China Wants Out of Spam Blocks

SomeoneYouDontKnow writes: "Apparently, China is feeling the effects of the e-mail blocks Western ISPs are placing on Asian mail to prevent spam, as previously reported here. A group of Chinese legislators is calling for the blocks to be lifted because they're making it difficult for them to communicate via e-mail, and a signed article in The People's Daily is calling on China to ban spam. Maybe now some of the lazy admins of these spam-spewing mail servers will clean up their acts."

Comments

Hmmm...

[Coffee Warlord]

Does anyone else find it ironic that China is complaining about internet traffic restrictions?

Pot. Kettle. Black.

Tiptoe, tiptoe, spam

[JohnBE]

Why do we always tiptoe around China's sensibilities?

We aid them block so called subversive sites from their entire country, we tolerate crackdowns on their populace, we paper over the facts, we supress demonstration when their officials visit our countries, we tolerate the occational nuclear secret heading their way and we've forgotton about Tienemen Square.

Why? Are they as bigger threat as Russia was? Are they capable of collapsing the Western economies with the stroke of a pen? No! Their near slave labor, poor working conditions and semi-rural economy is the cheapest place to make our goods. That's all. If you want the support of the west just open up your market, keep prices cheap and keep production up.

This spam blocking is another way of making China comfortable. Maybe we are doing the right thing and eventually (because of the increased trade) they'll become just like us. We'll just have to wait and see.

Overzealous Spamguarding

[Francis]

You know, it wasn't that long ago that someone pointed out how hard it is to be removed from spam lists.

That aside, I've always wondered why people get so upset over spam. It's not that hard to hit the delete button. I get about 10 spam mails a day. It takes about 1/2 a second to read the subject, realize it's spam, and hit the delete button. Over the course of a year, I lose 30 minutes. That's not such a big deal to me.

What does irritate me is I'm a victim of spamguards, on both ends. My web hosting service (yahoo) for unknown reasons is listed on 1 spam list. I've tried - there seems to be no way off the list. So, occasionally, I run into an institution which has walled me off.

What makes me even more angry, is that my school where I did my undergrad, (UWaterloo) has implemented global "spam protection." And so now, I can't receive emails from some of my contacts.

It's about the right to choose. I want to be able to control IF my email gets spam filtered. I'm willing to give up those 30 minutes a year in order to communicate with people. As someone pointed out, that's the beauty of the Internet. If I want spam filtering software, I'll install it myself. I don't want someone else to make that choice for me. We, as users, are losing our freedom too. I'm shocked that noone seems to notice or care.

Re:Overzealous Spamguarding

[Lish]

It's not that hard to hit the delete button. I get about 10 spam mails a day. It takes about 1/2 a second to read the subject, realize it's spam, and hit the delete button.

That's all well and good, until you start getting your email on your cellphone or wireless PDA, and you're paying for every byte you receive. Then, we're talking real costs beyond just the time wasted.

If you had to pay for every one of those 10 spams a day, would you be as willing to put up with it?

Re:Spam blocks are unfair

[dubl-u]

I live in Hong Kong and because of them I can¦t get e-mail through to some of my family and friends. Now I¦m a decent person, I post to /. send in bug reports for open-source software and I¦ve never spammed anyone in my life but I still have to suffer these restrictions.

I'm a decent person, but for years I've lived in bad neighborhoods. Many of my friends aren't comfortable visiting me. Is that unfair? Or just reasonable behavior?

Regardless, my whining doesn't make them come visit me more often. So a few years back I moved to a slightly better area and I do what I can to make my new 'hood safer still. Perhaps you could try that? Given your location and your language skills, you could be a big help to the anti-spam community.

I hope that China does something about spam mail but this really is not the way to encourage it.

That's a nice thought, but utterly wrong. Something like this is the only way to encourage it. Chinese spammers have been a problem for quite a while, but a gazillion complaints had as much effect as the chirping of sparrows. It's only widespread blocking that has made the government sit up and take notice.

It's sad that it had to come to this, but the only lesson to learn is that ignoring spam doesn't make anything better; the longer you wait, the more painful it is to clean up.

Can you read?

[autopr0n]

They want to use email, but can't accept that people don't want crap to be mass-mailed to them. This is a sure sign that China's only interest in the Internet is monetary, and that it is our duty to block off abusive .cn mail servers to show them that this bullshit doesn't play on the open Internet.

The artical is talking about China banning spamming outright which is a lot more then any leader in the US is even willing to think about. They do accept that people don't want spam and are looking to an internal solution to the problem.