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Fighting Spam With A 17th Century Law
A reader writes "Here is an interesting article which describes how a law from the year 1610 could make Spam illegal in Australia. The same story in german can be found here." Actually, since the law stems from King James I (the VI, if you are Scottish), as such, could be held British Commonwealth wide.
Ok but it was only for porn. No law for this-will-make-you-a-millionare-mail.
It's well known that this was enacted after this scroll was found kingdom-wide, causing no end of ladies to faint, the filling of dustbins and a temporary shortage of parchment:
:)
Lords and squires,
Were you aware of the fact that you could increaseth the size of your penis by as much as half a cubit? Come visit the apothecary and essay the new miracle tonic by Dr. Goodfellow! You'll have all the fair maidens screaming, 'Good Knight!'
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
I wonder what type of legal precedent could be set should a ruling be made against spam. I could imagine the judge saying "Thou art guilty of spamming. Thou shalt be sentenced to spend the rest of thy mortal life with Bernard Shifman in the royal dungeon."
someone shed some light on this. I just don't see how it would apply to spam. It sounds to me like they're grasping with straws here. We have several trespassing laws in the US, but I think any judge would strike down a case against a spammer using such laws.
Since the Commonwealth include Canada, that means the Canada has a law that USA does not have to save them from SPAM; now the USA needs a law like this!!!
Why only go back 400 years? Let's fight spam with the Magna Carta:
All Merchants (if they were not openly prohibited before) shall have their safe and sure Conduct to depart out of England, to come into England, to tarry in, and go through England, as well by Land as by Water, to buy and sell without any manner of evil Tolts, by the old and rightful Customs, except in Time of War.
See, spammers are merchants selling stuff, but not by the old and rightful Customs, in peacetime. It works, and the stretch is... just as rubbery.
Bring some 1297 smack down on em. It should be just as effective.
Actually, since this was created in 1610, it could theoretically apply to the U.S. as well, as it was barely even a colony back in those days.
Your village called: Their idiot is missing.
that, at least in the U.S., absolutely NOTHING i$ going to happen untill $omebody make$ a buck doing it.
Just noticed that Earthlink, out one side of their mouth, has "spaminator" prevention tools, then out of the other side, a "mass email marketing tool" you can purchase. Cheez. They probably make $$$ sending spam, then turn around and make $$$ blocking it, just like the phone companies charging a fee for caller-id, then charging a fee for caller-id-blocking.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Nothing specific about porn.
"Under the iron bridge, we fist" - The Smiths, Still Ill
The article didn't go into too many details as to what the 1610 law specified ("The ancient law forbids a person from interfering with the goods and chattels of another person without their consent" was about all I could find).
But the line "The law was brought in under King James I, and by extension it can be valid throughout the Commonwealth" intrigues me. Much of the legal system in the US is based on English law, from what I understand, and I believe that we often refer to precedent set by the laws governing the colonies, or England, before the creation of the US.
So, there's even a chance that a good lawyer could make use of this law in the US. I think. Anyone care to comment on this angle?
even if spam is illegal, does that really matter. spam email is here to stay.love it or hate it, it's how it is. can't we accept it and move on? oh, sure they're using some bandwidth here and there, and putting a HUGE strain on our corporate/private email servers. are there any concrete numbers on these claims? legislation is not the way to combat this type of thing. in a capitalistic society (i know the US is only semi-capitalistic) people would ignore spam and the spammers would stop because it's not profitable. kind of like banner ads, eh?
That with all the technology (e-mail filters) and thought/legislation (recent anti-spam laws) on this matter, and it takes an almost 400-year-old law to get the protection from spam right?
Then again, to kill a fly, I just use a flyswatter.
I'm not afraid of falling, it's the sudden stop at the end that frightens me.
IIRC, a cubit is roughly 3 feet (1 meter). I think the ladies would run screaming for the exits if they saw that waving around!
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Yeah right, as if this would ever hold up in court.
What's the penalty, being placed in a stockade? 30 Lashings? Or maybe getting tied up and tossed off the front of a moving ship like pirates used to do?
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Funny, I didn't see any mention of what the penalty is for the ancient crime. If it has anything to do with a head being chopped-off, then I vote to enact the law in the entire common-wealth. Then we Americans can export our spammers to these places where they can be put to death! Honestly, if the punishment is not fitting of the crime, then the criminals will continue to attack inocent email addresses.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
It will be hard to argue the intended interpretation of a law that old. Lawyers are good to fight this.
P.s.
Some are disguised as innocent messages such as 'Hi from Jane' or 'In answer to your question', but when you open them they are just pornographic."
Is that not why you should look at who's sending it to you, or better yet use something besides Hotmail? They do help the spammers transmit their smut.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
But England finally has a valid argument why the US should give the colonies back.
-Dennis
Maybe the problem isnt spammers, it's the idiots with email accounts. Of course your going to get mad spam if you give out your email address so freely. I have several email accounts. One strictly for receiving email from family and close friends, and another for the purpose of when i have to submit my email address to websites for various reasons.
And guess what, i never get spam in the email account i use for family and friends. Spammers can only send you junk mail if they know your address, so use your brain and stop giving it away.
Just as birds will surely shit on the hood of your car, your going to get spam. We dont need arcane laws to prevent something we can all not have to deal with if we just bump up our iq a notch or two.
Hmmm, no one expects it.....
"What we have here, is a failure to communicate." - Cool Hand Luke
The ancient law forbids a person from interfering with the goods and chattels of another person without their consent.
Ah, I remember the first time I had my chattels interfered with. It was at a drive-in...uh...no, wait. I think I misunderstood.
ALL SPAMMERS SHOULD BE PUBLICALLY FLOGGED
Fight Spammers!
Does that mean that 17th century punishments apply? Beheading? Burning at the stake?
Now, *that*'s entertainment.
or
Spam and ye shall be beheaded.
There was this thing called a "Revolution" a few hundred years ago, which means the American colonies threw off Brittish rule and formed a new government, with new laws and such. We don't worship a queen, so why would we follow her laws?
-Space for rent
This same legal construction has been used in the U.S. in lawsuits regarding unwanted access to servers and computer resources. AOL has used this as a legal tool against spammers in lawsuits.
Scraping has been uphelp under the Computer Fraud and Tresspass act.
SPAMMERS that get email off of websites, are breaching copyright and terms of use (or at least on my site) on a website with a carefully crafted terms of use.
Fight Spammers!
Actually, since the law stems from King James I (the VI, if you are Scottish), as such, could be held British Commonwealth wide.
That boils down to "Could be held British Commonwealth wide." Pat, I'd like to buy a subject!
(First we're doused in "it's" possessive, then the trigger is pulled in the form of a sentence fragment. Woe is us.)
As is mentioned in the article, and as has been shown over and over again, spammers don't have an inch of morals. It would even seem that (at least in Russia) they're usually part of bigger crime syndicates;
So it doesn't really matter whether you can find a law to outlaw spamming. The spammers will never care about such a law. As long as there's money to be made, these kinds of illegal activities will continue. And even if spam would be outlawed, as it doesn't seem like there will be a 100% working filter for spam in the near future, all the spammers have to do is remain somewhat anonymous (or out of jurisdiction) to avoid prosecution.
Sad but true: nothing can be done against them.
<Sig>The good thing about having a good memory is ... euh
Well, okay ... that's the porn sorted. D'you think we could use the Anti-Witchcraft laws now to get rid of pop-ups, pop-unders, pop-bys and the rest!?
First of all, this passage's connection to spam is even more tenuous than the other law being discussed. More importantly, the Magna Carta does not give any rights at all to the average man - it was intended for the protection of nobles - so the only people who'd benefit from this would be the House of Lords. Shame, though. I rather suspect the penalties for violating this part of the Magna Carta are...interesting.
I'm the stranger...posting to
I've been suggesting this approach for years (but wihout the bungled reporting). When the spam enters your system, it exerts physical dominion over your chattels (the bits, the head mechanism, draws additional power, etc.). Trespass clearly applies, just as when some dolt lifts you windshield wiper to insert an ad.
The reporting is a bit mish-mashed, though: Common Law comes from the courts, yet it reports trespass as coming from a particular king (and it would have to have been a king *and* parliament).
I've always assumed trespass to chattels to be Common Law, not a statute, but I'm not willing to spend a half a day looking it up . . . my guess is that the seminal cases in the courts date to his reign, and possibly were decided by the high court known as "the King's Bench," which followed him about England hearing cases & appeals . .
hawk, esq.
Or alternatively, "Hail to the King, Baby!"
I had to say that. I just had to.
I'm the stranger...posting to
The law, if extended to email, could apply to any mail or network traffic affecting a computer owned by someone else. As much as getting rid of spammers may be a Good Thing, we really, really don't want it applied to email (or any form of network traffic) lest you find yourself getting sued for trying to connect to the wrong address by mistake (after all, a new log entry was created -- you altered the owner's machine without his consent!)
You people who keep digging up hundreds of years old grudges are just plain silly. Forgive and forget.
Hmmm... Now if we respect this like they did respect it sounds like,m thislaw meant : "Don't touch my property while I steal yours"...
Examples:
So, my advice would be never to invoke a law that not only has never widely been followed but also is totally dumb: If you interfere with some people's Bell because you want to contact him, he should not sue you.
So, I think this law itself is antisocial even though I agree with the fact we have to kick the spammers.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
"This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use, copying or mirroring is prohibited. "
Darn it! I've just broken this law by going through 2 web caches and my own computer - thats 3 copies, will I be hanged?
They seperated about 25 years ago from the crown. This is why their flag is a red maple leaf and not some other design with a british commonwealth logo on the upper left hand side.
What we need to do is have a full counter revolution here in the states and be back under british rule. After that we would have more civil rights.
Its a sad day indeed when an American wishes there were under british rule because they want more personal freedoms. I bet all our countrie's fore fathers would be turning in there graves right now if they knew how much influence hollywood and other corporations have right now. The telecommunications act of 1996, the DMCA, and the wipo act, are just the begining of whats going to happen if you look at how much money has gone into the olitical system in the last 20 years. More money has gone in during the primaries of 2000 then the whole election of 1992! Guess who were the top contributers? MPAA, RIAA, ENron, AT&T, Verizon, GE, health insurance companies, etc. Sick sick sick.
http://saveie6.com/
because in Scotland, everyone has the right to roam on private property! ie. There are no trespassing laws.
I knew that American Revolution would come back and bite us in the ass!
*This page intentionally left pointless*
to fight spammers... Cool... Let's bring out the tar and feathers !!!!
Laws generally protect the citizens of a given nation, not forigeners. So 17th Century British law would not protect the rights of Native Americans or Africans.
END COMMUNICATION
The COMFY CHAIR!
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and it wold not have any trouble getting through the legislatures here in the US if they weren't all _bought_and_paid_for_ but the commercial intrests who support "the rights" of advertizers to invade out brains at every opportunity.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
"Or maybe getting tied up and tossed off the front of a moving ship like pirates used to do?"
That's called keelhauling, by the way. Nasty way to go. The rope is tied to the front of the boat, and by the time you're at the rear, you've been concussed, drowned - not fun.
I'm the stranger...posting to
and the taxes get heavier, so expect the 'no tariffs' clause of that rule to be the part that has wartime exceptions. Also, with sizeable fractions of the noble folk and the able-bodied in general off fighting at war, the prohibitions against (unofficial) trespass would probably get stronger, to protect citizens' property in their absence.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
In case you missed it
but if someone were to trespass my chattels, I'd get pretty upset, unless ofcourse she was really cute.
Let's hope it involves torturing the spammers on the rack, hanging them up by their thumbs and shoving red hot pokers up their backsides.
And you think that you have issues with Big Brother now... wait till you see what the English have in store for you... Pretty soon in England you won't even be able to take a sh!t without having it logged in a GPS-enabled toilet and uploaded to a mainframe database to be added to your profile.
Careful what you ask for... The brits are the worst for privacy issues.
I believe that their was a claus in the US consitution that said to the effect that common law still applies at least at the time when we seperatied.
-- Rick
Criminalizing alcohol sure made that disappear real fast. And seeing as how we've been fighting the War on Drugs for over 20 years, it sure is hard to get a bag of dope these days. And piracy! With all the laws against making copies of music, movies, and software, that's not a problem at all!
Making spam illegal won't make it go away. A law is just words in a book somewhere, and has no effect unless enforced. And enforcement means finding people and locking them away.
1. do you really want that to happen? REALLY?
2. do you think it's actually possible to find these people and prove them guilty?
3. holy christ man, put a man away for 10 years in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison just for sending you a toner ad? You've got issues.
Since the American Colonies were part of the Commonwealth at that time (in different ways, severally) this would also be part of -our- common law.
The American colonies split in order to -keep- the common law, which was being systematically denied them by the Elector of Hannover's government at that time.
Spam will not stop until email administrators can have spammers killed with impunity. However, this may cause other problems. Maybe we could just get spammers classified as terrorists.
Let's say you come up with a purely technological solution to the spam problem. You'd promptly be sued by the spammers for interfering with their "right" to spam you.
The first thing we need is legislation somehow excluding spam from the first ammendment, otherwise it is basically _illegal_ to stop it!
The Magna Carta clauses quoted above have the same problem. They allow unrestricted trade "by the customary means", so all a spammer has to do is prove that email is a "customary means" of communicating with people (not a great reach at all) and then he's _protected_ by this stuff.
First, we must OUTLAW SPAM. Then we'll have the legal right to simply unplug it at its source, whenever it's found. This right does not now exist, ask any ISP who's been sued for unplugging a spammer
There _is_ precedent for this. Many jurisdictions place severe restrictions on, or prohibit entirely, advertizements and business signs alongside roads and highways, freedon of speech notwithstanding. My neighboring Scottsdale AZ, for example, has municipal ordinances prohibiting business signs beyond specific dimensions and over specific heights. These forbid, among MANY other things, the trademark large yellow illuminated arches of a particular fast-food franchise chain. They were forced to resort to other architecture in Scottsdale.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
to buy and sell without any manner of evil Tolts
Now that this thread has pretty much settled the definition of a cubit, any enlightenment on "Tolts" - evil or otherwise?
You must be present to win.
Canada is a british nation and this guy has nothing important to say. He is not a troll but is not an insightfull genious. I live in Canada and I should know. Just because the british jack logo isn't in there flag means nothing. 5 should be reserved for truly insightful and well above average comments. This is a just a plainly average or slightly below average comment. We need to keep slashdot's integrety high as a truly nerd website.
with a satellite Internet link (a quite expensive means of connection, but the only thing available in the middle of the ocean). Anyone sending me spam is _clearly_ trespassing on my chattels (_my_ expensive bandwidth and _my_ mail server).
Now we're back to Keelhauling as an appropriate penalty....
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Spammers can make $1 million a month and many are part of international crime syndicates, Kim Heitman, chairman of internet rights group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said.
:)
If they're part of an international crime syndicate, do you think we could form a little geek syndicate of our own and start a war?
There are strong fears that Scotland's traditional "no crime of trespass" will go the way of the Dodo. The two main culprits: a cadre of obnoxious, litigious, wealthy landowners, many of whom are newcomers to Scotland; and foot & mouth disease, which is the justfication for the change. Let's hope these efforts fail, though the last I heard it was looking kinda grim.
-- We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of other people. La Rochefoucauld
And this would be super-effective under a modern powerboat with a propeller (a small boat with a _fast_ propeller is far more effective than an aircraft carrier or oil tanker with huge, slow propellers), nevermind keelhauling spammers underneath a _sailboat_ with nothing underneath to chop the spammer up into - well - SPAM(r).
(It's been noted before, but worth repeating, that SPAM(r) is a registered trademark of the Hormel Co., who have a good enough sense of humor and reality to not object to its use to refer to unsolicited commercial email. They request only that the term "spam" be used for email, and not be confused with their lunchmeat trademark: "SPAM".)
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
I say we put all the spammers in one big, deserted place and nuke 'em! Afterwards we could say that it was "just an accident...". Hey maybe there's a law about that. Oh shoot, I forgot, nukes didn't exist back then... let's do it anyway!!!!!
so it's just as well their king is an all-round nice bloke. Of course it's a criminal offense to say he's not a nice bloke (lese majeste) so it's just as well he is :-)
Can Brian Shifman sue King James I?
dog-owners are responsible for their animals. Cat owners are not.
A lot of spam works through taking advantage of open relays. Due to the way abusing them works, I don't think it counts as cracking the mailserver (At least I certainly hope it doesn't, that could put a real damper on my hobby of sending out crank email.)
However, using someone else's mailserver to forward your spam without that person's permission would certainly count as interfering with another's goods and chattels.
This is somewhat OT, but what about the f*cking avon lady. She keeps throwing those idiot catalogues in my driveway. I've already informed this woman that I am not interested in this crap and don't want them on 3 different occasions. What can I do? The cops are not gonna respond to this (and rightly so, they've got more important stuff to do). I've taken to signing her email address (which she puts on the label) up to receive a bunch of newsletters and crap, but I still don't want to see them anymore. If anyone has any ideas, I'd be glad to hear them.
Thanks,
especially if they could televise it....
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
As others have pointed out, this is a Common Law rule not a Statute, and it's a lot older than 1610, dating back to the 1400s. And it's a civil (torts) matter, not a criminal one.
2. Potentially Applies Throughout the Common Law World.
The most significant cases for this are The UK (except Scotland), the US (except Louisiana), Canada (except possibly Quebec), Australia and New Zealand.
3. Only Applies Where Implied Consent is Negated.
There is clearly implied consent for person-to-person email, even if inadvertantly misdirected. The assertion in this case is that there is no implied consent for spam.
4. This is NOT Going to Cause Paranoid Problem X.
The issue of implied consent, which is dealt with by the courts in remarkably sensible ways, prevents every single absurd outcome suggested here. This will only nail things that society considers abusive practice.
5. You Can't Draw Conclusions of Law Based Solely on a Brief Article in the Popular Press.
It takes other things, like, for example, knowledge of the way courts interpret things, and in the case of Common Law, full knowledge of all the rules involved (which are many) to draw conclusions with any validity.
Possibly file charges (perhaps in small claims court) for trespassing and vandalism (ie, littering on your property) or, depending on where you live, use physical violence to remove her from your property. Personally I believe that the latter is perfectly acceptable if other, more reasonable, effort has already been made and failed.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
The line is actually:
I blame the idiots that pass laws just to try to score a few public relations points...
An anti-spam law would NOT fall into this category.
Nobody _really_ hates speed limits, we just disagree on the numbers. Most bust them up at one time or another, despite vigorous enforcement. You can't, however, call them ineffective. Without speed limits, American freeways would look like the Daytona 500.
With the exception of the law-enforcement agecies which are now profiting from it, everyone is either neutral or bitterly opposed to marijuana prohibition. Marijuana use usually happens in private, making it difficult to enforce prohibition against it.
Similarly, sodomy laws are a joke, because the conduct is quite private, and the parties involved are unlikely to report it.
Clearly, laws against behavior which is undertaken in private, particularly by many, consenting, people, and perceived as harmless by the rest are counterproductive, in that they do not stop the "crime" and they _do_ undermine the authority of law. Prostitution statutes fall into this category.
OTOH, nobody objects to laws against murder or sexual abuse of children, because 1) these activities are obviously harmful to their victims and 2) only a tiny minority feels that this is acceptable behavior. Everyone _hates_ spam (except the miniscule fraction who are committing it), it's a completely public activity, and nonconsensual on the part of the recipient and the relays in the middle. Laws against spam (unless totally botched in their construction) would be extremely popular. Everyone would help the law enforcement agencies in the execution of these laws.
And harsh penalties would be appropriate. That spammer isn't sending out _one_ toner ad, he's sending out a million.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Why must the anti-spam community have no better support for their cause than a long-dead king who wrote ancient laws that barely apply to anything in this day and age? Why are legislators worldwide so freaking GUTLESS? It's immensely irritating that no leaders in any country of the world seem to have balls enough to write anti-spam legislation.
The perfect solution, IMHO, would be to disallow any and every email that advertises anything whatsoever, directly or indirectly, from being sent to anyone who has not specifically asked for it. There should be a site at which you register yourself to receive spam, which would allow you to select whatever types of advertisements you are interested in seeing. If you don't register, you don't get spam. If you register for "weight loss products" but not "porn", you won't get porn. Etc. Spammers would have full access to the email lists, and would be barred from using any other list for their campaigns. Spammers sending spam to those who haven't registered, or who haven't registered for the particular type of spam being sent, would face stiff financial penalties. Habitual offenders would receive increasing amounts of jail time. For maximum effectiveness, it should be put into international law, with full extradition rights for any country being spammed by a spammer in another country. The money garnered from fines should be used to fund Interpol spam investigators.
Okay, not going to happen. But dreaming is free.
First, the basics;
Turn off return reciept.
If you have your own domain, do not reply to innocent-sounding email that looks like it was sent to the wrong mail address. 9x out of 10 it wasn't. They are polling for your valid address and just want a response so they know who really should be spammed.
Next, the filters (personal, not network wide -- sorry!);
If it is From:/To:/Cc: a known good address or list, allow it through.
All other mail is shuffled to Spam.
None of these filters will prevent spam from simply being mailed To: you directly. Yet, if you check your spam headers you'll see that only a small sampling actually do this -- they don't want to send out individual messages. It raises thier profile too much.
Also, yes, this will not catch the case where you are added innocently to a mailing list by an unknown sender. That's why I suggest that you do not delete the spam automatically. (I've determined that most folks who do this are people I don't want to talk to anyway, so it kind of works out even if the message isn't delivered.)
Now, if you want to apply more sophisticated filters, go ahead. A blank or missing "To:" field seems to be popular with spammers these days.
For me, I'm not going to bother. I fiddled around with those for about a year four years ago and ended up deleting good mail accidentially and learning more about Procmail -- not that learning about Procmail is a bad thing.
* To prevent someone from figuring out that your address is a good one, ofcourse. Viewing rendered HTML email may, depending on the viewer, give a hint that they have a valid address. Some mail programs do allow you to render the HTML without fetching resources from a remote server. When in doubt, do without.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Spammers can make $1 million a month and many are part of international crime syndicates, Kim Heitman, chairman of internet rights group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said.
If you read spam, the terrorists have won!
we are building a religion
a limited edition
we are now accepting callers
for these pendant key chains
This is somewhat OT, but what about the f*cking avon lady. She keeps throwing those idiot catalogues in my driveway
:-) She probably won't have much trouble washing the paint off her car, but it would still serve as a friendly reminder to respect other people's property.
Get a paintball gun
A dingo ate my sig...
First, there's the technological end. The Internet community will have to hand spammers to the legal authorities pretty much on a silver platter, the police don't have the resources required to patrol the Internet. This is not hard now. It's easy to prove that, over the weekend of xxxxx, so-and-so broadcast tons of spam. If you're of any size at all, your mail server logs will have thousands of examples. If a dozen ISPs show a prosecutor one thousand spamlogs _each_, he's got a pretty cut-and-dried case. This will require cooperation among some large ISPs, but I think we could get that, as these are the people whose resources are the most blatently abused.
It'll take legislation to move this behavior OUT of the province of "First Ammendment Protection of Freedom of Speech" and prescribe the pillory or keelhauling as a punishment for it. Pillorage could, at best, only be participated in by a lucky few, so I would prefer keelhauling, with lots of cameras both above and below the waterline, and (unencrypted) mpegs to be posted afterwards. It'll take international legislation to deal with the international spam, and alas, I doubt we'll get the world court to go for keelhauling. Clearly nothing but the threat of probable, serious incarceration (or, of course, worse) is going to deter someone who's making $1e6/month.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Why do we need a 392 years old law to stop someone doing something wrong?
Yes, this trespass law has been used against several computer intruders in the past. It certainly would work against spammers.
I personally haven't used it because I haven't found the phrasing needed to show that my loss was not just the $0.00001 of electricity and disk use. I think my loss includes my time in dealing with the spam, including all cleanup and adjusting of spam filters.
An ISP undoubtedly has greater spam expenses than my tiny server, of course.
Search... computer trespass conviction...
s cr acks-10.html
- ss i
h -c omp-law.html
m l
http://www.linuxsecurity.com/news/articles_hack
http://www.infowar.com/hacker/hack_092297b.html
http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/6.805/articles/rasc
http://www.nysba.org/lyc/mt2000/info.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/23737.ht
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/9.79.html
http://www.levity.com/julian/phiber.html
But if we send such an mass email, that would be spam, right?
However, it's not an unwanted email, since it tells people how to profit from other spam, so is it still spam?
Another thought: would we then have to give out corn with the emails since it's spam, or keep the corn because it isn't spam?
The circular logic's making me dizzy. I think I'll lie down here for a while...
The article talked about the people from hotmail that always get a lot of pornographic solicitation. The reason for this is simple. Microsoft sells all of the e-mail addresses from hotmail. I do not say this simply because I dislike Microsoft, but from simple experience. I opened up a hotmail accout, and before I had even told anyone the address, I was getting Spam. The only people that could have told anyone was Microsoft, because they were the only ones that knew my e-mail address. After that, I got a free account from excite.com, and I havn't gotten any unsoliced e-mail (well, there are a few here and there, but I'm pretty sure that they are not excite's fault).
The EFF has been wrestling with this issue and come to the conclusion that trespass is a risky doctrine to use in the fight against spam.
The problem is that the internet runs entirely on private property. It's not really possible to use the internet without using the private property of others.
The norm on the internet was "I pay for my half of the connection, you pay for yours" and it works pretty well.
If we define the use of somebody else's property with packets to be potentially trespass, what does that mean? All internet traffic can be considered trespass. Is this how we would want to regulate communications -- speech -- one of the most precious rights we have?
Since all traffic flows on somebody else's private property, to define unwanted traffic as trespass is to say all traffic must be consensual. Is that how we regulate communications in the real world? Is that the tradition of speech regulation?
If I send you a message that annoys you -- not a spam, but say a flame because I don't like what you said on slashdot -- should we risk that you can define that as trespass because you didn't want it, you didn't put your machine on the net so people could flame you?
It seems like a dangerous path. There are other solutions to spam that don't involve it.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
but what I learned in high school was that the Magna Carta was forced on the king by nobles angered by what they perceived as the king stripping them of some of THEIR rights - the commoners weren't involved.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Spam is advertising, correct? Collect e-mails from the company that is being advertised and spam them back. That simple.
Payback is a bitch!
Isn't always funny when a lawyer needs a law he just thinks he can use one from England! But when the governemnet wants to stop people from using laws for England they say that Australia is indepentant of England and the laws do not apply?
This makes it even more fun, because the Head of State is appointed by the Queen of England, as per the Australian Consititution. Except the government calls her the Queen of Australia, becuas ethey passed a act giving her the title.
Now just to make things more fun, the Australia government relies on English common law, but the Magna Carta, and Bill of Rights do not apply in Australia, unless it is a benefit to the government.
And to top the whole thing off is the Head of State, the Governor-Gerneral is not even appointed by the people of Australia. This make's it real fun when the government appoints a low life like Mr Peter Hollingworth who turns a blind eye to sexual abuse of children, how wonderful.
First amendment protections don't cover commercial speech with nearly the force with which they cover (say) political speech; that's why it's possible for business signs, product labeling and such to be regulated as they are. Spam, being commercial speech, thus has very little protection. Second, the first amendment only applies to the government; it does nothing at all to regulate actions by private parties (like ISPs). Presumably if Paetec has been sued by a spammer for terminating service, their initial contract didn't include a termination clause covering TOS violations (or spam wasn't against Paetec's TOS); the case would be based not on any sort of 1st amendment violation, but rather simple violation of contract -- and is Paetec's own fault for not writing a termination clause into their terms of service. Third, your suggestion that an exception to 1st amendment protections for spam be legislated is laughable -- any such legislation would be inherently unconstitutional (unless it were an itself an amendment) -- and is in any event unnecessary for the reasons discussed above.
Outlawing spam is completely unnecessary -- existing anti-fraud laws cover much of it, and technical measures can eliminate it (see my above post) after even a majority of ISPs get their act together.
IANAL, but I've sat in classrooms listening to them for too many hours to put up with the simple misinformation you're spreading.
Post her email address on slashdot
food!
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I fear that the world will have to suffer a few digital dictatorships before things will swing the other way. Much like we suffered through a few communist regimes before it became a largely discredited practice. It's sad that the British will be leading this next wave into oblivion, with the United States closely behind.
It's hard to break out of a regular totalitarian dictatorship... with the convenience of computers to gather data, I wonder how long it will be to escape the computer-enhanced ones.
Bork!
No, you simply have to resolve the dispute properly. Some of the Commonwealth and former British colonies have updated little-used parts of common law, but some things occasionally fall through the cracks. A friend of mine relates a story, probably somewhat embellished in its trip around the SCA, about a friend in Maryland who was in a civil court case he wasn't likely to win. His attorney (licensed in Maryland) was also an accomplished heavy-armor swordfighter. When it was time for his opening statement, the attorney approached the other side's attorneys, threw down his chainmail gauntlet, and demanded his right of Trial By Combat, which had been part of English Common Law when Maryland revolted against the crown in 1776, and therefore was still active (even though the English Parliament abolished it sometime later), since it hadn't occurred to the Maryland legislature that it was something they should also abolish. The attorney making the demand, who was acting as Champion for his client, was a Large Dude, while the other side's attorney was an Old, Non-Large Dude. Some legal discussion ensued following this action, and at least some renditions indicate that the judge was a spoilsport and wouldn't let them follow through properly. Others indicate that the legislature may have since fixed this bit of old code.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
That has to be the funnest shit I've seen in a long time. Have you heard the internet made easy MP3?
I have to do something cool for a special treat by next month.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
I am not a lawyer (this seems to be an obligatory beginning).
However, this use of trespass law to attack spammers seems an interesting approach, if a little unwieldy. This is law of tort, which I think involves bringing a civil action. The Crown Prosecution Service would not get involved. Maybe the Small Claims Court would be appropriate, or maybe an association of users could be formed to bring a case.
Spam sent to me interferes with my chattels. This is extremely easy to show: I have a dial-up connection, so downloading the message takes up time on my phone line, costing me money and depriving me of my phone line for the duration of the download. It also occupies my computing resources and especially electricity, which means more cost to me.
Parallels might be drawn between spam and unauthorised parking. In the United Kingdom, if I own a piece of land and somebody parks a vehicle on it, I am entitled to immobilise the vehicle and require a charge for freeing it. This is, I believe, also a modern interpretation of an old law concerning grazing rights (you allow your cow to wander into my meadow and eat my grass, I can sieze your cow until you pay me compensation for the loss I have suffered). There is a requirement to display a notice like "unauthorized vehicles parked here will be clamped; fee for removal £50" and a telephone number.
Now, maybe I could trace the spammer's computer, hobble it, and charge a fee to free it again....
In Texas, if someone is on your property, you can shoot them, and its self-defense. I love being a redneck-by-birth.
Oh yeah, if anyone is offended, dont flame me because your a retarded-tree-huggin-green-party-herded-lemming, its a friggin' joke.
Beer, now there's a temporary solution -- Homer Jay S.
You can file an action for trespass to land in your nearest magistrate's court. File for both nominal damages and an injunction. This is a no-brainer. You'll need some pleadings - plead as follows:
One other thing - the advertising material would need to have been thrown onto the driveway inside the property boundary - if it's outside that boundary, it may not in your possession, and even if it could be argued it is you'll need a lawyer to argue it for you.
Don't use physical force (as one poster suggested) unless she actually crosses into your property herself. If she does, you can use as much physical force as is necessary to eject her.