Slashdot Mirror
European Union Says No To Spam
Peter Dyck writes: "CNN reports that the Council of Ministers of the European Union (EU) has agreed on Thursday to pass a new law banning the use of unsolicited e-mail. The resolution also bans the so-called inertia marketing for the promotion of financial services. This means that within the 15 EU member-states companies cannot resort anymore to direct marketing to sell their wares. Marketing is still possible, but the consumers must opt-in for it first." However, this is just one bend in a long and bureaucratic road.
I figured, as long as the US is arresting Russians for breaking US laws in Russia, maybe we can get the EU to jail American Spammers that affect EU internet users.
Who wants to help organize a Spamming Conference in Brussels so we can nab the asshole who's been sending me the porn spam labeled "Bin Laden Captured"???
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Don't bet on it. .us only SPAM (e.g. with text "For US residents only" i the mail), to addresses ending i .dk. Spammers will send anything to anyone.
I receive plenty of
For a look at the mind of a spammer, take a look at Behind Enemy Lines
/Styx
I'll put aside the fact that this happened in Europe, for a second to talk about free speech in the US. It's my understanding that the Gov. can restrict harmful speech as long as it is in a content-neutral manner. I'll give an example. I live in the very liberal town of Amherst, MA. There is a banner across a public road, which town residents can use for announcements, etc. But every so often, some nut rents out the banner and puts up strongly-worded anti-abortion messages such as "Abortion has two victims, one is wounded and the other is dead." Needless to say, this sentiment doesn't reflect the opinion of MOST of the town. Unless we want to eliminate the banner entirely, though, there's nothing we can do about it without infringing on someone's first-amendment rights.
There is nothing in a law that prevents sending UCE that is restrictive of your personal freedoms, as long as it's done in a content-neutral way. My view is that spammers are infringing on MY rights when they put their crap into my mailbox. I think I have a RIGHT to pay for my Internet access without paying for someone else to send me porno and get rich quick schemes. I think if ISPs and users were allowed to recoup the costs of receiving spam as damages, ISP rates would drop!
Your suggestion that you should be required to add a header to your e-mail is just as restrictive. I think ANY restraint of speech is a very serious matter, and deserves much debate. I equate spam with a type of speech that is wholly unwanted and unbeneficial to society. We have proven that self-policing of spam simply doesn't work. There are too many rogue networks and spam-friendly service contracts out there to stop it.
The government is not telling you that there is a subset of users who you cannot e-mail. You are being told that if your e-mail is of a commercial nature, you can send it to ANY user who has agreed to receive e-mail from you, and to NO user who you are simply marketing to. Would this law prevent you from doing something that you presently do? If it would, then you are probably a spammer. If not, what are you worried about?
This isn't like encryption, or spying on citizens, or taking away your guns (although they already did that in Europe). You have a right to those things. You do not have a right to be a nuisance to millions of others.
I propose banning all non-consentual commercial communication. That means public billboards, telephone calls and spam. etc etc.
Why should the population have to endure a bombardment of unwanted messages when they almost universally detest them?
Consumption (demand) drives capitalism, what are we going to do now that we understand the planet will never enable an equal opportunity (exploitation of the poor is the method that NorthAmericans and the G8 use to facilitate our own unreasonable waste and consumption)... let alone that the planet is incapable of supporting 6 billion 'NorthAmerican lifestyles'.
So, here is the problem, we allow* business to lie (market) in every way, using every channel at their own desire, to drive UP consumption - making our very real problem worse.
I recognize that telling the sheeple they need to consume *less* is very difficult to do, but allowing a powerfull elite (plutocrats) to prevent a more sobering message, one encouraging reduction/adjustment/re-alignment/reassessment, does not play well... especially echoed in a chorus of 'buy now buy now buy now buy now buy now buy now buy now'.
So, back to my original point: If we are to ever make reason again of our modern society we must come to grips with rampant consumerism. In order to do this we must re-assess the benefits our community - as a whole - gains by accepting the very real manipulation that un-solicited commercial messages manufacturers.
Would we be able to put a computer in every north american home, which allowed for open and full discourse on the marketplace of both products and ideas if we chose to spend our resources there instead of say, 20" x 40" billboards blaring garbage at the population.
Which would people prefer? Certainly the former - but without a realistic approach to the marketplace, one that dosnt simply encourage mindless consumption (which leads the planet to literal oblivion) - where to begin? how do you change the course of the economy without being slaughtered under the ignorance of ignorant, misinformed, mislead masses.
Without restraining the ability of a reckless, self-interested minority (the powerfull rich) to restrict and contain public discourse, how do you ever have a public debate on the issue itself... its is a mind-numbingly inescapable rabid incestuous viscious circle.
So again, in order to break this circle, we should, as a community, dissolve the practice of allowing ignorant, unhealthy messages to be broadcast (in all channels (spam, billboards, bench-ads) to our community....
* Sounds radical dosnt it... im very serious. There are surely to be alot of free-market libertarians to take serious offence to this idea... but again, free-market libertarians believe voting-with-your-dollars is an acceptable way to run a democracy... and no, that is not flamebait, it appears as the basic ideal behind alot of arguments ive heard in the past.
I know this idea is a bit radical, but it certainly is not flaimbait... so moderators, please weigh your disagreement with the idea against your desire to stiffle the idea and remember the purpose of moderation is not the latter.
actually if they do switch to opt-in lists you'll find just about all email marketing businesses going chapter 11 as soon as the bill takes effect. Unless they can pull some sort of stupid "by NOT replying to this email you OPT-IN to receiving our advertising" then there will be no profit to be made in advertising only to people who want to get the advertising.
If God gave us curiosity
Why not make it required that any mass mailing, be it for promotion or getting your voice heard, have something like "[Unsolicited]: " as its subject? or even a tag in the header? If it is felt that all email that we now regarded as spam does not fall under the category of unsolicited, just have a list of options. This should give people the power to decide what they want to use their internet connection for. (Since any of those emails can be deleted without downloading) I see this as enforceable as any other option and it does not deny a person from what cases I can think of that would be considered as freedom of speech.
I mean, there are some problems with spam:
So spam can be stopped at serverlevel, but how do you do that?
First of all make sure that the email server is'nt set to forward mail coming from "outside". If that is the case, use the "relay control"-function. And also make sure you upgrade old servers that does'nt have this kind of protection. Configurate "reverse lookup" for the server in the dns. With reverse lookup your email server can verify that the sender really is who he claims to be. That should stop alot of spam.
Happy anti-spamming
Maybe we should have laws that "nails" people who has'nt configured their mailservers the rigth way, that oughta do it..
2 reptiles beneath your current threshold.
Well, I think the point is one of cost.
If you write me, you pay for the paper, the envelope the stamp. If you call me (barring 1-800 numbers and the silliness that are cell phones) you pay, "it's your dime/quarter/doller" If you fax me it's your cost to call, but it costs me to maintain a fax machine, fill it with paper and ink, etc. With email, you may or may not pay to get an account in order to send email, but I have to pay for the bandwidth you use, the disk space your email takes up, the time wasted to download it. If you want to pay everyone you send you "SPAM" out to, just like the postal service, then you should be able to send whatever junk you want. Just like in real life. Until then, SPAMmer's should STOP stealing my money.
To recap:
postal mail - sender pays, reciever wastes time throwing it out.
phone calls - sender pays, reciver wastes time hanging up.
faxes - sender pays for phone call, reciever pays for fax machine, paper, ink, electricity, time to through it away.
SPAM - sender pays minimum cost (if any), reciever pays for ISP, disk space, bandwidth, electricity, time to download, time to through away. Numerous third parties pay for bandwidth, disk space, servers, electricity, etc. etc. etc.
That's the differnence. "SPAM" faxing is already illegal, "SPAM" emailing should be as well.
Just my $0.02 (Canadian, before taxes)
Imagine if all or some very large contingent of email clients allowed you to "retaliate" against spam messages. Highlight message, select "negative feedback" option, a daemon is spun that traces back as far as possible the route of the message and barrages it some fashion. By pings maybe? By directed replies? Imagine it does this in some scheduled fashion so as to minimize the impact on your local network. As 1 million disparate sources converge upon the last traceable source of the route of the offending spammer, some network somewhere will start to feel the load. Like the spokes of a wheel converging on the hub, the retaliation traffic will thicken as it closes in on the source. The pain increases. ISPs inundated by individuals expressing their right to freedom of speech, will feel suddenly inclined to exercise their right to refuse service to someone.
The "negative feedback" could be dosed in a coordinated fashion if there were some P2P means of establishing how many individuals had received a particular spam. If a spammer hits only a hundred people, the dose of retaliatory traffic would have to be increased to be felt. If the spam hit a million, it would require only a modest retaliation to utterly swamp the source.
Just thinking out loud. Could this be made to work?