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.
Dude, pack my stuff, I'm moving.... now I just need to buy a bunch of those power convertors. Damn metric electricity!
This is fine passing the laws, but if you dont give the people teeth or enforce the law it's worthless.
The US has some anti-spam laws, and we dont enforce them, or dont allow the law to have any teeth.
Most spammers couldn't care less if it's legal or not.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I could be wrong, but the article strongly suggests that this ONLY BANS SPAM FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES... not all spam. It comments that a Europe-wide policy on spam in general will be debated next year.
I am prepared to hand over a small but reasonable amount of cash in exchange for a spam-free email. Who wants to take my money?
Now that the evils of spiced ham are under control. Action can be taken against corned beef. Millions of kernels die every year in the making of this vile product
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Don't move yet...
This applies to financial products only, although they are talking about more comprehensive legislation later.
"A law on unsolicited e-mail covering all other industries is expected early next year. " (Last paragraph of article)
Stop Continental Drift! Reunite Gondwanaland!
Is Hormel giving Cmdr Taco grief? Enquiring minds want to know.
/*drunk.. fix later*/
Disclaimer: I'm not a legal or constitutional expert. Happy to be corrected by others.
/. readership, this doesn't in itself mean much (legally) right now. By agreeing on the directive, the member states of the EU have committed themselves to putting forward (similair) legislation in their respective national parliaments to the effect.
For the Americans and non-Europeans amongst the
The council of ministers are simply ministers of the various memberstates having a chat about policy and direction. The European parliament doesn't really (unfortunately) have much bite (nor much of a bark either).
Don't hold your breath. Things move slowly at the EU level. But it's something, all be it small. Let's hope it's enforceable, too.
ooooooh! What does this button do? - DeeDee, Dexters Lab.
This bans spam only when selling financial services, hence the name "The Distance Selling of Financial Services" directive.
/. editors don't read and/or understand the stories their submissions point to]
[insert compulsory commentary on how abhorrent it is that
"We have an A-Bomb...what more do you want, mermaids?" --I.I. Rabi, speaking in defense of Robert Oppenheimer
No one who values freedom should be celebrating this. Yes, spam is annoying. But do you really want the government telling you who you can send e-mail to? Good god, many of you people freak when the government gets close to tracking your toilet usage, but if it comes to restricting your right to send e-mail, it's "GO GO GO"!
There are ways to solve the spam problem without restricting freedom. Requiring a tag on the e-mail would be a great start, either by putting something in the subject line or adding a line to the header information.
But dammit, I don't want the government telling me who I can and can't e-mail to!
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
...but so much more difficult to enforce it effectively...
"Good Luck, and remember - we're all counting on you." -Leslie Nielsen (Airplane!)
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
I did notice that Portugal has sensibly decided that the war on (some) drugs is a mistake, and is now treating drugs as a medical, not criminal, problem.
But your honor! The plaintiff's e-mail address was subscribed to our "mailing list" already. If he didn't want the e-mail, he shouldn't have subscribed to begin with.
What? He didn't subscribe? Then it must have been some sort of practical joke by his friends (we get those ALL the time). He should really be more careful about who he calls "friend"...
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
> Most spammers couldn't care less if it's legal or not.
Yes, most spammers couldn't care less, but most spammers are sitting in the USA anyway. It seems, spam and bad elevator music is the only thing the USA is exporting these days..
Where this law will help most is to shoot down hare-brained schemes by soulless middle managers and marketroids. With this directive,I can tell them, to please check with the legal department if their last stupid idea conforms to the law. This usually stops them fast.
As a side note, such laws sometimes work. I'm living in Europe, and I've never been called by direct markeing organisations I've never heard of who try to sell useless junk. Not during the day, not in the evening. I guess, the laws against unsolicited call and calls by machines don't really hurt.
I am really sad to see laws against spam because it gives The Man control over something which puts their toes in the door.
I would prefer to fight spam privately. I do not like it, for I've been on the net since 1988, when spam was rare and the net was beautiful. But I do not think the solution is to make it illegal.
I think the blacklist sites are a reasonable, unmoderated, sensible approach that doesn't carry the curse of giving The Man more power over my non-spam actions.
-wp
information is immaterial
The so-called freedom argument is about the lamest thing I heard.
Do you have the freedom to slice the tires of random cars in the parking lot of your favorite mall? Is the gouvernment oppressing you by taking away from you that most basic freedom?
Every freedom in society basically needs to be balanced against the freedom of other people, because many interests are fundamentally opposing. (This concept is very hard to grasp for many americans, who never get past the 'I WANT' part). The role of the society is to provide with its laws and customs a stable framework to balance those interest.
For instance, you have the right to express your dislike of your neighbour, but you don't have the right to do it with your 5000 Watt amplifier set on maximum at 3 o'clock in the morning.
The same applies to spam and direct marketing. Under the proposed law, you can send your mail to anybody you want, as long as you don't have been told by him that he wants it. If he didn't give you that permission, you just have to assume that he doesn't want your fabulous offer.
There's nothing more to it.
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.
European spamming laws would not be very useful as such, as most world-wide spammers are Americans. But, I have a plan.
We could arrange a "conference for spamming professionals" in Europe and call spammers from all over the world. When they arrive at the conference location, we would arrest them.
I doubt Americans could complain about the immorality of the procedure...
A cool idea, not?
> Do member states of the EU have similar lobbyists who would push for dropping this law under a similar veil of 'free speech?'
yes.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
What I'd prefer to see is an approach like this:
- Corporations must obtain a consumer's explicit consent before sending an advertisement via e-mail.
- This consent may not be a part of any other agreement, i.e. it must be obtained separately from any other agreements made (in other words, no hiding it in the fine print).
- This consent is not transferable to any other entity; if a list is sold to another entity (person, corporation, or whatever), that entity may send a single notice asking for permission, but no more until permission is gained. Failure to respond to that notice must be taken as denial of permission.
- The permission given must be revocable at any time, and all advertisements must send clear and valid instructions on how to revoke that permission, should the user desire to do so.
- If an entity starts sending e-mail to a user without their permission (aside from the single notice mentioned above), the person has the option to press charges of harassment. Note that I said the option.
The idea is to require online advertising to be opt-in, without specifically banning any types of messages. I'm not certain how workable it is; ideas?"A law on unsolicited e-mail covering all other industries is expected early next year. The question of whether to apply opt-in or opt-out to e-mail marketing is provoking hot debate; the Commission favors opt-in, but many members of the European Parliament prefer the more industry-friendly opt-out approach."
This seems potentially dangerous. I hate spam mail as much as the next person, but it almost seems dangerous to make laws that say, "You can't talk to this person without their approval". If someone else writes someone email and mentions your product in it, are you liable, or do you have to be the sender? Where's the line between a "company advertisement" and a "personal suggestion". If I email a friend and tell him to check out a computer game that I think is cool, and he didn't solicit that "advertisement", is the company responsible?
What if I mass-mail it to hundreds of people? If the company's name isn't attached to the origin of the email, is it therefore okay? And if so, why wouldn't companies just get third-parties to do such things for them?
It just seems risky to me to make laws that limit the content of communications. As an analogy,. I do hate telemarketing... my phone is usually unplugged from 4pm-7pm every day... but I don't think I'd like a law that made it illegal for them to call me.
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.
My costs include my ISP's bandwidth and disk space (which are passed on to me in higher charges), my own bandwidth, my mail server's diskspace, my employees' diskspace and their phone costs when they dial in and are forced to grab your unwanted ad along with their work mail.
It's not just in Europe that you pay per minute for phone calls, but also from US business offices, on airplanes, at hotels, etc.
Making spam illegal is not overkill, it's overdue.
woof.
I wrote this a while ago, but some /. POST method wasn't working and submissions were being rejected as "illegal for the index.shtml page".
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.
Spammers are SO DUMB that they'll spam abuse@ email accounts, or even .mil accounts. Way!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I think one of the potential problems with Spammers is their progression towards legitimate markets. Take monsterhut, a huge spamming company that slashdot has featured before. I know the owner and "brain" behind monsterhut, and truthfully, he could care less. If he were to go out of business, a hundred others would jump in to take his place.
In fact, he was excited when Slashdot did an article on Monsterhut - any fame is good fame when it comes to Spamming companies - because legitimate companies more and more are looking at Spam as a legitimate advertising medium.
I think what *would* happen if these laws were passed however, would be that the Spamming companies may still be allowed to operate - but they would have to operate their servers in foreign countries and effectively Run from law enforcement. This in turn would scare legitimate business away from spammers, reducing their market and leaving Spam open only to small timers who don't have the resources to generate huge email lists or fight court cases.
The trick I think is not to go after the Spamming companies directly, but to pass legislation that allows the gov't to go after any companies who knowingly use Spamming agencies - most companies dont' see "Spamming" or 'advertising" as their business, so they won't look any further into promoting themselves through their own Spam - business just tends to use what's available when it's outside their knowledge base.
Ace
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.
The wording has me mind confused a bit. Would this affect, say, road-side billboards? I'm not asking to see it (opting-in). It's just there. I guess the use of the "direct marketing" phrase has my mind a little fuzzy. Do I have to make a request to see all advertising? Do I have to request to see a TV commercial in that case? Odd.
One thing I would like to see in a mail client is digital signatures incorporated more seamlessly. Then mails encrypted to my key would go to the top, digitally signed senders in my address book could go next, others digitally signed can go in under a lower priority, and the rest can go to a separate inbox. It would help if anonymous mailers such as Hotmail were configured to reject signed emails. This would stop important emails being lost in the noise, and make it computationally more expensive for spam to end up in my mail box.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Corporations must obtain a consumer's explicit consent before sending an advertisement via e-mail
So instead of dozens of spam message each day, I'll be getting dozens of requests for my permission to receive spam each day? Doesn't sound like much of an improvement to me. Most spammers that hit me are one-shot wonders anyway.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Got his PGP sig on that subscription? Then I guess he didn't send it.
I think that would be pretty neat: it's only a valid/legal subscription if it's signed. But how do you know that the person who signed it, is the one who actually receives your ad? Easy: you have to encrypt the ad with the same public key that you used to verify subscription. Then all ad-email becomes encryption-mandatory. That has multiple nifty side-effects:
Then, if someone subscribes you to a list as a prank, you end up receiving ads that you can't read. You're still paying for them (depending on how you're hooked up), but at least they'll be less annoying.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Er, that's actually what I meant. ;)
By the way, thanks to the moderator who modded me down as redundant, moving me even further down the sorted-by-score list and making it likely that I'll get another redundant. :p
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
All that being said, I am definitely against email that I recieve that I can't opt out of, but there is a huge difference between spam and legitimate business.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Acutally, it sounds stupid. Tou are telling busisness that they arent allowed to put the message they choose on their property. If I own a busisness, why cant I paint whatever message I like on the side of the building? Thats the essence of a billboard. Why can I not send someone a letter if thay havent told me they dont want to hear from me? Am I not allowed to talk to another human being? The arguement or spam has always been that it costes the person i contact money to store my mail. That is a whle nother arguement. You are speaking of universal censorship to a degree that frightens me.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
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)
When I'm driving on 101, I don't mind the billboards - I sometimes buy what's advertised. When reading slashdot, I often click through to ThinkGeek and buy a shirt - even though I have hundreds of t-shirts already and sure don't need any more of them.
I still hate spam. But advertising in general is a positive thing, and not just because it subsidizes publications including but not limited to slashdot. And I suspect that mine is the majority view.
sulli
RTFJ.
Oh yes it sure is ! As I understand it, the directive next needs to be approved by the European Parliament which has a history of favoring "opt-out" over "opt-in" ("before the end of this year" probably means "not before next year"). If it is approved, the directive would then become "European law", i.e. UE countries will be required to pass it onto their national legislations ; however there usually is a rather long transitional period during which they cannot be prosecuted for not complying with the directive (1+ years transitional periods are common). If a country doesn't comply with the directive at the end of the transitional period, it may then be prosecuted by the European Court of Justice. This again takes time, and if a country really doesn't want to pass that law, it can usually still get away with it by paying a fine ; e.g. France has been in violation of the European hunt opening dates directives for years and there is no sign of it changing anytime soon.
This is just an overview of this awfully long and complicated bureaucratic process, I'm sure I forgot about several steps. This is one of the reasons I think that the current EU "constitution" sucks big time, another one being that even though those European Commission have very extended powers, no EU citizen ever appointed them for the job. We only get to vote for members of the weak "consultative" European Parliament. Calling that system a democray/republic is a joke !
Back on topic : as other posters already pointed out, one major flaw of this directive is that it only applies to "financial services" spam. A more general directive about unsollicited e-mail is expected to be discussed next year ; if it decides for "opt-out", the "financial services" directive will be rendered irrelevant. Given the track of "brilliant" technological laws of the EU, this is NOT impossible.
My point : if you're a EU citizen who wants spam to be outlawed, you're probably better off petitioning your own government rather than waiting for the European commissioners to get that one right. Even if the EC finally requires your national legislation to be changed, by the time it finally happens you will have enjoyed several years of outlawed spamming. Whether anti-spam legislation is an effective solution to this problem is another matter.
I propose banning all non-consentual commercial communication. That means public billboards, telephone calls and spam. etc etc.
Oh really? So my local pizza shop can't have a sign that says "pizza" because I haven't agreed to it in advance? Or maybe they can have a sign that says pizza, but not one that says "enjoy a Coke with this pizza." Or maybe they can have the sign but only if it is small. Give me a break.
Can the homeless guy ask me for money? Can a busker advertise his or her CD?
Why should the population have to endure a bombardment of unwanted messages when they almost universally detest them?
I don't detest billboards. I find them mildly ugly and occasionally useful.
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)...
Capitalism gave you the computer you are typing on and the network we use to communicate. There is a pretty clear correlation between democratic capitalism and prosperity. How would it help the third world if we scaled back our lifestyle to be equivalent to theirs? We could shut down all of our sweatshops and they could have no jobs, rather than poor jobs, and no food, rather than little food.
Do you advocate an alternative to capitalism? If so, please name it. If you don't have an alternative then I'd suggest you stop trashing capitalism.
let alone that the planet is incapable of supporting 6 billion 'NorthAmerican lifestyles'.
The North American "lifestyle" is not a constant. It adjusts to fit the times. Many of our machines are much less resource intensive than they were fifty years ago. Non-polluting energy sources are on the horizon. Capitalism is the framework for discovering these solutions to problems. Have shares in a fuel-cell company because it helps me make money, it helps the environment and it helps feed the employees of the fuel-cell company. Capitalism is the solution, not the problem.
Polluting cars are a problem. But guess, what, non-capitalist countries have had polluting automobiles also. In fact they tend to pollute worse than ours! Once again, capitalism is the solution, not the problem. California's tough emission laws harnassed capitalism to funnel billions of dollars into alternative energy systems. Democractic capitalism offers the best hope of solutions to problems because it is a great mechanism for encouraging creativity and innovation.
If you want to be part of the solution you'll investigate ways to make capitalism compatible with the environment rather than trashing the only economic system that has ever been demonstrated to work consistently.
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.
"We allow". Have you heard of rights? It is a fundamental human right for each individual or organization to communicate in almost any way with every other individual or organization. Although there are some limits at the margins (e.g. cigarette advertising is limited in many countries) the overall system is free. If you truly try to implement a system where unsolicited commercial communication is disallowed, you will need scores of draconian laws and thousands of policemen enforcing them every day.
The ironic thing is that you are quite open about your goal: you want to prevent corporations from encouraging certain patterns of thought. In other words you want to restrict free speech because you do not like what is being said. Does that sound right to you?
If you have a message that you want people to hear: shout it loud. But don't try to do so by shutting up your opponents through coercive laws.
That translates into real figures when we start talking about how much gas you are burning and how much garbage you are throwing out every week. You can't be completely unconscious of where all that styrofoam packing and cardboard filler goes after you're done taking it out of the box with your valuable stuff and putting it in your trash.
Do you really think that getting rid of billboards would have any meaningful impact on this? I'm ashamed as a leftist of what passes for critical thought on the left these days. Look: the market is a tool. If you want to reduce styrofoam consumption then you can do that in the capitalist system by imposing a tax on styrofoam. You don't have to restrict people's right to free speech.
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?
Wrong!
At one point my email address somehow got on a Hong Kong spammer's list.
I started to receive spams from the Far East, mostly Hong Kong (going by headers anyway).
This was perplexing to me. You see, I'm a Canadian: all my email addresses are .ca, .com or .org. I think it was a .com that got hit. Can't remember now :)
Anyway, the perplexing part about this is that I'm monolingual, English. All of these spams were in some form of Chinese. (Or perhaps Japanese. Well, one of those languages anyway. :)
I haven't gotten any Chinaspam in a month or two. Maybe they finally took pity on the anglo. Or maybe my filters have moved up to where they're killing it off. (I edit my filters; also, the mailservers I use are administered by Other People, many of whom actively monitor filters.)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
The telephone system is also a public system, as is my business' 800-number. However, you will be held responsible for all solicitous calls made to that number, even if made "accidentally" with a demon-dialer, and you can't turn off ANI (Caller-ID) when calling 800 (and 877 and 866) numbers. If you call me, I know from which number and when. If it was a solicitation or other inappropriate call, you're gonna pay up. Two companies said the same thing you have about spam; one paid up $500 after I enlightened them, the other insisted on going to court and paid me $3K plus accumulated legal fees: $500, doubled for knowledge & intent, then triple indemnity for malicious and unethical practices.
Your ability to abuse a public system will NOT deny me the right to use it as it was designed and intended. I have no problem with commercial E-Mail sent to those who want it (opt-in). I find it hard to believe there are people who want in, but they really exist. However, you have no right to make ME shoulder the cost of your pathetic attempts to sell me anything, whether I want it or not. Post Offices around the world agree and make you, the sender, pay for the stamp. Wonder why?
This is what I get for feeding trolls, I know, but I will not stop until there is effective legislation in place with equally effective remedies. I spent three years hollering and knocking on doors and annoying every politician possible and resending all the junk faxes I received to my representatives' fax machines and it finally worked. Junk faxes illegal, because the cost is borne by the recipient. I will continue to do the same with UCE until I am successful or until I die.
woof.
I didn't spend 18 days straight without a break back in 1986 trying to make my university's computers reconnect to DoD'S just so some asswipe could fill my disk telling me how horny Russian wives are waiting for me to get rich quick so I can buy Viagra by the carton and watch HOT YOUNG TEENS with them when I retire before I'm 40.
Troll my ass. You don't know how to properly set up your mail clients if you're getting mail you don't want. In your earlier post you claimed you wanted mail only from those you gave explicit permission to. Which means that ANY mail not from that list can be piped to /dev/null. I'll agree that forged, missing and incorrect header are wrong, but when you let your address get out to the public you are implicitly allowing at companies to attempt to contact you at least once. Which is perfectly legal and a valid expression of free speech.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Public space can be regulated by the public. A sign on the door is reasonable, a 60 foot tall billboard on the interstate is not. What people do to make the interiors of their homes and places of work ugly is their own problem. What people do to make the world at large oppresivly ugly is our problem. It's that simple, your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins. What kind of ass is it that would put up a billboard in a residential area? Have I violated YOUR rights by saying that you can not urinate on my front yard? Billboards are offensive, and should be outlawed. Yes, you can tell people not to paint outrageous things on the side of their building, and you have not violated their rights.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There is enough space for five billion people to live in an average American suburb in the state of Texas alone. The world is large.
As you don't think there's enough for all of those folks, what do you want them to do? Do propose that every one in the world give up potable water, adequate diets, health care, sanitary housing and public entertainment? I think we should continue to teach people, who have not, how to make things for themselves.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
At one point my email address somehow got on a Hong Kong spammer's list.
.tw to /dev/null :P
Heh, I got on one of those. I finally resorted to just having procmail dump any email from
Well sir, I guess we have reached the reality of our problem.
I am dumbfounded.
Tell me, what ideals do you find morally acceptable? If this is your opinion of your role in this world, if this is your reaction to the problems your actions create, tell me, what higher-order morality do you subscribe to?
even though I have hundreds of t-shirts already and sure don't need any more of them.
Do you kick puppies and drown babies too?
But if I want more, who cares what anyone else thinks
Because your ridiculously stupid consumption fucks up my world: it causes pollution, it fucks up the economy, it causes exploitation of people working in sweatshops abroad, it fucks up my ability to seek a sane and reasonable balance of work/life (because you are willing to work 90 hours a week to by your 123131 fucking consumer-bit), it generally fucks up my ability to live happily. By having 300 million selfish americans driving the worlds economy no one else can do anything other than bear down and adopt the system because if we DONT you'll eat everyone out of house and home (very fucking literally) - leaving others with nothing and not caring a whit.
You are not living in a vaccume, you are a member of the global village, and everyone has got to become a little more aware of what their own actions create and what they destroy.
When you eat 5 mcblondanlds meals in a day, you drive up meat prices, you increase demand, rainforests are slashed, methane is produced, anti-biotics become useless... its a simple analogy but true none-the-less.
Where is the easonable balancing force? Nothing without market-value lives today. Where is the market for peace? goodwill? happiness? joy? freedom? democracy? nature? bio-diversity? greenspace? clean air? clean water? community? love? understanding? Where is the efforts to create more of these things? There isnt any - and because Capitalism only deals in $$$, and the world is forced to care for their $$$ least they have none, these other things take a back seat...
Those in the drivers seat of the worlds present empire are getting drunk, fat and ignorant... when we alone are capable of creating any real value and stearing the future to something we can be proud of...
Free speech is saying "George Bush (Jr or Sr, take your pick) has as much foreign policy ability as a small outcrop of granite in the eastern Afghan hills." It is NOT filling my mailbox at MY cost with YOUR shit.
You have all the right in the world to speak your mind, what little of it there may be. You don't have the right to make me pay for it. I have a domain (call it bullshit.de for the hell of it) and I route various mail through it. I don't care to make new accounts and aliases for slashdot@bullshit and k5@bullshit and register@bullshit and stileprojectmail@bullshit since the names alone tell me what I have, as is MY right to do with MY domain. In comes spam to postmaster, admin, webmaster, and a million fake names, many of which procmail can nail, many of which it can't. Why do MY rights to the use of MY property take second place to your "right" to advertise to me? Answer: They don't. You will lose.
Go crawl back under your bridge. You have me confused with a billy goat gruff.
woof.
I'll at least give you credit for posting from an account instead of being the usual AC troll, although an account's not really that difficult to set up.
There's a lot of other things implied by this approach, of course. The problem is you have to do it sustainably. Forced, quick, radical approaches tend to collapse in on themselves and give away the original objective, whether it takes 70 days or 70 years. There's nothing wrong with having ambitious objectives, but you have to put together a workable plan to achieve it that's not going to turn everything into worse crap before it can be achieved.
Bullshit. The net is public, if you put your server on it, you share in the handling of traffic. If you can't handle that take down your box, stop crying about non-existent cost increases and go back to beating off and watching after school specials.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Because your ridiculously stupid consumption fucks up my world: it causes pollution,
Places with the worst environmental records are non-capitalist ones like the ex-Soviet Union and China. Your correlation of capitalism and environmental degradation is not just wrong, it is backwards.
it fucks up the economy,
Capitalism fucks up a capitalist economy. Brilliant.
it causes exploitation of people working in sweatshops abroad,
Right. There was no slavery before there was capitalism. And exploitation is worst in the most capitalist countries.
it fucks up my ability to seek a sane and reasonable balance of work/life (because you are willing to work 90 hours a week to by your 123131 fucking consumer-bit)
So he should adjust his hopes and dreams in order to help you achieve yours? If you want a 9-5 job there are lots of them out there.
, it generally fucks up my ability to live happily. By having 300 million selfish americans driving the worlds economy no one else can do anything other than bear down and adopt the system because if we DONT you'll eat everyone out of house and home (very fucking literally) -
That makes no sense. The US is agriculturally self-sufficient. Americans pay farmers not to farm because there is so much damn food around. You would deny this state of abundance to other countries in the world. Who is selfish?
leaving others with nothing and not caring a whit.
There was poverty in the world before there was capitalism. In fact, according to modern definitions of poverty, the whole world was poor until there was modern capitalism. Capitalist countries tend to be rich. Socialist (China, North Korea, USSR) countries tend to be poor. Socialists are the worst enemies of the poor. They think they are helping but they make the plight of the poor much worse.
People come to the West because they want what we have. We can give them what they want in their home countries by exporting democracy and capitalism. There are dozens of countries in the world that have made massive strides out of poverty by working according to democractic capitalist principles. Japan, Taiwan, all of post-war Europe, post-communist East Europe, much of central and South America. Please do not reverse the progress these countries have made by undermining the very technique that they are using to make progress.
If you read the whole thread you'll see that I did address his point. When you are available to the public you give your consent to be contacted, you have the right to ignore this contact or tell the party involved that you do not wish any sort of communication. It does not matter in the least if it costs you (in time, money or anything) you have made yourself available to the public. Now if the person (company or whatever) insists on repeatedly trying to talk (advertise or whatever) to you, then they're crossing the line into harrassment. A one time attempt to initiate communication is entirely under the blanket of free speech.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Exactly. This is why I have to calm myself when spammers say, "well why don't you just delete it?"