senator_wyden@exchange.senate.gov, it looks like.
Gephardt, unfortunately, seems to require users to go through the "Write Your Representative" cgi-bin, which isn't nearly as revealing.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The First Amendment does not establish the right to send me e-mail.
I agree...but i'd go so far as to say the First Amendment doesn't give anyone the right to even talk to you if you don't want them to. I feel that the first amendment promises that should I want to say something, people may CHOOSE to listen to me. But they may also choose not to. Of course this right to speach also implies the right to listen.
No, its not their legal right to contact you. Maybe one time, and if you tell them to fuck off, they do not have any right to contact you. Are you trying to tell us that ANYONE that wants to talk to me has a legal right to do so??? I don't think so...
Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will help on this issue. If you made Spam illegal how else would they meet attractive barely-legal teens in nearby colleges who need to meet men?
Someone you trust is one of us.
The Internet is a public forum, however, my inbox is not.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Why, oh why, must people too stupid to comprehend obvious sarcasm respond to my posts?
Well, if the democrats want to guard the spammer's right to cost me and my company money, I think I'll be calling my Republican senator, asking him to slap them around a little.
Of course, in a week I will be threatening vote for a democrat if he doesn't stop advocating internet censorship bills...
Author says: But they should be required to pay "postage" for that right. I think spammers should pay a penny per k to both me and my ISP. A 5k spam would cost a dime. Still less then a stamp.
... if we start charging people does this mean if i receive an email from someone i don't like I can now charge them for it?
:)
A few major problems here...
1. If they pay for email, you should have to pay for email you send anywhere as well and then we will be back to having a regulated postal service.
2. E-mail is arguably free.. Its a system of networked servers designed to pass messages from one user to another.... they are using that.. why do you assume there is a level of personal privacy there? I can send an email to anyone! bob@yourmomsuck.com president@whitehouse.gov cmdrtaco@slashdot.org
I guess where do draw the line? is spam that infuriating to you? Personally it doens't bother me.. I have a few different pop accounts i use, with one i give out to people so i can read messages from and one for mailing lists(usually one per mailing list) and one for signing up for dumb stuff online where it sounds like i'm gonna get spammed for it...
What do you do about postal spam? Personally i can't stand that.. I get over 2 pounds a week of trash mail in my mailbox that some how now I AM RESPONSIBLE to recycle or throw away.. My name is Not Postal Customer, or Recipient... i've fought with my post office and left the junk mail in my mailbox.. that does nothing unfortunately.. those are the people who should be paying us for email... if you get some spam... thats reason #45628 the DELETE key was invented...
I think theere are highly more pressing issues to worry about then some junk mail...
Just my thoughts...perhaps losing some karma now
Just force everyone who mails you to encrypt the message to your obnoxiously long GPG key. If everyone did this, it'd take a lot more commitment to spam people.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The Federal Trade Commision regulates interstate telemarketing. Unsolicited faxes, and calls to pagers and cellular phones, or any number that will mean a charge to the person being called are banned by the FTC, and for intra-state calls by many state legislatures.
The rules for faxes are very clearly opt-in:
- Advertisements for any goods or services cannot be sent to your fax machine without
your prior express permission or invitation.
- Permission to send unsolicited faxes is presumed to exist if you have an established business
relationship with whomever is sending the message.
- You can end this relationship by telling the company that you do not want to receive any
more faxes from them.
nformation that must be placed either on the first page or on each page of a fax:I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
You forgot 4) Don't put your real email address in your /. user profile. Those old postings are archived forever, and easily accessable by any web spider...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Agreed. The operative legal phrase is "captive audience". For all intents and purposes, you are a captive audience of your email - your job, your lifestyle, and more depend on you checking your email. Indeed, in some cases, your email is the equivalent of small-scale corporate emergency services (you're paid to respond immediately when an alert comes in), and is analogous to phone numbers you can ask companies not to call (including wardialing telemarketers if you have an unlisted number).
There is a clear legal opinion that First Amendment rights do not extend to being able to address captive audiences. (The case that comes to mind is a KKK rally that the would-be host town objected to, where the sound of the rally would penetrate even closed doors and windows such that there would be no place in town free from the rally. I may be misremembering this, though.)
Under the legacy of common law which we share with England, a corporate body is considered a person for most purposes, thus they can be sued, taxed and held accountable for their actions.
illegitimii non ingravare
---
In order to protect a company's first amendment rights, they can only be held guilty for spamming once an individual specifies that they don't want it, as opposed to emphasizing an individual's first amendment right not to have someone else's speech imposed upon them.
Obviously, since this favors the corporate world and they pay the politicians to do their bidding, this is the logic that will prevail as it does with telemarketing.
- tokengeekgrrl
spammers aren't exercising free speech. they're interfering with free speech by trespassing into private fora, distrurbing private communications, and stealing resources that do not belong to them.
if the first amendment protects spammers, it also protects those who want to walk into my house uninvited for the purpose of nailing advertisements to my walls.
maybe someone should find out where the senator lives, and drive up and down his street at 4am playing advertisements for ponzi schemes over a loudspeaker.
I've said it countless times, you cannot have it both ways, the internet can be a public place or it can be regulated. It's nice that you want freedom for the things you want to do, but want restrictions on the things the YOU don't like others doing, but it's hypocrytical. The internet is here by consensus, not by fiat. I like the fact that the net is frontierland and it turns my stomach to see regulations of any kind being enforced by the government of any country.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Again and again and again... the internet is a public place. If you leave your mailserver set up as an open relay tough shit on you if I send mail through it. Not that I personally would, but you're the idiot that doesn't know how to configure a server. The internet should not be ruled by legislation of any kind, but by consensus. Hence organizations and concepts such as the RBL, IF you are stupid enough to leave you're mailservers open to relaying, we'll put you on this public list... available to anyone who wnats to ban incoming mail from your servers. This make sense and it works. Why involve the government? Because people are too used to whining and complaining that someone should fix things instead of fixining them themselves.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
It's the way the net was built in the first place, so I'd safe I'm still pretty safe here in the real world, where are you?
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Wrong boyo, forcing someone to capitulate is democracy, it's called majority rules.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Yes, it would be a restriction of freedom if these companies were prevented from placing ads on their own site. Free speech entails certain responsibilities. I'll rely on the shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre argument to explain that one. If a door-to-door salesman doesn't have the right to wander round your house trying to advertise, what gives spammers the right to invade your PC? Okay, that's not a very good analogy - the fact remains that there are (at least today) limits to how free speech really is.
The problem I have is when you "opt-out", only to have the mail bounced due to an invalid email address, presumably due to spam from the account. Or if you end up on a Japanese spam list, and the email & all linked pages are unreadable by non-linguists, so you *can't* opt-out.
jred
www.cautioninc.com
jred
I'm not a mechanic but I play one in my garage...
Make sure to call from a pay phone; it costs more. Plus, if you call from home, they will have your phone number (even if you try to block it). I knew some people who would carry a list of 800 numbers and would call them from pay phones at the metro or grocery.
No replies made to AC posts. Please log in.
Your right to free speech does not obligate me to provide you a forum in which to exercise that right.
I think spammers should pay a penny per k to both me and my ISP. A 5k spam would cost a dime.
Rob, repeat after me:
1 x 5 = 10^H^H5
1 x 5 = 10^H^H5
1 x 5 = 10^H^H5
A penny times five equals a nickel. Hell, I'm even Canadian and I still know that much"...
--
I guess someone should sue on the anti-fax junk mail laws and see what happens, or offer to fax all four hundred hot sexy barely legal teens porn spam to either one of these guys.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
This message was unsolicited and contains no "remove" instructions at the bottom, qualifying it as "spam" email. Spam email is now illegal. Please see to it that you never send spam email to the email address "(my@email.address)" again, as it will be reported.
Ok it was a little harsh, but I was trying to break my caffeine addiction, and as such I was a bit cranky. :P
People shape laws. Not the other way around.
CmdrTaco apparently thinks happiness is a right!
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
But opt-out simply doesn't work. It just puts you on the "live fish" list, for which the spammers can charge extra money. I'm more for fraud charges against spammers who insist on concealing their identity.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I agree, companies do have a right to contact me. But they should be required to pay "postage" for that right. I think spammers should pay a penny per k to both me and my ISP. A 5k spam would cost a dime.
If you want entities to pay you to email you, set up an email account which forces this. If you want to make exceptions for certain "from addresses", you can do that too. Seriously, how difficult is that? If you want your email address to be private, stop giving it away to the public, and stop accepting email from random sources. It's really that simple.
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Advertising is slightly different than free speech.
If I was getting spam about overthrowing the American Government, fine... That's free speech.
But when I get spam advertising unsolicited crap products (low mortgages, cheap ink, infinite supply of viagra) that I just don't want it sucks.
Here are some precidents (sp?) for ending unsolicited spam.
1. Missouri now has a do-not-call list. It's enforced. If a telemarketer gets caught calling my house, they get in big trouble. It went into effect a week or so ago I believe and calls have ENDED! Honestly!
2. When I get credit card(and other advertisement) offers in the mail. There are a few rights that I have...
a. I know exactly where they came from.
b. I can "usually" get off the mailing list.
I'm not saying necessarily that it needs to be government regulated, but we need to design and bulid an email standard that will stop unwanted mail with tough to trace headers.
Once this sort of mail server is in place it should also have the option of only accepting mail from other mail servers that follow these standards.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Senator Wyden will be holding town meetings in Oregon. Surely enough Slashdotters livbe within a few hour's drive?
Saturday, June 30th 12:00pm - 1:30pm Lake County Town Hall Lakeview Senior Center 11 N. G Street Lakeview 4:00pm - 5:30pm Curry County Town Hall Port Orford City Council Chambers 555 W. 20th Street Port Orford Sunday, July 1st 2:00pm - 3:30pm Lane County Town Hall Cottage Grove Community Center 700 E. Gibbs Avenue Cottage Grove Monday, July 2nd 4:30pm - 6:00pm Benton County Town Hall The Corvallis Fire Hall 400 NW Harrison Boulevard CorvallisDon't blame me - I voted for Howard Dean. http://dean2004.blogspot.com
Its called the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. (I am assuming you are in the US.) Everytime you receive a telemarket call, log the time and date of the call, the name of the caller, and the company they represent. Tell them to "Put me on your do not call list". If they call again within 1 year, its $500. Further calls can cost the offender up to $1500 (judges discretion to treble the damages). Try www.junkbusters.com and www.fcc.gov for more info.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
Congress is once again proving how out of touch with reality they really are I wonder how much money the DMA (Direct Marketer's Alliance) contributed to Senator Wyden and Congressman Gephardt?
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Email is a push technology, not a pull technology. If someone posts it on Yahoo, or banner ads, you are making a request for it. If they stuff it in your in-box, then you have not requested it on your equiptment. This pop-up/under ads are questionable.
Fight Spammers!
Where in the First Amendment does it say that a company/person has the right to invade my home/place of work with information I do not want?
Right, so lets go censor things we don't want on television too, since they're 'invading' your home through the non-essential service you voluntarily use.
NO CARRIER
In CompuServe v Cyber Promotions the court stated quite clearly that the spammer's first amendment rights DO NOT trump the recipient's property rights. This was not a novel result, but was consistent with past rulings, including US Supreme Court rulings.
There's really nothing more to this than that - The Senator is wrong. Plainly, unambiguously, and inexcusably wrong. The only thing newsworthy about this is the degree to which the Senator has embarrassed himself.
It has been established that companies do not have to allow free speech in the workplace. Every company has the absolute power to coerce their employees to follow standards and policies.
I think that as long as companies are allowed to deny their employees the right to free speech at work, they themselves should not be able to avail themselves of any 1st Ammendment goodies, whether its advertising or anything else.
Now, before you flame me, I think it's good that employers are allowed to exercise some control over their workplace environments. I guess this leads me to conclude that, well, OK, companies shouldn't have any 1st Ammendment benefits, period.
This _will_ work as long as most people are subject to a broadband monopoly, either Cable or DSL, or whatever's next. This won't fly if there is true competition in broadband access (and don't tell me that the DSL market is truly open).
DJ
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
This page explains the situation quite nicely.
Basically, a group of people involved in junk snailmailing claimed the same First Amendment right to spam. But in U.S. Supreme Court Appeal 397 U. S. 728, the Supreme Court ruled the exact opposite way. They said that "a man's home is his castle" and that if he doesn't want to receive junk mail, he has the right not to.
Sure, this ruling applied to snail mail, but it is similar enough to email that it is very likely that the Supreme Court would rule the same way here.
---
DOOR!!
I pledge allegiance to the flag...
of the Corporate States of America...
You said it. I have my own mail server too, and it makes life grand. I still use my ISP account for many things though... I can't switch 100% to my own system because as soon as I do the cable modem cops will wave the TOS at me shut down my server... murphy's law.
Ever been pissed off at the phone company? So which other phone company did you switch to, I'd like to know because I hate mine...
Anyway, if all the major ISPs adopted this there would be *nowhere to run to.* Frankly I am surprised that it isn't happening already.
I said it might be excessively cynical, you were warned.
Yeah, but I'm worried about my connectivity provider playing that game. Ugh.
[WARNING: This post may be excessively cynical.]
Really, what I am waiting for is ISP-approved spam. If the right to send spam is legally upheld, I think this is what awaits us in the future:
- Major ISPs set up "commercial email facilitation services."
- Spammer contacts the ISP. Spammer signs up for the service, and for $0.0X per email address the ISP guarantees delivery to the end user. How many users does home.com have? Or Earthlink?
- ISP makes a bundle.
- We all start getting 50 approved spams every day (the ISP would be smart enough not to redistribute pr0n spam)
- ISP rewrites the TOS so you can't complain about it or opt out.
- ISP monkeys with subject and sender headers to defeat mail filters.
- ISP defends their actions by claiming that spam was costing them $X million a year and this is the only way they can recover costs.
Obnoxious? Yes. But with the huge money to be made I think it's only a matter of time before things go this route. Non-spamming ISPs will become rare... only small ISPs will want to refuse the income, because their small user base won't make it worth backlash. But as more and more small ISPs get bought out or go under, there will be fewer and fewer places to run...
Are you willing to pay 2 cents per e-mail? I know some of us are (especially those of us who send less than a hundred e-mails per month). What about the maintainers of e-mail lists/newsletters? This would add a significant cost to some big open source projects with large newsgroups (like bug lists, announcement lists, etc). If you impose a 2 cent tax on business e-mail, you have to impose a 2 cent tax on EVERY e-mail (at least those that cross between companies/individuals - two AOL users obviously would not have to pay, just like two Microsoft users).
Sorry, I'd rather put up with spam than give up free e-mail.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Look at it.. spam is there to perform a "function", to get you to buy stuff or whatever. Well DeCSS is a function in just the same way. If Spam is protected free speech, DeCSS should be too ;).
SSL Certificate
That's right, folks. Not only are we going to simultaneously cut Department of Defense resources while actually incurring EXTRA EXPENSES, but we will also virtually give away the airwaves, YET AGAIN, to large corporations, for them to do with as they please, namely MAKE MONEY AT THE GOVERNMENT'S EXPENSE. This kind of corporate subsidizing makes me sick, especially so since it is a supposedly liberal Democrat who is proposing that we do so.
--
< )
( \
X
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
In any event, it seems likely the same legal thinking will apply to any anti-spam law. Since most email spam is, in fact, commercial ads, that would appear to be something that can be banned. Chain letters (that are not other wise illegal, like Ponzi scams), political messages, even ones asking for donations, and many other kinds of email are going to be protected, in the end. Or so it looks to me.
wishus
---
(By the way, leaving a note on my windshield is illegal if my car is parked in the garage. Ditto if it is parked in the lot of an apartment complex which forbids solicitation.
E-mail is not a public accomodation. I own my e-mail account, just as I own my fax machine and PCS phone. Just as with those devices, the person who is paying for the service should have final say in how it is used.
You have no First Amendment right to make "first contact" with you via mobile phone. Nor do you have a right to send unsolicited ads to my fax machine. On my land-line phone, I can use the phone company's service to opt out of call solicitations. These same rules should be made to apply to e-mail. There is no Free Speech case here.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
An e-mail box is not a USPS mail box. It is a privately owned data file which is leased for the purpose of being able to exchange data with others. Your example of putting a billboard on somebody's lawn which faces their window is particularilly cogent.
Opt-out is a whack-a-mole game, because when you tell an advertiser you don't want to hear from them, they can come back as another company in a week anyway. Most spammers are fly-by-night scams anyway.
The First Amendment does not establish the right to send me e-mail.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
No need mate, you can send e-mail to gephardt@mail.house.gov.
As anybody else can send e-mail to gephardt@mail.house.gov
Actually every spambot from some sleazebag marketers can pick up the e-mail address of gephardt@mail.house.gov right here @ /.
Of course, so can every reputable company wanting to contact gephardt@mail.house.gov.
No need to thank me.
(Instead you might want to thank gephardt@mail.house.gov protecting your consitutional rights. Thank you Mr. gephardt@mail.house.gov )
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Simple including the substring "mail" into a service does not upon that service bestow all the rights, priveleges, and protections afforded to real mail.
The *right* to do this stems from Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company [118 U.S. 394 (1886)], Read more here
This is the wellspring of power from which most of America s ills originate. This is why you will not be able to stop Spammers (or pollutors or corrupt congresspeople or warmongers) Close this well and take back control of your country...
Simple - Anyone who values Democracy and dislikes the class-based rule (your present plutocratic government) should join with those who seek to repeal this case. This is the brass-ring with which Americans can restore their Democracy... otherwise, we wait for the next revolution.
Considering all spam is advertising (even the "save so-and-so" chain letters, in a way), spam is NOT entirely protected by the First Amendment. Yes, IANAL, but the traditional 4 zones carved out by the Supreme Court where protection is subject to debate are 1. Advertising (see 44 Liquormart v. Rhode Island 1995 et al.), 2. potentially libellous material (US v. New York Times c. 1972 I belive), 3. indecent/obscene speech & content (now using the Miller v. CA standard from 1973) and 4. hate speech (more or less meaningless after Brandenburg v. Ohio). The First Amendment is not total, and theoretically, if it were we'd be subject to much worse from advertisers.
If you dont trust somebody with your email address, DONT GIVE IT TO THEM, just use a disposable email service like Sneakemail.
Even if you're giving your address to an organization you trust not to spread your address dont trust their opt-out functionality, since it could very well be a temp using Excel to remove your address.
Since I've been using sneakemail (which lets you know without a doubt how somebody got your address) the most spam I get, BY FAR, is at g4hu5001@sneakemail.com, which is the address I only use only for slashdot.
So sure, spammers may or may not have rights, but if you have total control over their ability to spam you, the argument becomes mostly academic.
Sneakemail is to spam filters what an ounce of prevention is to a pound of cure.
Apparantly you aren't familiar with economics. If the ISP's start pissing off their customers, they will cease to have customers, and they will cease to be ISP's.
"And like that
Ever been pissed off at the phone company? So which other phone company did you switch to, I'd like to know because I hate mine...
Well, not that it's really comparable (which ISP's have monopolies, like phone companies?), but YES, I have been pissed off at my local phone company many times. What did I do? I dropped their service and chose one of several cell phone providers in my area.
Anyway, if all the major ISPs adopted this there would be *nowhere to run to.* Frankly I am surprised that it isn't happening already.
Again, it's simple economics. Most people hate spam. Assuming for a moment the ludicrous notion is true, that all the major ISP's would take up something that is going to piss off 90% of their customers, there would ALWAYS be smaller companies coming in to service the DEMAND -- spam-free service.
"And like that
And opt-out is a joke. I've opted out of countless things, but I still get a hundred+ spams a day.
Actually, opting-out usually doesn't prevent SPAM. For the simple reason that if you send back an opt-out email, you are now a "verified email address" and I'm sure you will show up in the next edition of their "3 billion Verified Email Addresses!!!!" CD-ROM. Which you can buy for the low, low price of....
Check out Althea for a stable IMAP email client for X. Now with SSL!
The emphasis on legality, while being typically American, is misplaced, as always.
In a market economy, everything is for sale, and it's offered up at the best price, or so the story goes. SPAM is the *ultimate* form of free speech in this context: it elicits a potential buy response from a consumer at a low cost to EACH party. In theory, this is why the "marketplace of ideas" works, but in reality most folks are crypto-fascists wanting their freebooting capitalism right alongside their DisneyWorldview--which rules out porn, free cellphones and any other for-sale item the marketeers wish to pitch. It's as though you want a kinder, gentler capitalism--there ain't no such thing.
What people seem to be seeking--indeed, what many people here seem to want--is a legislation of a moral stance to which they find themselves attached. This isn't the solution now, and it never has been, not the least because not everyone shares standards. Tacitus noted over 2000 years ago that the more laws a state has, the more corrupt it will be. I personally think this State is plenty enough corrupt already.
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
Screw postage, that doesn't keep the crap out of my two physical mailboxes. It's tresspassing, pure and simple and has nothing at all to do with "freedom of speech".
If I were to walk across Taco's lawn to put an advertisement on his front porch, he could bar me with a simple No-Tresspassing or No-Solicitors sign. If I disregard it he can charge me with tresspassing.
Since email is physical and takes up space somewhere, which I have paid for the use of, I should be able to post a simple No-Tresspassing or No-Solicitors sign, effectively, and they keep out. Only those I welcome into/onto my property should be allowed.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I see absolutely no reason why I should receive advertisements that require such actions on my part. Cleaning up junk mail takes time out of my already busy life, and I don't think anyone should have a right to burden me like that. Why should you have a right to take up my time?
Luckily, even illustrious personages like U.S. Senators can make wrong statements. Since email spam is advertising, it is not protected speech,and therefore not covered by the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.
In fact, the U.S. has recognized over the years that advertising must be controlled - thus we U.S. citizens are protected by "Truth in Advertising" laws.
The real question is who bought off this particular U.S. senator? The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has its hooks into a lot of state representatives. For instance, here in Colorado, someone proposed a bill to make scumsucking telemarketers use a state "opt-out" list. Colorado citizens could register phone numbers in the opt-out list, and scumsucking telemarketers would be required to *not* call those phone numbers, under penalty of law.
The president of the Colorado State Senate is an ex-DMA-lobbyist, so he used parliamentary procedure to table the bill - it essentially wouldn't even be voted on. A mass outpouring of outrage against evil telemarketers got it back on the table, and it passed.
There can be no compromise on email spam - email spam is theft, and must be eliminated. Email spammers are theives and must be punished withing the limits of the law.
First off, I'm all in favour of people standing up for their rights to speak, make their opinion known, etc.
Spamming should NOT be covered by the first amendment. PUBLISHING is covered by the first amendment, creation of work is covered by the first amendment. FORCING CRAP INTO PEOPLE'S INBOXES SHOULD NOT BE COVERED.
I believe that people have the right to put whatever they want up on a web page (within libel limits of course), express their ideas, opinions, creativity, and if Spammers want to put their stuff on a web page somewhere, more power to them! If they want to buy banner ads on sites, again, they are free to. I don't think that Spam is covered under the first amendment because it infringes upon others to "say" what is transmitted, prohibiting the sending of the message unsolicited to millions of people is irrevelant. They are allowed to create their message, their delivery method is the problem. I do not think that it is right for someone to push crap like that down my DSL line to where I host my email, for I am paying for the bandwidth, not them. If they want to send to me unsolicited, they should pay for the transmission rates more than they do, and they aren't. If spammers will pay the backbone providers so that my DSL rates can be lessened, I'll be happy to take their mail and do what I do with junk mail, trash it.
Spam is a problem, and this problem really needs to be corrected, and soon.
"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...
Representative Ron Wyden's number is 503-326-7525. I called his office and expressed my views.
The legislation is called the CAN SPAM Act of 2001.
If that link doesn't work, try Thomas, put "spam" in the search field and click on "Can SPAM act of 2001".
The bill suggests that "Opt-Out" is a remedy. This is extreme social ignorance of the type that is common among politicians. For support for this view, see the comment #128 above, "Opt-Out is a game like Whack-a-Mole." Or, possibly the bill was actually written by lobbyists for spam-friendly ISPs. As John McCain says, the U.S. government is quite corrupt.
However, be careful when you think about this issue. The First Amendment has pulled us out of a lot of big messes in the past. It is possible that it would be difficult to write anti-spam legislation that does not interfere with the First Amendment. If it is not possible to outlaw spam without abridging the first amendment, then it is actually better to have spam.
Bush's education improvements were
Opt-Out is like the Whack-a-Mole game, only far worse.
When you opt out, you tell the sender that they have a responsive person. That makes you more valuable to them. They take your name off the one list to which you opted out, but they sell your name to at least 1,000 other lists to which you have not opted out.
If you were to opt out of each of the 1000 lists, they would sell your name each time to 1000 others, so you would eventually be on 1,000,000 lists. These numbers are an estimate, but are not far wrong.
Opt-out is an invitation to spending your whole life as an opt-outer.
Bush's education improvements were
Well, isn't there a saying that your right to swing your fist ends at my face. If I've decided that spam causes me undo hardship (bandwidth costs, lost time, unwanted x-rated material), then I ought to be able to recognize my right not to get it. You can do this with junkmail, why can't we do it with junk email?
It'll end up being a judgement call as to whether or not the email sent was spam, but if you coordinated efforts you could probably prove that you were being spammed instead of contacted specifically for something to do with you as an individual.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Holy it's time to go home.
Karma: Chameleon (Mostly affected by the 1980s)
But it's still doubtful if he can think,
...because it gives companies their first ammendment right to contact you.
/. Nazi for today. Tune in next week kiddies, same bat time, same bat channel!
And opt-out is a joke. I've opted out of countless things, but I still get a hundred+ spams a day. Thank god for mail filters.
Hey Rob, try deleting them unopened if you want to really avoid spam.
Or whether he can multiply and divide properly:
I think spammers should pay a penny per k to both me and my ISP. A 5k spam would cost a dime. Still less then a stamp, but it'd make me a few hundred bucks a month for my time, bandwidth, and hardware costs.
$300 (a few = three in standard english). $300 at $0.01 per k comes out to about 30 Mb. Rob gets 30 Mb of Spam a month? Wow, those opt out emails sure helped!
Somehow I'm doubting he has $300 of bandwidth and hardware costs per month due to Spam.
And finally, we see that Kumannduhr Tawko sttil duz not kno how too speel. That's "amendment".
Anyway, I'm done being a
-Kasreyn
P.S., disclaimer. I actually think CmdrTaco's ok, I'm just being an insulting prick for the hell of it.
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
Really not a bad idea, except why would it be illegal if they didn't pay a penny? It is their legal right to contact you and I don't think that should change. What is illegal and should be enforced, is the filled-in radio buttons that companies often leave in nooks and crannies which you must click off to NOT receive spam. That is illegal certainly in Canada, and I believe in the States as well. It is an absolute manipulation to make people opt-out of being targeted before they ever agreed to even BE targeted.
is this.....is this for REAL?
great comedy company.
This just in: it is now legal to spam any pro-spam senator. When he opts out, just go get a new hotmail address.
Yes, but you forgot to tell them how.
First, in each spam, make sure you include a name, street address, city, state and zip code from their state. Otherwise, their spam filters will reject it.
Also, give a misleading subject: No, not Make Money Now!, but something like My neighbor said you could help with this legislation. That will get it past the subject filters and not put in a folder and then ignored.
Now for the text. Write a script for this and push it out, you need to show them you mean business.
OK, let's get creative:
Dear Senator Wyden (or other name),
Glad to meet you at when you [visited/flew in/dropped by] to talk about [guns/email/spam/cereal/mining law tort reform].
You said I should [email/write] your office about the fact that I get [spam/unsolicited email/garbage] sent to me with [opt-out that doesn't work/misleading headers].
So, I told a few [friends/neighbors] and they said they'd write you too.
[Basically/Actually], we'd like you to [sponsor legislation/write a law/pass a bill] to outlaw any commercial email that has misleading headers or subjects and doesn't include [ADV/ADV:] in the subject line and doesn't have an active working email account to remove all persons who reply to the email saying they wish to be removed.
I've enclosed a [document/petition/letter] with further info on this:
[attachment - something varying between 0K and 2 GB in size]
Sincerely,
[name]
[city]
Have fun, script kiddies!
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Similar concerns apply here: Bandwidth, disk space, and my time are all limited resources, and they all cost money. Others don't have the right to co-opt my resources (or those of my ISP or mail host) for their own purposes without my permission.
Interestingly, OpenSecrets.org lists Wyden as having gotten ~$100,000 from the "computer equipment and services industry". Couldn't find any particular evidence beyond that for quid pro quo, though.
OK,
- B
--
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
The Right to send email unsolicited is what's at question here. No self-respecting defender of Free Speech would limit offensive or inconvenience causing speech. Hate spammers all you want (and I do) but they have a right to send you stuff you don't want to get. Deal with it, don't outlaw it.
- Dan I.
The bigger issue here is how certain congressmen (and women) feel opt-out is the way to go for PRIVACY - i.e. credit card companies selling detailed info about you. Remember all those inane privacy notices that showed up all at once in teh mail from your banks and credit card companies? Well they were heavily disguised opt-out notices. Most folks (myself included since they looked like junk mail) threw them out and thus have given permission for all their info to be sold. The hell with SPAM, I can filter it and thanks to ORBS, etc, plus a decent mail filter I get maybe a handful a day, maybe - easily managed.
But the selling of my personal data like medical history, credit information, etc - screw that. I want that info PROTECTED and only released if I SAY SO!
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
But it isn't possible to put thousands and thousands of flyers on thousands and thousands of cars in an extremely short period of time. There is a significant barrier to sending large quantities of flyers or junk mail which prevents us from getting completely overwhelmed. Production cost acts a limiting factor on the amount of junk that we will receive. This doens't exist with email. Anyone can easily collect/buy a large number of emails and spam away.
Also, no self-respecting defender of Free Speech would argue that are no limits on free speech. Certain limits are necessary. Its a matter of determining which are reasonable and justified and which aren't.
A penny a k? I'm no fan of spam, as I do get a lot it, but as you admitted in your self-gratificating "couple hundred bucks a month" speil, e-mail filters almost completly solve the problem.
The next thing you'll be saying is telemarketers should pay you money for using YOUR PERSONAL PHONE, for the money it cost you on your phone bill because you were talking with them for a few seconds, some money for rent to have a place to keep the phone, money for food for you to have the energy to pick up the phone and talk, etc., etc.
I'm sorry, but if you have a reachable e-mail address, you would be paying the same amount of money having e-mail if you got spam or not. Network bandwidth is completly free for end users, and companies aren't exactly suffering over spam bandwidth with their enflated premiums and oversold pipes.
Anyone who doesn't have the two seconds to install a mail filter or press delete is butt lazy, and someone who wants to get payed for sitting on their ass and whining about paying for e-mail and hardware they would already have regardless is adding greed to their lazieness.
We're always going to have spam because we live in a capitalist economy. People will always try to sell you something. And most spammers do pay for bandwidth (having a co-hosted mail server is free!?). In many ways, stopping businesses from contacting you with all this consumer rights BS actually hurts the economy. Pretty soon people's vision will be so holy that there will be a charge for looking at advertisements in the local grocery store.
The point is there is no charge for asking "Do you want to buy this?" or "Can I have your money?" which is really all that spam is. Simply reply "No, I don't." or take the default approach and press delete. Your computer is not a forum, however much you want it to be, and people do have an unabridged right to contact you, however annoying their message may be.
Live with it. It goes both ways, and its there for a much more important reason than this. Don't destroy free speech because you are lazy.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
senator_wyden@exchange.senate.gov
I'm doing exactly that right now. Even just a couple dozen diffrent people all forwarding the mail that gets trapped by their spam filters will make his e-mail address practically useless. Sure he can set up his /own/ spam filters, but we all know that's not the point. And after all, we can do this. It's our first amendment right. We're making a statment. Who's with me?
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Eh, getting rid of spam is easy.
1) Buy your own domain. People crapflood *@hotmail, *@aol, *@yahoo, etc etc just to find addresses by what doesn't bounce. Cracking dictionaries work wonders at guessing usernames.
(I have *never* gotten spam on the domain I use for my personal email, after about a year and a half.)
2) Don't use it for frivolous things. Big companies are usually smart enough not to spam you, you should be able to order from amazon or whatever without too much trouble.
3) Let your friends know that if they sign you up for mailing lists you are going to beat them down with a sock full of nickels.
How people expect spammers to not find their yahoo mail account is beyond me...
It's probably been said before but just forward all your spam to congress. When congress finds out how much money it will cost them to deal with a nations SPAM they'll come around.
Freedom of speech is simply a ploy by companies to excuse their behavior.
So I guess we should ban it then?
You suggest that an individual has rights to free speech, but as soon as two people become organized, the government can regulate what they have to say? And what of media companies then - where do their rights of free speech end? I hasten to point out that the government is basically a large corporation; that would give the government a legal monopoly on organized speech.
Sorry, no sale.
What would keep us from /.ing a senator's
video-voicemail box at home?
That's called harrassment, or mischief in some jurusdictions.
IANAL, etc.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
That's all well and good, but what about the wasted bandwidth I spent downloading said spam, and the processor cycles stolen from me to process all the HTML and render the images in it? With USPS, both printing and delivery costs are the sender, but the recipient is responsible for at least part of those two when it comes to e-mail. It's like someone mailing you a credit card ad COD.
Alright, so it sounds like I'm being anal retentive, but it still intrudes on my right to decide how my computer and my internet connection are used. The difference between this and getting hacked is merely an order of magnitude, nothing more.
Of course, he probably never reads e-mail anyway. Wait, I've got a better idea. Everybody print out all of your spam mail. We'll bag it up and dump all of the bags on his front lawn. We'll tell him he can read all of our spam for us so that businesses don't lose their opportunity.
GreyPoopon
--
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
we sign up the senator for some "product updates" and then see how he feels about spam.
-PYves
OK, I followed your cue and left the following charming message at his site:
Re: your position on unsolicited email, also called spam, I just want to point out that you are a big dumb idiot.
I notice that you do not have an email address, only this stupid web form. Good for you, so you will not have to suffer the consequences of the bribes you are receiving from direct marketing lobbyists.
Hope you choke on your spam and go to hell in a flaming handbasket.
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
it seems like everybody Has First-Amendment Rights as long as it does not interfere with the RIAA =(
I have to agree with you both. It partly is the user's fault for signing up for these things. Lets not kid ourselves here. Companys do send this crap, and re-sell addresses.
But there are those little 14 year olds standing out there that just send this crap to anything they see. Search engines, pages, havest addresses from pages. Whatever the hell method they use. It is all still wrong, and highly Illegal . I have already had 2-3 spammers kicked off of their ISP's this week, and am going after a company that has sent me spam only once. There was another in which they recieved a warning from their provider, and I asked the provider to tell them who turned them in for sending spam. And the provider told them. And I havn't recieved a spam from them again. I even had one moron that (after looking at my sendmail logs) tried to send a spam to customer@ns.(myserver).net. I mean... ns.(myserver).net is not in my sendmail records, and there is no user called 'customer' on my box. Even if my server does run all these services, ns.(myserver).net is not meant for mail.
The point is, It can be the user's fault, but it can also be dynamic, spammers just make up addresses and send this crap. Ive been on the net since around '95-'96, and started using UNIX/Linux around '97. And only this year I started getting bombarded with spam. Thats why I have spam filter 213 lines long. I havn't gotten any spam today, so I believe I have ridden myself of the MAIN sources.
I'm no punk bitch !!!
I read that you believe that unsolicited email is a first amendment right and that you believe that opt-out is a good alternative. It is not realistic for me to opt-out with every person that sends me unwanted email.
I would like a right to opt-out in a general way. Just like I can mark my phone number to prevent telephone solicitation, I should be able to register my email address to prevent email solicitation.
I think that anyone who takes the time to send me a personal email should be welcome, but if the message is computer generated, it should be excluded.
Thanks for listening.
Jim Hollcraft
eSoftware Professionals
10300 SW Nimbus, Suite C
Portland, OR 97223
(A volunteer on your Feed Project at the Oregon Food Bank!)
Either way, it's coming. You WILL be paying for packets. You do it with your phone, your TV and postal mail, so why does everyone continue to hold out hope that the Internet will remain free?
Never use the 'P' word. Once it starts.....well, you know.
I used to be all for legislation against spam until I really thought it over. Do we really want to give up more of our rights to government legislation? I know what you're thinking - a bill against spam would only affect companies & people that are sending unsolicited commercial email, not me. But consider the following: Joeblow@dickswidgets.com sends an email to his favorite mailing list, linking to a /. story.
But what he didn't realize was that slashdot.com is owned by a private, for-profit company, and actually sells merchandise from this site. So is Joe Blow sending spam? Can he be fined for this transgression? If he sent the mail from work, is Dick's Widgets now liable for his actions?
What if Joe Blow does some for-profit programming on the side, and links to his web page on every email he sends out? How is this different from the 'I'm 18 & horny!' spam we all hate so much? Should Joe Blow expect everyone to whom he want to send mail to opt him in?
Can we really expect our legislators to understand the issue well enough to craft a bill that protects Joe's right to send email, but blocks the spammers? Why am I asking so many questions? Where am I, and who are you people?