Slashdot Mirror
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); }
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!
Best Slashdot Co
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?
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.
YES, that is true. The people in the USA offten refer to ancient laws from the coloniel days. Mainly to point a finger at the Salem Witch trials, or the church rule of small communities, and sometimes we refer to the way in that the red-coats were searching, and seaizing false evidence, or how they would torture confessions out of inocent people. Yes, we look at the old laws offten, mainly to find how NOT to reproduce the mistakes of years past. After all, those laws are the basis for the bill of rights. We certainly have much to thank the British for, their tyrany forced a more free country into existence.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
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.
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.
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.
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.