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CA Appeals Court Upholds Spam Law
Joe Wagner writes: "Criminal penalties for spam, yeah baby! It has just been announced that California State's spam law has been ruled constitutional and valid by California Court of Appeal for the First District: '...we hold that section 17538.4 does not violate the dormant Commerce Clause [of the United States Constitution].' The actual ruling is here. Congratulations to Mark Ferguson and his lawyers (1, 2) for fighting it out for the rest of us..."
Now if the other states and countries would just follow. Something (besides filters) needs to be done about SPAM.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
Lovely. Now that California has lead the way, when do you think other states will follow suit?
Is there actually a "spam lobby" anywhere that could prevent (read give money to) politicans from supporting or passing such bills in other states?
"Moving through the masses like a fish through water." syrup
"The statute defines "unsolicited e-mail documents" as "any e-mailed document or documents consisting of advertising material for the lease, sale, rental, gift offer, or other disposition of any realty, goods, services, or extension of credit" when the documents (a) are addressed to recipients who do not have existing business or personal relationships with the initiator and (b) were not sent at the request of or with the consent of the recipient."
Perhaps not plain english, but as close as legalese gets.
YES!!!
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
YOU TOO can prosecute all those pesky spammers. Just send $100 to this paypal account and we'll help you. If you don't want to press charges, just send an email to nothanks@prosecutespammersnow.BIZ and we won't press charges at this time.
(IANAL) When do I get my cut of the Civil Suit?
Obviously SOMEBODY is making $4000 every week while they sleep with Barely Legal Lolitas and loose weight.
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
This law specifically ALLOWS spam to be sent. It just requires that spammers include a valid return email address and that they remove people from their list who want to be removed.
This is great?
It also only covers spammers who have their equipment located in California. All this means is that spammers will use mailservers in some other state or country.
The only good thing I see about this is that it requires the subject to have "ADV:" in it.
I expect absolutely no change in the amount of spam I get as a result of this law.
Yes, I hate spam.
However, do we really want a precedent of banning certain types of emails? As much as we don't like spammers, I would much rather have to delete "Increase your ejactulation by 581%" than to worry that an encrypted email transmission was deemed illegal.
I demand a million helicopters and a DOLLAR!
Are you sick of all of the SPAM that your receive in your email everyday. Well now there is something that you can do about it.
Our law firm will go after all of these hideous capitalist marketers...
To help our cause please forward this email to all of your friends and spread the word
Also be sure to tell them to vote no on the Congressional Act adding a tax to emails...
Considering that the vast majority of users do not know how to setup filters and the like, spam really is a detriment to electronic messaging. My folks are not the most computer literate people on the planet and the thought of them receiving "No subject" messages with embedded porn makes me cringe. If I didn't have a full time job, I'd work on a system of intelligent agents that actually worked.
Why was this modded off topic? This was most certainly "on topic".
At the point of origin, or the destination.
And on behalf of some Canadians, I would love something like this to happen up hear.
Could someone explain what the law means?
S.V.
We need to formulate a standardized procedure for fighting spam. This way, the good citizens aren't trampelled upon by big-wig spammers.
We need to stand by this law. Fight Spam to the end.
Go see ramdac
An so I have to set up systems. However, one place I have not been able to set up a working system is my (snail) mail handling. and the reason? I get so damn much of it. It really is a denial of service. Bill's get lost, causing me to have to pay late fees. My fiancee didn't find a wedding invitation until a week before the wedding. And so on. And there is no unsubscribe link, no spam filter, no mechanism for controlling it.
A few days ago, my fiancess commented on the local newspapare, which, despite no on in the building paying for, was faithfully delivered every day. We periodically collect them up and throw them out, but with liited recycliung spcae (one blue bin per apartment) It seems a pityu to waste it on something that should not have been coming to our house anyway. When I finally called the paper to have the delivery cancelled, it was in her (my fiancess') name. She never ordred it. It was probably a miscommuncation between her and the some cold calling telemarketer. I need a spam filter for them, too. I guess I could at least get aclller ID for that...
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
If not, I don't care. Spam is annoying, sure, but junk mail is heaping piles of dead trees. The recycle bins by my apartment are constantly filled with weekend shoppers and credit card offers. One place I lived put the paper bin right next to the mail boxes, so you wouldn't have to carry your armload of junk mail. Aside from that, there's also the fact that spam is easier to deal with. I can set up procmail (or even more primitive filters) to do a decent job of keeping my inbox free of crap. But no matter how often I show the contents of my .mailmanrc to my postal carrier, I still end up getting a new shopper every day from a different place, always printed on high-gloss 100% freshly killed tree.
The enemies of Democracy are
Spammers would have you believe that other than your time for "just clicking delete", there's no cost to spam. However, since you and I and all spam victims pay a lot of the cost of spam before purchasing the spamvertised product, market forces on spam are seriously weakened, with respect to market forces on other forms of advertising (radio and Tee Vee broadcast, newspaper and magazine advertising, billboards, stock cars, product placement in movies). For all other forms of advertising, the advertiser pays for the ads up front, before the consumer buys the product. If the ad campaign sucks ("Ring Around the Collar!") or offends (Frito Bandito, anyone?) ad victims can choose to exert market forces on the advertiser. With respect to spam, victims have already paid more than their share of the ad costs before making a decision whether or not to buy the spamvertised product. Market forces apply only weakly to spam, thus requiring government intervention. Criminalizing spam is a step in the right direction.
Spammers are all thieves. Don't forget, don't let your legislator(s) forget it. Down with the DMA!
I don't think a California law goes a very long way in stopping spam that comes from China.
Do you think China cares about California? Didn't think so.
I know the law has more to do with adhering to requirements than it does with stopping spam altogether. But still, if I were a Californian business man/spammer, and I didn't want to bother with these laws, I would simply move my operation outside the boundaries of said law.
Texas has passed a law to make it illegal for telemarketers to call people on a special do not call list. If the telemarketer violates this law they will be charged $1000 for each offense
Here is the story from Yahoo
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Indiana has a new "list" you can add your telephone number to to avoid any telemarketers (Well, 95% of telemarketers. Some groups aren't bound by it).
Maybe it's the first step to adding your e-mail to a "no spam" list. If they're doing it with etlemarketers, why NOT with mass e-mailers?
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
Note that it also says, right up front
(emphasis mine). Not just companies registered in California, nor does the email have to originate or be transferred through, or delivered in Calfiornia -- if the company does any business at all in California, it applies.
I like it!
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
What's being done to STOP spam? I for one am tired of sorting through my mail looking for valid messages (spam to real mail ration of about 100 to 1). What's more as the years go on (same mail box for five years) my spam gets stranger and stranger I get more messages in Japanese, Korean, German, Russian and Taiwanese then I do in English.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
I believe that if the recipient or the sender is in California, they are bound by the law.
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email from john@iz.cx with the following subject
$$ MAKE $$$$$ PROSECUTING SPAMMERS!!! $$
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Go here for more information But also note they charge your $5 to do it online. DONT. You can simply mail in a letter (printable from this form), throw on a stamp, and away you go.
And it does work. My junk mail has decreased dramatically.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Is there any doubt in your mind that it's more than a coincidence that DMA and DMCA are different by only one letter?
This case is very similar to what happened with the WA law, with the WA court ruling that a law that deals with the fraudulent aspects of spam (that includings not including valid return email addresses, or a way to opt-out of future mailings without significant hassle). Because the WA law allows WA residents to take on out-of-state spammers, the spammers were trying to argue that the law violated 1st Amendment rights and the Federal Commerce Clause. However, the WA state attorneys followed previous rulings that allowed states to regulate intrastate business when fraud was involved, and the law was kept constitutional. It sounds like the CA case was decided along similar lines since the law specific states that proper identifying and opt-out mechanisms must exist.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
As a spammer, I am concerned this new law will stop me from being able to do my job. Spammers are people too you know, no matter how much you don't want to admit it. We have a family to feed just like the rest of you.
Such as the door to door salesman, the telemarketer, and so on, we all need a paycheck.
Should we issue a law that states Microsoft's employees shouldn't be able to code software because the company is "evil"? Spammers are just like those employees in the way that they work for an evil, unrelenting company so to speak.
So, I ask you, please recondsider this.
He's in California, right? His employer makes spam tools, right? Oooops!
I realize that spam is annoying, and that spammers often use resources that don't belong to them, but I find it odd that the Slashdot crowd, which so frequently touts Freedom of speech as one of the major benefits of "open source" or GPLed software, should be so dead-set against a certain group's speech. The law, as far as I can tell, makes illegal "unsolicited email documents" when "the documents (a) are addressed to recipients who do not have existing business or personal relationships with the initiator and (b) were not sent at the request of or with the consent of the recipient. ( 17538.4, subd. (e).) "
This will probably lead to 1000 people explaining to me that spam wastes bandwidth and all that, but really, I would expect less hypocrisy from a group that frequently appears to defend freedom of speech so vehemently. This isn't to say I don't like spam, but if fucking C++ source code can be considered speech, why isn't "Do you want a longer penis?" Honestly, I would consider spam more of an expressive medium than code. Maybe the guy selling penis enlargment sauce really feels deeply about it and wants the world to know how truly great his product is. Anyhow, before everyone pats themselves on the back for this "win" over spammers, maybe you should take a step back and look at it from the much-heralded freedom-of-speech angle you usually take on Napster/Ogg/Kazaa/Microsoft/DeCSS issues.
rooooar
Many reasonable allegations against the spammer were dismissed in a way that suggests that the Court does not understand the issues involved.
Perhaps someone should suggest that spam is to a computer what random placement of raw eggs is to a judge's chamber: an annoyance and potential mess to clean up.
Think of poor windoze users reading html spam with cookies or javascript popups enabled, for example. Or any of the email exploits that monopolyware has enabled. (Yeah, they should be using Linux or *BSD. Doesn't help with the annoyance of spam, just makes it less messy.)
Perhaps when more e-clueful judges take the bench, the details in this sort of decision can be handled more appropriately.
Let me get this straight. Links are speech. Code is speech. But e-mail is not speech?
It should be noted that CA state spam law is not just similar to WA state spam law, but that the WA state spam law was also upheld by the state supreme court and an appeal to the US Supreme Court was denied, as it is inherently constitutional.
...
Sometimes George just lucky, i guess
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
What are the odds of getting someone big to do this, like Hotmail or AOL? Then we'll really see how against spam the big companies are.
Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
My fiancee didn't find a wedding invitation until a week before the wedding
What kind of person sends a wedding invitation as an e-mail? These are supposed to be fancy, formal cards with multiple envelopes and calligraphy. Whomever sent that to you must have been a total geek.
Oh, wait - this is Slashdot. Never mind - carry on.
(as a suggestion, you could set up your mail program to route important e-mails to an "Important" folder based on the sender's address - shouldn't take more than a few minutes of your time and will save you some hassles)
A replacement of or enhancement to SMTP to require secure, unforgeable authentication of an email's sender in order to make this enforceable. Otherwise it is for naught.
My friend has one of those fathers that left when he was a small kid and pops in once in while to give him a car, business, just sort of out of the blue.
/.ers can help me make the call on this.
Anyways we're going down to his house in bakersfield next week. Apparently his father has a T1 line going into a csu/dsu into a router on a pretty unsecured network into his house. All windows machines running IIS, can't remember the spam package he's using but here is the dilema I face, maybe my fellow
Up until last year I was a happily working dot com guy. Every company needed sysadmins so for a guy like me that understood tcp/ip networking and o/s installation it was great. Jobs were everywhere. Then I got laid off a week after buying my house. Been surviving, still got the house, but you just don't derive as much pleasure from life living day to day on ramen and cigarettes your bought scraping the change that fell out of people pockets from your couch.
His father wants our help. He know's I can help him convert everything over to BSD, which in itself would secure him a bit, get a firewall in place and a billing system. Currently he is making $2,500 a week net and has customers lined up out the door to use his spamming services.
My moral dilema is, do I help the guy to make a quick buck (which also makes the wife happy) or do I stick to my guns and say spam is wrong?
It's a really hard choice to make when you're faced with the reality of well.. reality. Bills don't pay themselves. I sometimes wonder if the goverment is lying about how bad it really is out here because I got 5 sysadmin friends in the bay area out of work now. 5 sysadmins that I personally know and hang out with. Their job hunts have been the same as mine for the last year, HR ppl just bringing you in for an interview so its "make busy" work.
I dunno, today might just be a weird day, its an odd coincidence that slash would be posting a story on this a week before i'm supposed to go help it.
Now all we have to do is have another state pass a law which contradicts the CA law and we can eliminate all spam. Since the CA law requires first four characters of the subject to be ADV:, all we need is for another state (say VA) to require that the first five characters of the subject to be SPAM:.
Of course there's no way the federal courts are going to let this ruling stand.
Personally, I don't think this is much bigger than mail fraud. IMHO, Rather than criminalize sending unsolicited email, I would criminalize sending spam without an ADV: prefix or ADV ADULT: prefix.
This would effectively give them the freedom to send as much unsolicited junk to people who want it, and let us who don't want it to filter it out.
As far as regulating technology goes, I think there's bigger fish to fry. Here's some examples of how the FCC helps the communication monopolies keep thier monopolies...
UWB technology gets stuck in red tape
Roll your own DSL
My point: Communications and tech have been regulated for YEARS. So while you're pondering if criminalizing spam MAY set a bad precident, existing technology and communication monopolies are doing everything to criminalize and patent truely liberating technology (Ultra-Wide-Band) (DSL without the telcos): (That is before they figure out how to use it for thier own advantage)
...and that's just one very small facit of the problem...
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Read it. The law says that spammers have to provide an "opt-out" address, and users have to send their real email addresses to them, the spammers.
Duh.
So now the spammers will have a list of valid, guaranteed active email accounts. To sell, which is what opt-out addresses in spam are for. Not to opt out, but to verify that they're real.
And since this is a state law, the spammer can get away with this by being out of state. Not that spammers ever care about the law. The law merely encourages users to ACT LIKE IDIOTS and send real email addresses to spammers who will then use them as verified, premium spambait!
Say if the mail carrier demands a quarter from you for each piece of mail you get, without letting you see what it is first.
Imagined scenario:
Mail Carrier: "Doh! You chose not to recieve your paycheck! But you did choose to receive item #4, a lovely Harry and David catalog! Loser!"
You: "Damn you!"
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
I would like to thank you for representing us as retards who don't know the difference between hear and here.
The right to free speech does not mean you have a right to commit harm through your speech; I am all in favor of penalties against fraud, and inevitably some of those need to soak up some of the slime where it slithered, into my / your / our email boxes.
There's no ideological banning of "certain types of speech" here -- they're the same things that are (legitimately) not allowed IRL already.
(You're allowed to send me an unsolicited invitation to a party, but you're not allowed to send it to me in the bottom of a paper bag of dogshit doused with gasoline and set aflame on my doorstep, then claim your rights to free speech are violated if I catch you at it and take appropriate action.)
Spammers are the dogshit-bag lighters of the online world.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Spammers can still email people. People who want to get ads about penis enlargement, or hot teen sex, or credit repair can still recieve it. But people who do not want it should not be forced to recieve it. This is what people have been begging for spammers to do since day one. People asked spammers to stop and they didn't. People started munging their email addresses when posting in public forums and spammers de-munged them.People blocked email addresses of spammers and spammers just changed addresses. People started blocking domains of spammers; spammers just registered new domains. If spammers won't listen to the people, maybe they will listen to the law. And if they still don't listen, the people can do something about it.
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This ruling really worries me, actually.
I don't like regulation of the Internet in any form unless absolutely necessary, and while many will feel this is necessary I can picture this ruling being abused very very easily.
You people generally want to be able to do whatever you want on the net, yet at the same time you want to restrict what someone else can do. Tread carefully, or else you may find yourself being restricted next.
For instance, if this spam law involved reasoning about using resources without approval that could arguably be extended to something like pinging another point on the Internet just to measure your latency.
Just one example...
Just put in ADV in the subject line and spam all you wish. I will never see any of it due to my client routing all ADV to my trash but hey sounds fair to me..
Got Code?
Clearly, requiring spammers to behave with some sort of ethics is a noble goal. However, it appears that the judge has decided that this law does not violate the constitution for the wrong reasons. So, as much as it pains me, I must disagree with the judge. The law needs to be rewritten to be more restrictive. My logic follows below.
I read through the judges decision, and here are some interesting snippets which show the judge does not understand the nature of the internet, and the defendant clearly did not present sufficient argument in several areas.
That implies that (1) the geographic location of the electronic mail server can be determined by the sender of the mail, (2) that the servers which will be passed through (or at least are at the origin or destination) are known to the sender, and (3) that the residency of the recipient is known to the sender.
Which implies, again, that the residency of the recipient is known or can be inferred. Both the Attorney General and Ferguson apparently don't know how the assembly of e-mail address lists occurs. When compiling a list of addresses who might be interested in a particular subject, address assesment almost never occurs.
If I were to decide to assemble a list of addresses that might be interested in my product, I could go to a newsgroup, download all the headers available, and compile the attached e-mail addresses into a list. However, that list of e-mail addresses has no other information embedded within it. Any of the e-mail addresses listed may be hosted with a server having a privacy policy which prevents disclosure of the end user's address. Therefore, I have no way of determining what the residency of those recipients is.
Here lies the most important part of the argument, conflicting state laws. The entire basis of the court's rejection of the unconstitutionality hinges on the assumption that the residency of a UCE recipient can be determined. If it is impossible to determine the residency of a UCE, the law becomes unconstitutional.
How many free e-mail services do not require an indication of a user's residency? How many of those servers that do require it verify identity? For an entire segment of the population, it is completely impossible to determine the residency of the users, thus, this law should be found unconstitutional.
[jbirr jbirr]$ grep \\$ -c spam_law ./move_to_california --with_lawyer_friends --with_open_relay --with_patience
./prosper
19
[jbirr jbirr]$
Welcome to GNU Moving to California v1.02
Moving with lawyer friends...
Moving with open relay...
Moving with patience...
Done.
[jbirr jbirr]$
Prospering -- please wait...
Fuck that. Go on and make that money, kid. that's the real reason we're all here on slashdot. People say it's for the love of tech. bullshit. if a linux administrator got paid the same as an HR administrator, then no one would really waste their time trying to learn cryptic perl strings and other assorted geek bullshit. Geeks are in it for the cash. We're no better than anyone else out there.
.. whateva gets that chedda.
who cares if some whiny bitches think spam is annoying and "wastes bandwith"
This is something people keep forgetting. Spam for the most part comes from corporations. Corporations do not have constitutional rights (e.g. corporations don't vote). A corporation is not a citizen. This law does not apply to an individual that spams people saying, "Protect our rights!!!", or "Oppose the Government!!". It applies to businesses saying "Buy our products!!!"
People need to remember that there is a difference between citizens and corporations.
Why aren't we told when editors moderate our posts?
Hello, it's Joe from XYZCorp here. I'd like to give your state $1 million for that list. If your state doesn't comply, I'll ask a civil servant to make a photocopy for me.. or I'll just hack into your computer and get it. Mm'kay?
That still isnt going to eliminate the stupid Taiwanese spam I get all the time.
I mean, US spam, I at least can read.
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
Hormel Food Corporation, which debuted its Spam(R) luncheon meat in 1937, has dropped any defensiveness about this use of the term and now celebrates its product with a website . . . . [Citations.]" (Heckel, supra, 24 P.3d at p. 406, fn. 1.)
Does that mean /. can use the old Spam logo again?
(only partially kidding...)
So basically, you're asking Slashdot how ethically principled you are?
Sorry, man, but you're the only person who can make that call.
Sorry, I thought the (snail) would have been more specific. What my little rant was about was the amount of Spam I get via the US postal service, not E-Mail.
Just because the mailer takes the cost of postage, does not mean there is not cost associated with the end user (me) not being able to make use of the mail. I can't wait until all my bills come in electronically.
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
In fact, it's probably already illegal where you live.
Due to a historical quirk, most mail systems on the Internet will deliver mail to anyone, not just their own users.
Not a 'historical quirk' but _by design_. You may want to read up on the history of email systems and why this is a feature. Besides, this is a non-issue, the trend away from relaying mail for other domains means this (theoretically) is not a problem.
DMCA is bad. Yes. I agree. Threatening lawsuits against ORBS is bad. Right with you there, the internet functions well as a self-governing system. Also, don't tax transactions on the internet, okay, no problem. But if it involves an annoyance such as spam, please, bring in your law enforcement.
As a sysadmin, I hate spam plenty. As a sysadmin, I employ various mechanisms to employ spam. I don't consider this legislation to be any great cause of celebration.
Another damned comic
+++ NO CARRIER
The court has said that when you mail, you have a duty to figure out in advance what state the mailbox you're mailing to is in, and then find out the e-mail laws of that state and obey them.
Yikes! That's not at all the way E-mail works. You often have no idea what state the other guy's mailbox is in, and it's a pain, or impossible, to find out in many cases.
You may cheer that this law puts this burden on senders of UCE, but the reality is that if this decision stands, you are letting all states put whatever rules they care to pass on E-mail, and putting a duty on everybody to know all the laws and know the state they are mailing.
To add insult to injury, this law defines new syntax for the Subject header! The government should not be defining the forms of e-mail headers. The IETF does that. This is also compelled speech and apparently the defendant didn't even bring that issue up.
Less you think I'm defending spam, you can read my essay on the insidious evil of spam to find out the contrary.
But we must fight spam the right way, and setting precedents like this is a dark day for e-mail and the internet in general.
California had another spam law which wasn't so bad because the recipient had to notify, thus making it clear what state they were in.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
http://spam.abuse.net/spambad.html
Twoflower
--
Twoflower
Uh, dude.. did you even read that he said "...is my (snail) mail handling..."?!?!?
We all know that Spam sucks.
;-p
The degree to which spam sucks is open to debate. To be fair it does taste better than treat spams off brand competitor
Now unsoliceted email that is worse.
Years ago I thought unsoliceted email was a passing fad and would go away when it proved unproffitable. I couldn't be more wrong on an email account that I set up to catch spam I average over 100 peices of crap a day.
What can we do about it?
Not much.
We set up clever filters and they bypass them with the skill of a 15 year old on a porn hunt.
We make laws, and they ignore them or make themselves very hard to find, not to mention the fact that many of these "businesses" would be illegal if they were exposed to the light of day.
What have I done, well I set up a reverse filter it blocks everything that does not have a specifc subject line, people who want to email me must use this line, it is a pain in the ass but it saves me time and I look at no spam on my urgent account, when I have time I will scan through my spam account for lost messages but I haven't had any in weeks.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
My mistake - overlooked the one-word snail notice as I wasn't expecting to be reading about junk postal mail in a spam mail thread.
:-)
Apologies for the response, (sincerely) but your original post was OT anyway and lead to my mistake.
"This just in. A California man has been arrested for attempting to smuggle a can of reprocessed meat product aboard an aircraft. Apparently, the producer of the product has no comment at this time."
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
wow. growing illegality on the net is one of my greater fears. although the spam law is clearly useful in situations, the fact that anything should be illegal out there is unsettling. i know it's just a utopian wish, but if only people could be responsible for their own actions with respect to the effects on others.
Shouldn't You expect more from your DJ?
Sign him up for as many spams as possible.
A bit OT, indulge me while I ramble...
Wow, you have been getting interviews? Even ones that are clearly shams? Here in Seattle HR people just don't bother to call back. I have compared notes with many job-hunting friends and we all agree that up here the HR culture is very strange. You never get a call back, email back, or any kind of contact at all unless you are a front-runner for a position -- they don't even say, "thanks, but no thanks." It's a total black hole.
I have gotten so few nibbles from my resume drops that I keep looking over my files, trying to make sure that I haven't accidentally put the word "penis" in somewhere.
It's so bad that I actually get a sinking feeling when I see a job opening that I am perfect for, because I know from a year of futile efforts that I won't hear anything in return. After a while this really plays hell with your self-confidence. Man... maybe I just SUCK! Maybe I am a SHAM!
Back on topic... Take the job. Take the money. Spam is low but it's not like killing someone. And you have a responsibility to your family and your creditors... those are critical to maintain. Take the job. I, at least, won't look down on you.
BTW: you can make a lowly package of ramen into a delicious treat! Buy cans of cooked chicken meat: you can get a pack of big cans at Costco. Add half a can of chicken, some sesame oil, sliced mushrooms, celery, hot oil or cayenne pepper (if you like heat), sesame seeds and black pepper to normal chicken ramen. Cheap and 100x better than ramen alone.
Looks like it has a big loophole for non-commercial spam to fly right through. At least that is how I read it.
What we end up with as a net result (pardon the pun) is that there is a law on the books restricting speech on the net; if this law survives further appeals, it becomes precedent for further laws restricting net speech. Personally, I would rather deal with spam and keep the regulators as far from the net as possible.
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
If I want to set up a stand on my front lawn and tell everybody about how great my penis enlargement system works, I can .. because I have free speech. If I want to promote my penis enlargement system on my Web page, I can .. because I have free speech. If I want to rent a hotel convention center and hold a series of meetings raving about the effectiveness of my penis enlargement system, I can .. because, well, you get the idea. Spammers have, and always have had the right to free speech. You are going one step further by claiming that massive (and often distributed) attacks on open relays and ill-prepared ISPs constitutes "speech." I must admit that this is one of the more puzzling arguments I've heard in favor of spammers.
.. not just from a bandwidth perspective, but from the perspective of computational resources as well. Back then, stories about these ISPs closing up shop were a dime a dozen.
.. when was the last time that you took a piece of "fucking C++ source code", purchased a list of 20 million email addresses from some promoter, sniffed out an open mail relay on some poor boob's network, and unleashed a bulk mailer bot to share your "speech" with the world? You're missing the point. Nobody is saying "MAKE MONEY FAST!!" isn't speech that is subject to First Amendment protection. What is being said is that the method of delivery is illegal. A spammer has no more right to steal the resources of others to mailbomb millions of people than I have to break into your house while you're sleeping and try to sell you a can of oven cleaner.
I realize that the days of the "Mom and Pop" ISP have pretty much gone the way of the dodo, but back in the mid-1990s there were quite a few of them. Unfortunately, many of these ISPs (which were pretty bandwidth limited and served a relatively small amount of users) were put out of business because of the overhead effects of spammers
This isn't to say I don't like spam, but if fucking C++ source code can be considered speech, why isn't "Do you want a longer penis?"
I'm starting to suspect that I've been trolled here, but assuming you're serious
Maybe the guy selling penis enlargment sauce really feels deeply about it and wants the world to know how truly great his product is.
Great! Then he can set up a stand on his lawn, put up an advertisement on his Web page, or put on a convention at his local Holiday Inn. Nobody is saying he doesn't have a right to promote his product. What people are saying is that there are some methods that cannot be used to do so. This has been true in the past, and it is true today.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Filters? If only. Free e-mail services like Hotmail and Yahoo don't even have spam filtering (if you can't filter out any e-mail that contains the word "mortgage", for example, you don't really have filtering).
Mass-marketing/3rd class mail subsidizes first class mail that you send or recieve. You wouldn't be able to send a snail mail letter if not for all the USPS spam.
This is one of the few clear-headed posts in here. I hate spam just like everybody else, but hitting delete a few times a day (or setting up filters) is far far less annoying than the kind of clueless laws that the government likes to regulate the internet with.
Listen slashdot! You don't want the government's hand in this!
Remeber how they "solved" the pornography problem? (CDA I, II, etc., forced use of censorware in libraries)
Remember how they "solved" the movie piracy problem? (DMCA?)
I want as little regulation of what I do on the internet as possible. I think the spam problem is best solved by (1) hitting delete, (2) technological/social solutions, or finally (3) civil torts.
Ok.. this is a shady on the ethical side BUT here is what you do. Do all the work for him but leave yourself a 'backdoor.' A open port, a root user only you know about, etc. Once you get paid destroy the whole damm thing. Not only do you end spam but you can actually cost them MORE money (and maybe earn yourself some more money in the process).
Solves both problems. =)
going to enforce something like this? When you get spam are they going to expect you to call your local Police department? (Thats what DCI told me to do back when I was consulting for a company that got hacked). My experience with that was less than satisfing. From what I've seen, most enforcement agencies do not have the knowledge to actually follow through with something like this. I'd kind of like to see an organization/department specifically aimed at enforcement of internet crimes. Federal or state? I'm not sure. I'd just like to see all these 'Spam laws' and whatnot enforced. Even the DMCA has fallen short of their words. How many police officers are going to spend the time to nail some kid with 200 MP3's? Thats right, not many, because most officers don't know enough about it to actually do anything. DMCA only applies to big companies like Napster, etc.. What about the people sitting on IRC distributing a gig of mp3s a day? Oh well. Maybe its better this way.
Can all fish swim?
Do you think that "Free Speech" means that you have the right to bust into someone's bedroom and night and recite Ogg-Vorbis code documents?
Well, saying that spammers have "free speech" to invade your in-box against your wishes is the exact same sort of thing.
There are too many spammers in Bakersfield for that reference to uniquely identify him.
But if you'd post a sample of his spam, the Lumber Cartel (TINLC) will recognize him, get his T1 yanked by his provider, and then his network of IIS boxen will be secured for free ;-)
It's amazing how many people followed the link to view the customer's product and, of those, how many are purchasing the product.
I'll follow the rules, but I'll always offer "broadcasting" to my clients.
Posted anonymously due to knee-jerk reaction potential against myself and my clients.
Seriously, why is paper spam more accpetable than the e-variety?
Mark Ferguson is obsessed with Gary Burnore, and is an obsessive anti-privacy nut. Having him champion the anti-spam cause shows once again that they are opposed to all free speech
Nice cut n' paste karma whoring there buddy! This is a great victory for Troll Nation!
Keep up the good work.
I feel for you, but think about how it is for HR people - they're being laid off badly, too, and there are a lot more resumes coming in now. They're almost certainly overwhelmed, and not being intentionally rude...
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
Who pays for spam? The people who's computers it goes through.
Think if the paper-spammers started putting "postage will be paid by adressee" on their ads.
Assuming you don't starve to death (rather unlikely, all things considered), you'll look back on your period of privation, and forget most of the unpleasantness. If you take the job, you'll look back on the experience and regret it. Would you go up to your friends and say, "I supported a spammer pumping out a million spams a day. I made a million peoples' days worse."? I wouldn't want to do that. And I don't think you would either.
Do the right thing. Report your friend's dad to his ISP.
the california law is a well written law that explicitly defines what the law means when IT refers to spam.
And surprisingly, the way the law defines spam is how most of us would want it defined.
Please be very carefull when contacting politicians about spam laws that you states/country defines it they way California does, otherwise it could be twisted pretty badly.
Its a tough thing, for me spam is an ad for business. But I would hate a law to stiffle free speech.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The decision also available here from the court itself said the lower court erred in not letting Ferguson pursue tresspassing charges against the spammer, despite his evidence that physical damage was done to his computer. I admire his creativity: the physical damage he cites is the fragmentation of his hard drive due to the spam in his inbox.
Has he also considered the physical damage that can occur by increasing your ejaculate by 581% and shooting it 13 feet?
It's interesting how the /. Community cheers this law but screams at the top of its lungs when it comes to anti-piracy laws and activity.
/. community & me too) is put upon by spammers, you want blood.
/. community & me too) that it's not right to rip off musicians and software developers - you (the /. community & me too) wont hear it.
So when (the
But when someone tells you (the
An interesting bunch we are!
Dude,
Everybody has to make a living. Everybody has to live with there own conscience. What are you asking for?
If you want someone to tell you its okay to send out spam, well try again. SPAM is wrong because you are basically syphoning off the system. This guy's dad makes a few bucks in a morally negligent way. It does create hard currency, but it won't do anything for your conscience or your resume, and chances are you will always regret working there.
If you have a conscience. Many people don't. Perhaps you are one of them. In which case, go help the spam guy. Its easy to rationalize. Hey! If not you someone else, right?
But this is a decision you need to make and no one else. Asking slashdot for advice is about as predictable as asking. "I was installing an OS on my PC, and was wondering whether I should use Windows or FreeBSD. What do you think?"
Anyway, good luck, and please take me off any lists you might come in contact with.
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
What if I'm living in Florida but my ISP is in Georgia (near the state line, still toll-free) but I'm current on business in California where I'm dialing back into my email from my ISP, who although in Georgia may outsource mail/news to a larger provider which is HQ'd in Alabama, but who's mail servers are located in New York. When in where would the law apply? "location" is hard to define for many things on the internet.
mcox.com - Useful Information re: IT, Running, Fitness, Finance, or Ann Arbor!
The law allows an exception if the spam has a valid removeme address at the beginning of the email, but this is absurd. Everybody knows that 99.9% of the time they see such an address, it is just a means for the spammer to verify that they have a live, regularly checked address. Perhaps some will be responsible spammers -- if that's not an oxymoron -- but if the law is intended to actually provide a solution, it is totally inadequate. You would be added to 100 lists for every 1 that you're taken off. Basically, in order to verify that the law has been broken, you have to be prepared to have the volume of spam go up drastically. It never fails to amaze me when well intentioned laws have huge exceptions that nullify the effect of the law. I wonder if that exception isn't in there because some of some lobbyist's anonymous contributions. Why else would there be an exception that completely invalidates the whole email part of the statute?
Secondly, "Due to a historical quirk, most mail systems on the Internet will deliver mail to anyone, not just their own users"
Ever hear of anti-relay hijacking?
What you can do is, go to those spammer sites for opting out, then fill in the email address of you congress person, your senator, your mayor, your president, John Ashcroft, and every other politician that you have the email address.
That's what I do.
I believe that, sooner or later, we will get a really tough law against spammers, especially if you do this at the pr0n sites.
We just need to make sure that these opt-out addresses are the most widely sold / spammed email addresses around! Kind of turn the spammers back on each other.
It does not matter where you or your servers are physically located. It works the same as phone: if you send commercial email to California, you are doing business in California, and the law applies.
Although I fully sympathize with your plight, being in the middle of the same thing myself, the long-term consequences are far more dire.
Taking the job is a black mark that will follow you for the rest of your professional life. No one that you'd actually want to work for will knowingly hire a spammer. Your employment options will be forever limited to spammers and spam-friendly organizations. You will also not be able to reveal the nature of your employment to your friends, for fear of their reaction.
If you simply fail to mention that piece of your employment history on future resumes, you'll still have a curious gap that future employers will ask about.
A quick trip through mythological or Biblical references will show you this is how Evil traditionally works: Wait for a moment of supreme weakness, then make the victim an Offer He Can't Refuse.
Ultimately, as an earlier poster pointed out, you are the final arbiter of your own ethics and what you think you can live with. But if you want my opinion, I recommend avoiding the Faustian Bargain. The long-term costs to your professional career are simply too high.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
How can I setup Sendmail to deny all emails where the Reply To: != From: address?
Filtering for message subjects which begin with "ADV:"
How can I verify that the sender's domain (or parent if they have a tertiary level domain such as neal@cowboy.slashdot.org) has a valid MX record?
On a side note, I don't understand the comments on who is donating to political parties in order to gain support for pro-spam policies.
From my understanding, the majority of spam is completely useless... even if I wanted to buy that timeshare in Afghanistan and use it as a base of operations to make $63,924 (first month!) sending marketing material to Al Qaeda members. There was some enterprising reporter (in LA, IIRC) that actually followed up to 200 or so spam emails trying to buy the product or the like, and 95% it was fake.
So what the hell is the point? If the spammer's time is worth nothing, they should try Linux instead. But their time is worth something and they're wasting it sending spam that they can't even make money from. Maybe they just use it to see who responds and then sell those addresses. But if that's true, and only 50% of the people respond, then eventually that list of emails gets really short... and since I can buy millions of email addresses for $39.95 I don't see how these spammers can afford to give anything to politicians.
Maybe that spammers are trying to get you to send them your credit card and then they run off on a giant shopping spree at your expense... but if that is the case then there would be even more anti-spam legislation.
The constitution does not guarantee the right to be heard by the general public.
I, at least, am not complaining about what the spam says, nor do I believe they shouldn't be allowed to advertise their products. My complaint is the amount of effort I have to go through in order to read my own E-mail.
Less than a week ago, I switched DSL providers from one that charged per usage to one that is always flat (i.e. spam no longer appears on my ISP bill). My very next day at work a CS rep was asking me what we can do to get some of the spam out of our customer service queues as our customer service representatives (many of whom are apparently Mormon) are spending more time (money) processing porn spam than customer requests.
Freedom of speech is not relevant here.
-- The world is watching America, and America is watching TV.
Take the job.
Yes we all hate spam. Spam == bad. But not being able to pay your creditors and putting yourself into debt because you're too proud to take a job is worse. Not to mention the blow your credit rating will take if you end up having to default on your mortgage.
We've all had to take less than glamourous jobs at one time or another... in this job market its just bound to get worse.
Swallow the pride, make sure the bills are paid and that your family's taken care of.
If you feel that badly about it afterwards, donate some money to charity once you're back on your feet.
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
... send a singing telegram to various courtrooms, legislators offices, and legislative chambers. Make sure the telegram pitches some fraudulent get-rich-quick scheme or illegal pornography. Send the telegrams repeatedly and at the most inopportune times.
Eventually, the judges and legislators MIGHT get the point.
Just try to perform it as "morally correct" as your conscience demands. That means if you discover an anti-spamming law that you can comply with by changing some code, change that code. If you know that the DMA maintains a list of addresses that have requested "No spam, please," then try to keep that list current on your systems. Just because your boss is "ethically challenged" doesn't mean you have to always do it his way. (Just when he's looking over your shoulder ;-)
Hell, who knows, you might eventually drive his company in a more legitimate direction, which might even prove to be more profitable in the long run. Y'know, you could even then legitimately advertise your services as "ANTI-SPAM S.xxxx compliant"
Just do the rest of the hacker world a favor and make his spam-slinging engine leave some spammy header traces that our spam filters can spot, please! Spam plays the numbers game, and if 5% of us are savvy enough to filter it out, SO WHAT? It doesn't cost you any business you would have otherwise tricked us into giving you.
Hell, it'll even save you time NOT sending it to the spam-hating addresses. It might even keep the rabid anti-spam crowd from chasing your IP address back a day early, letting you operate a bit longer each time.
John
John
FN 5. "Use of the term 'spam' as Internet jargon for this seemingly ubiquitous junk e-mail arose out of a skit by the British comedy troupe Monty Python, in which a waitress can offer a patron no single menu item that does not include spam . . . . [Citations.] Hormel Food Corporation, which debuted its Spam(R) luncheon meat in 1937, has dropped any defensiveness about this use of the term and now celebrates its product with a website . . . . [Citations.]" (Heckel, supra, 24 P.3d at p. 406, fn. 1.)
Ahhh yess, the obligatory sigh oh, did you say sig?
Dont buy anything from companies who send you junk mail! EVER! When you get junk mail, call the number on it, and tell them that. Here's the way I see it: if a company is wasting valuable money on advertisments that lose them customers, I can find another company.
-dbc
*cough* plagiarism *cough*
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Bullshit, mail would still be affordable. Mail has alwyas been affordable in this country and even going back at least 200 or 300 years in England. And marketing trash mail only started on a large scale in the past 50 or so years. I'd gladly pay more for postage for the occasional letter i send in exchange for a drastic reduction in the number of junk mails i received and had to throw out unread.
FN 5. "Use of the term 'spam' as Internet jargon for this seemingly ubiquitous junk e-mail arose out of a skit by the British comedy troupe Monty Python, in which a waitress can offer a patron no single menu item that does not include spam . . . . [Citations.] Hormel Food Corporation, which debuted its Spam(R) luncheon meat in 1937, has dropped any defensiveness about this use of the term and now celebrates its product with a website . . . . [Citations.]" (Heckel, supra, 24 P.3d at p. 406, fn. 1.)
"The unicode stuff in the latest version is working fabulously well. My russian mafia friends are ecstatic."
Yes, because the lawsuit he'd face afterwards would cost absolutly nothing I'm sure. You can't go destroying your employers work after you're done with the job, especially since they are paying you to do it, for a good reason, they expect a product. You certainly may not be legally required to continue supporting it, but you are breaking the law by using some type of "back door" to destroy your previous work that he now owns.
mcox.com - Useful Information re: IT, Running, Fitness, Finance, or Ann Arbor!
Now we need a law in Texas that states that it's illegal for Spam subject lines to contain "ADV:". That way, the spammers will get sued either in TX or CA. That would put an end to Spam once and for all.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
which means they have to be aware of and follow laws on interstate commerce anyway. I don't see a big difference here.
What the poster is getting it -- although I doubt the poster is a lawyer -- is whether the law violates the dormant commerce clause. The court says it doesn't; of course, it's arguable. Anyway, this issue involves the idea that Congress has the right to regulate interstate commerce. The "dormant" commerce clause implies the *exclusive* right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce; that is, no individual state can regulate interstate commerce. What you say ("they have to be aware of and follow laws on interstate commerce anyway") involves interstate commerce FEDERAL laws, WRT spammers, as well as state laws when spammers are doing business with specific people in a specific state. The poster's problem is the now-classic commerce clause argument about regulation of the internet -- if the internet can be regulated at all, only the federal government can because of the distributed nature of the network (that is, no one really knows where others are physically on the Internet).
Of course, we know that spammers rarely actually know where their spam-victims are, so CA's anti-spam law arguably affects spammers who aren't actively trying to do business with persons in CA. This sort of issue has been litigated plenty before in other states, mainly WRT child pornography or access by minors to pornography. A lot of these laws were initially struck down as violating the dormant commerce clause.
Without reading the court's opinion, my instinct is that it validated the constitutionality of the CA law because the law was narrow enough to make it possible to pick out true violators. For example, if the law said that "all UCE received by CA residents is illegal," it would have been struck down, probably, as violating the dormant commerce clause and possibly as a prior restraint on speech. But if the law said "all UCE sent using servers within the CA borders" (and probably " . . . and received by CA residents"), it wouldn't seem to be regulating commerce outside CA, and so would be okay constitutionally.
As for "compelled speech," I have no idea what that could be. There's no law, constitution or otherwise, that prevents "compelled speech." The only thing that's bad is "prior *restraint*".
don't project your own lack of principles and commitment to more than just the money deity on to the rest of slashdot. Some of us love what we do and would try to scrap by on minimum wage if that was what it paid, in order to do something that we love and think is important. we're not all white-collar whores like you apparently are.
As much as we all hate spam, there are effective ways of dealing with it. The reason I stated this first is because I see a bigger issue here, that of passing laws to regulate the NET (even for something as objectionable as SPAM).
If you are for this, you are saying something's should be regulated on the INTERNET. As soon as you make that statement you loose most of the "absolute" force behind "The net should be free for all things..." argument.
--- diplomacy - 'the art of saying "nice doggie" 'til you can find a big enough stick'
The requirement to provide a valid return address as a way to opt-out of further correspondence is good and reasonable. Not providing a valid return address is a concious decision to make oneself unavailable to complaints and opt-out requests, which is not acceptable behavior for spammers.
The requirement to include specific characters (ADV and ADV:ADLT) as part of the subject line is not so good. Requiring the tagging of content is a dangerous legal precedent which might easily be extended to things other than email. It would be ridiculous to fine or jail somebody for failing to tag content, email or otherwise, with specific labels.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Thanks for all your replies. I'm gonna do it for the money cause I need it, I got a feeling a lot of you are in the same boat.
I seem to have hit on an interesting thread through when it came to the current HR culture when it comes to finding work. I'm wish slash would run a story on it. I know i'm not the only one thats been in the HR revolving door for the last few months.
Lately I've been getting spam for some sort of pyramid scheme, where you snailmail money to somebody, and they email you a "report" that you then shift everyone up one and email to all your (soon-to-be-ex-) friends.
Since it involves snailmail for sending the $$$, couldn't the USPS get involved for postal fraud?
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
First of all, the idea that you're stealing someone's resources by sending them e-mail is absurd. When you connect a computer to the Internet, and have a mail transport agent listening on port 25 and accepting mail, you are inviting the public to send you mail. That's the purpose of standards like SMTP. If you want to have a private mail network, use a different port/protocol with authentication built in. Or at the very least, use a filter to block mail that doesn't come from a recipient that you know.
If someone sends you junk snail-mail, and it fills up your mailbox, you can't claim that you've suffered a denial of service because no new mail will fit in. The First Amendment protects junk mail, as long as it isn't fraudulent, etc. But this court says that a lesser protection is afforded to mail that travels on the Internet. In other words, Internet information has a lesser First Amendment protection than other forms of speech. I find this scary (as well as contradictory to the recent U.S. Supreme court case ACLU vs. Reno in which the CDA was struck down.) Think of all the other decisions that could follow this precedent.
The scariest part is the fact that spam is only allowed if you include a valid return address. Does this mean that anonymous remailers could someday be outlawed? This precedent would seem to support the consitutionality of such a law. I believe the U.S. Supreme Court has held (although I can't remember the precedent specifically) that anonymous speech is in fact protected by the First Amendment, and you don't lose any such protection just because you choose to be anonymous.
As the parent post states: To add insult to injury, this law defines new syntax for the Subject header! The government should not be defining the forms of e-mail headers. So now it's okay for the courts to be deciding Internet protocols. Think of all the damaging laws that can now be passed that will rest on this precedent. Limits on encryption, limits on anonymous remailers, God knows what else! And no First Amendment protection.
I hate spam as much as the next guy, but there are technological solutions. I sincerely hope this case reaches the U.S. Supreme Court and the decision is overturned on First Amendment grounds. This is scary stuff.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
YAAC - Yet Another Anonymous Coward
As a Mafia extortionist, I am concerned this new law will stop me from being able to do my job. Mafia extortionists are people too you know, no matter how much you don't want to admit it. We have a family to feed just like the rest of you.
Such as the door to door salesman, the telemarketer, and so on, we all need a paycheck.
Should we issue a law that states Microsoft's employees shouldn't be able to code software because the company is "evil"? Mafia extortionists are just like those employees in the way that they work for an evil, unrelenting company so to speak.
So, I ask you, please recondsider this.
...apputation of the hands so these bastards can't type anyone. 2nd offense gets you a burning at the stake--end of problem.
I've read some of the comments, and I'm amazed at how quickly some slashdot readers would limit the speech of "spammers". This seems to be a childish attitude for several reasons:
1. One of the respondants commented that junk email is preferable to dead tree junk mail. I couldn't agree more.
2. Certainly, it seems to most people that alot of the products and services being pushed by spamers are nearly worthless; but shouldn't the reader have a chance to decide if they have an interest (in...oh, I don't know...volume discounts on Viagra;) themselves rather than having the government do it by diktat?
I wonder how many would also be in favor of outlawing cold calls; by sales reps of their employers; to potential new customers. If they would ban cold calls, they must not like being employed. On the other hand, if they would permit cold calls, why not permit spam & let the reader decide to unsubscribe?
So now it is illegal to send spam!! But why can't the lawmakers do something about junk mail!!!
Save Pangaea!! Stop Continental Drift!!
As far as the cherished freedoms of the Internet, the most cherished, which has been largely abandoned since the influx of Net-noobies in the '90's, is to NOT have things shoved down your throat. Let me clarify.
It used to be the case that when people wanted to advertise on the Net, they posted to specific advertisement newsgroups. If you were interested in the availablilty of a product, you checked those newsgroups. It's based on the concept of pull rather than push advertising. While you might get a lower number of ad viewers using pull ads, you can be certain that 100% of those viewing the ad want to be doing so. No pissed off non-customers. Spam, like TV ads, are push ads. The difference is that TV ads don't invade my property (Inbox) and waste my time or money. I usually take the TV ads as an opportunity to do something productive, like pee. There is no similar option with invasive email spam.
I'm of that cast-iron school of thought that considers my telephone and my Net connection to be no different from my house doors and windows. You have NO right to come banging on my doors and windows, or to be shoving unwanted communications through them into my house. And that's what spammers do, whether by phone, email, or snail mail. And as other posters have noted, spammers take your and my time and money every time they employ their anti-Net pseudo-marketing schemes.
No, you have no right to spam. No, it most certainly does NOT violate the Constitution or the spirit of the Net to squelch spammers. Quite the opposite; spammers and their fellow-travelers totally violate the spirit of the Internet, and should have their T1 lines forcibly inserted where the sun don't shine with a massive overvoltage supplied :-)
And for pity's sake, NEVER reply to a spammer, or follow the Click Here To Be Removed From Our Mailing List links. As has been noted by others, all that does is confirm to the diquied (you figure it out...) that he's got a live address.
As for legal solutions, I doubt the California law, or any other, will really work though I'm glad someone cares. I would much rather that we Netizens clean up our own mess, instead of getting the gummint in on it. We have the tech, and we should be able to collectively figure out how to blast spammers out of the data stream, or just corral them into the advertising newsgroups.
The Net has historically policed itself; we just need to pull up our socks and accept that responsibility once again. That's the converse of Net freedoms, y'know. As a first suggestion, we need to introduce the masses of Net-noobies to basic Netiquette---Practical Anarchism 101, as it were. I remember the old services used to push Netiquette FAQs right up front, every time you connected. Now if AOL, M$N, BellSouth, ATT and the other large ISPs. would do that on their front pages, maybe the mass of users would at least get a sense of what the free (of BS) net was like, and work to bring it back. Maybe their Welcome New User! emails could contain a version of a Netiquette text. I dunno...and I'm really starting to ramble, so I'll just shut up now.
Rabid? Me? Heavens no!
Happy Thursday,
Chuck the Inflamed
----------- /bin/laden
rm -fR
Look at the problem this way: if a religious sect wants to advertise their beliefs, thay can set up a tent in a park, etc. and preach all they want. That IS freedom of speech. But when they start knocking at your door, that's a different matter - and you can refuse to open your door. You can't, however, (sadly) keep spammers from invading your mailbox, which is a private domain. The phenomenon is still "new" (historically speaking) but it definitely needs to be regulated.
I'll be the first to say that I hate spam. I actively track down the ISP of anyone who sends me spam, and complain to 'em.
But the idea of a global legal move against it fills my head with much scarier thoughts. I mean, come on, we all know that the "old world" legal & political system just isn't geared up to understand or enforce internet issues responsibly.
Please go to http://www.overture.com/ enter "bulk email" as the search term and click on one of the links displayed. This will cost the spammers real money.
Don't use a script to do this, don't click repeatedly, don't click on all the links.
Maybe it's just a fantasy, but I'd like to think that eventually SPAM would just fall away as an advertising medium, not because of the ethical issues but because of its ineffectiveness.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Naturally I have no idea if this actually helps prevent spam, but I get very little spam, say perhaps one per month. Kinda Interesting.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
... because I'm not knowledgeable about them anyway. The ADV: string in the SUBJECT is plain stupid and is a perfect example of why a judge shouldn't be making technical decisions on the evolution of SMTP.
This string should have gone into it's own header, possibly even as an X-Header, for example X-Advertising. Then it would have been easy to put proper qualifiers on the nature of the spam, not just ADV: and ADV:ADULT.
I respect your wanting to pay the bills, but that respect only goes so far. Don't update this clown's spamming machinery. Please.
The Tenth Article of Ammendment of the US Constitution clearly states:
This clause above all others should say that states clearly have the right to enact legislation, even stuff that may even be unconstitutional on the federal level (because of limited powers of the federal government).
People in the EU please note this as well (before all of your national sovernty is gobbled up by the EU federal government). Each US state is an independent soverign entity, and can even pass treaties with foreign governments (subject to congressional approval... another story there).
On a more philosophical viewpoint, it is very healthy for 50 states to have 50 sets of laws (it is too late to stop that anyway.) If you think that living in Idaho is just like living in Mississippi, I would challenge you to actually go and visit both places.
The main point is that each state should be a testing ground for new political ideas, and if they are successful (like some of the anti-cell phone laws... just as an example) they will be adopted by other states.
If some bad laws are passed (again using the anti-cell phone laws as an example) there are some nice things about it.
What I'm trying to get across here is that there is a genuine role for state governments to play in the regulation of commercial enterprises, and they may even have some roles to play in the regulation of the internet.
And the other thing... the message that I'm replying to mentioned that it was just worrying about each of the 50 states. With the internet, you also need to worry about the other 200 + countries that your e-mail message could end up in as well. Just try to be the sender (or even the recipient) of porn in Saudi Arabia.
The Free Speech metaphor IS a joke... I can own my own house, but I need PERMISSION (a building permit) from the city to add a shed for my mower, or to enlarge the living room, I can't park my car in the yard, I need to keep the lawn mown, sidewalks shoveled, etc... even if I OWN it, I can't do whatever I want with it (in the city)!
People are NOT gererally OUTRAGED at zoning issues as infringing on Constitutional rights... I sure as hell couldn't raise livestock in the backyard (or basement) or build an outhouse to save on my water bill! I can't burn a pile of tires in my firepit... I probably can't even HAVE a firepit.
We tend to look at ISP's use agreements (which typically forbid spamming) as the zoning issues, but there may be more at stake here. Your ISP's use conditions are more likened to forcing you to use only terra cotta planters and having white blinds in your townhome... and keep that garage door closed. They are not "laws" per se, but they are the rules you need to follow if you choose to live there. Using mauve planters won't be a blight to the neighborhood, but it might cause problems with the association.
On the other hand, violating certain zoning issues are viewed as holding the potential to lower property values for the neighborhood. Is spam just a flock of plastic pink flamingos and a menagerie of lawn ornaments, or is it a mountanous, stinking, putrified trash heap in the front yard?
Just because something has "words" it need not be considered free speech! I haven't seen a cigarette ad on TV for quite some time, and I don't think anyone is barking about it being a free speech issue... we don't have bill boards all over the freeways in certain scenic areas (so some jokers just paint the side a a semi trailer and park in near the road... hey, it's a truck, not a sign). We don't have hardcore porn on network TV... is that a free speech issue?
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
What if you could cause spammers to spam other spammers? Use "postmaster@ (spammers domain) for all the sites that insist you provide an email address to download drivers, access content, and other instances where there is no VALID need to know your email address. Sure, go ahead and subscribe "postmaster" to all your junk. Let the spammer's postmaster get the junk. Or, subscribe the postmaster for the annoying pop-up advertisement that bothers you. Let the "webwastes" spam each other with spam. Wouldn't that be great? No endorsement intended for these methods :)
Sometime last fall, I got a dozen spams in one day containing racist/bigotry against Turkish people from some sort of so-called Armenian group. This is the first example I can think of of "non-commercial" spam. I'm surprised there is not much more of it: there are a lot of fanatics out there of many kinds.
Can you imagine what is going to blizzard the e-mail boxes of the free world if there is resistant action taken if China decides to invade and trash Taiwan?
I've already sent a stern email off to the responsible service provider (xo.com), but the details of the case make it tricky. The POP used to inject the spam appears to have been in the USA (NY), then bounced off an open relay in Japan (which I'm ignoring as a useless target for litigation), but I'm in Australia.
Any suggestions as to how to cause the spammer in question major pain for this fraudulent use of my email address?
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
This may be a little crazy, but is there a patent on SPAM? I was just reading a few stories, and... well.. it sort of fits doesn't it?
Pattenting SPAM would immediately increse it's cost. Of course you'd need to call it something other than spam, any ideas?
eg. electronic form based message sent out to multiple (>10) recipients for the purpose of advertisment.
Greetings all,
The truth about my case and what will, or now could happen with spam.
The laws in several states attempt to stop spam and while California's law is not the best one written it can be effective on the ISP's end.
The first four characters must be ADV: for regular UCE and ADLTADV: for adult oriented spam. Failure to do this violates the California State Law. The reply address is not a string you can filter on while the subject requirement is.
I am not an ISP, I am single individual that has been a major pain for more then one spammer.
So in reality you have something that can be used to stop spam and those that violate this can be prosecuted as you have just seen. The battle is not over yet but as you can see it is winnable.
Mark Ferguson
admin@whew.com and admin@stop-spam.org
What the ruling DOES do to spammers is simply this: it increases THEIR costs by requiring THEM to verify a location for your email address before they SPAM it. That expense will drive out some fly-by-night advertising companies, as it should. Spammers have gotten by on the cheap for long enough!
You list several straw-man cases of potential harm, none of them relevant to this issue because the court rulings cited by the judges in this decision would clearly disallow each one. Read it and see. As for your last point, that it's not even a good spam law, what more do you want? Monetary damages? As calculated elsewhere in this thread, few individuals lose enough time or money to get anything back. The only people who'd get anything would be ISPs and other entities who deal with thousands and tens of thousands of UCEs.
This is NOT a loss of precious freedom, it is a rare and lovely example of common sense in the law. Would that such were more common!
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Your point is valid and certainly appears sincere. No idea why some dimwit marked you as troll.
Yes, spam is speech. I think what is desired is a distinction between
The reason many people feel the first type of speech should be treated as less sacred, is that it normally requires some sort of force or fraud. Yes, spam is a type of (nearly harmless, but nonzero) fraud, in that when you connect to my SMTP server, there is the implicit assumption about what I allow that connection for, and spam violates that assumption. Just as when I enter a restaurant and ask for food, there is an implicit assumption that I'm going to pay for it.
I'll admit that it's a bit gray and the consensus of the purpose of SMTP ports are not well-defined enough, so calling spam fraud is somewhat subjective.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It's HipCrime!
I should think of something useful to post.
Why won't slashdot let me change my terrible username
Hey! Look! A confirmed email address!
Take this one off our list, Jimmy, and put it on our "Get 50,000 CONFIRMED email addresses for $24.95 list!
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
This last weekend, I received spam with the following:
"You are receiving this because you joined our opt-in list. However, we have become aware that some people have been placed on our list in error. If that is true, please click on our 'Remove' link below."
Which, of course, confirms to them that the email address you want removed WORKS, that the person who receives the email reads it, and while you may very well never receive that particular spam email again, you have now been added to a much more valuable list for sale (or use?) for other offers.
Spammers are a lose-lose event. Not only am I charged for downloading and my time wasted deleting, any effort I make to get off their list is futile at best.
In order for a spam to work, in order for them to receive money or sell their product, they MUST have some valid contact information in the message. Use It! Make anyone who puts a true address or telephone number rue the day they decided to send that email. I actually look forward to 800-numbers now.
On a related note, filtering software is getting easier and easier to install. "ADV:" = delete.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
There is no need for a new "law" for this, there is already ample (and supplied in this forum) legal precident for charging the spammer for your time. Theft is theft, before there was a "spam" law it was no less illegal. How unfortunate that people have been taught to think "what isn't prohibitted is manditory".
It is already a Federal law that if you notify a commercial caller, when they call, to "add me to your no-call list", if they call you again it's $1500 fine. Unsolicited fax ads are also covered. I cannot think two more apropriate and obvious analogies to email. Both demand your time and your resources to "receive" the spam.
Sure, the receiver must do the prosecuting, and it's darned hard to sue everyone who trespasses, but only when spammers start to loose in court, just like crackers, will they back off.
In order to work, a spam has to have a workable method for you to get back in touch with them. Web page, email, smail, telephone number. All of these are evidence to be used against them.
No, I haven't yet. But when I see an 800-number, I cost them a pretty penny for their having sent me that spam.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
The parent post is a plagiarized copy of http://spam.abuse.net/spambad.html