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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..."
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!
At the point of origin, or the destination.
And on behalf of some Canadians, I would love something like this to happen up hear.
It is an improvement. Those methods work for getting rid of most telemarketers.
Best Slashdot Co
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!
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...)
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
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
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
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
If the law forbade using open mail relays or anything that can be considered an "attack" I'd have no problem. But it seems to be forbidding the messages themselves.
I don't read it that way. I see nothing in the law that says anything about the content of the messages. Content, after all, is what we're talking about in freedom of speech and censorship cases. The law prohibits a method of distribution. It is entirely neutral to the contents. If it had prohibited the sending of (for example) anti-Catholic email, then you would have a freedom of speech case on your hands. As it stands, nothing in this law prevents you from taking the exact same piece of mail that you would have attacked people with and putting it on a Web page instead, and nothing prevents you from offering to email it to people who specifically request it from you.
This doesn't mention attacks or open relays or anything of the sort.
Not in so many words, but how can you spam without stealing somebody else's resources? You can't (by definition!)
It says you can't send unsolicited messages. That is the problem.
I really don't see why this is such a problem. There is a long tradition in this country of prohibiting people from being "held hostage", as it were, by unsolicited materials. This tradition has been reflected in other laws (such as existing laws banning fax spamming) and in court rulings, up to and including the United States Supreme Court. Nobody's freedom of speech is being violated here. Instead, the freedom of individuals to not be forced to pay for garbage that they don't want is being affirmed. That's a Good Thing (TM). The fact that it takes aim at the subhuman scum who bombard my mailbox day in and day out is icing on the cake.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground