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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.
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.
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.
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); }
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?
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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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.
Does that mean that 17th century punishments apply? Beheading? Burning at the stake?
Now, *that*'s entertainment.
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!
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!?
By the same logic, the problem with breaking and entering is not the burglars, but rather the homeowner who doesn't install enough locks and anti-burglar alarms. I don't buy that.
.com domain. It *will* get probes by spammers trying to send a email to "joe@somecompany.com"
Why should I have to make it harder for people to legitimatley contact me, by for instance obscuring my email address on my web page [well, actually my webpage is down, so don't click that link]?
Anyway, spammers can guess your address even if it has never been published anywhere. Try to set up a mail server acting as a MX for some newly registered
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.
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!)
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.
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/
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.
No shit, really?!?
Look. Just because we've formed a new country and disconnected ourselves from England doesn't mean that we don't accept some of her principles of law. I believe, for example, that much of US property law is derived from English law, though I'm having a devil of a time verifying any of this online right now. Which is why I asked if anyone here could comment on it.
No, we are not *bound* by England's laws. We certainly can't point to new laws in the British Commonwealth as precedent for our own. But we grew out of the British system -- our colonial laws were British laws, and our Constitution was written by people who'd grown up accustomed to those laws. It's my understanding that, in cases where current law is unclear or ambiguous, the courts have looked back to pre-colonial laws and practices for prececent.
Sheesh.
That depends.
If this "law" turns out to be something enacted through common law instead of an act of Parliament, this will apply to most of the US as well (since most state constitutions include English common law, Louisiana being the only exception I know of).
This is probably something worth looking up.
Except for Louisiana, pre-revolution English common law is the basis for the legal system in the United States. Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England was a popular legal text in the United States for many years after the Revolution.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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.
in cases where current law is unclear or ambiguous, the courts have looked back to pre-colonial laws and practices for prececent.
Supreme Court rulings cite common law all the time, sometime where existing law is ambiguous and sometime to reinforce existing interpretations.
See, for example, WASHINGTON et al. v. GLUCKSBERG et al.. In this case, which asserted a 14th Amendment right to assisted suicide, Judge Rehnquist wrote: "More specifically, for over 700 years, the Anglo American common law tradition has punished or otherwise disapproved of both suicide and assisting suicide." He cites a 13th century legal treatise and Blackstone Commentaries from the 18th century.
Justice Scalia, concurring, writes: "We now inquire whether this asserted right has any place in our Nation's traditions. Here ... we are confronted with a consistent and almost universal tradition that has long rejected the asserted right, and continues explicitly to reject it today, even for terminally ill, mentally competent adults. To hold for respondents, we would have to reverse centuries of legal doctrine and practice..."
In effect, he makes an appeal to common law to justify a narrow interpretation of the 14th Amendment instead of broadening it.
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?
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.
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.
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.
No, the fact that we have formed a new country does mean that we don't accept English law.
When this country was formed, the founders based their new laws on their idea of what would be fair and just. Now just by human nature they would be keeping some of the laws that England had, after all they weren't all bad. However, even in these cases they didn't simply copy the old laws into the new books, they weren't that lazy.
Besides, the laws are defined solely on how the courts interpret them. Just because our laws have similar origins does not mean that they have stayed that way. As dynamic as they are, odds are you wouldn't be able to find a single law that is completely identical between the two countries.
Am I the only one who doesn't think this is common sense? (and not trolling)
-Space for rent