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EU to Require Opt-In for Commercial Email
From: Beebit <beebit-u03@euro.cauce.org>
Newsgroups: news.admin.net-abuse.email,
talk.politics.european-union
Subject: European Parliament Supports 'Opt-In' for Commercial Email
Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 13:08:11 +0200
The European Parliament has decided to accept the Council's Common Position which would require senders of advertisements by "electronic mail" to have the recipient's prior consent. "Electronic mail" is defined broadly enough so as to include text messaging systems based on mobile telephony in addition to email.
The 'opt-in' requirement for electronic mail will be in Article 13, Paragraph 1 of the new Directive concerning the processing of personal data and the protection of privacy in the electronic communications sector which will enter into force following its publication in the Official Journal. The Directive will guide the enactment of legislation throughout the European Economic Area, which includes the 15 EU Member States and European Free Trade Association members Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein. EU Members Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, and Italy as well as EFTA member Norway had already implemented 'opt-in' in their national legislation.
Further provisions in the same Article would allow companies to send advertising via email for their own products or services of a similar category to addresses which they had obtained in the course of a sale, unless and until the customer has registered an objection. Customers are to be given the opportunity to object "free of charge and in an easy manner" both at the time the contact details are collected and with each advertising message.
All in all, is an extremely welcome development, and should serve as an example and inspiration for legislators in other territories. We are absolutely delighted to see Parliament joining the Commission and the Council in taking a stand to protect European consumers and network users. It only remains to extend similar protection to corporate citizens. This will probably have to be within the framework of other legislation than that pertaining to the processing of "personal data".
~~~
The European Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email is an
all-volunteer, ad-hoc grouping of Internet users and professionals
dedicated to bringing about an end to an unethical practice by
technical and legislative means.
http://www.euro.cauce.org/en/
Why must we be so behind the times when it comes to things like this?
Oh, right. We don't want to interfere with business' right to annoy the hell out of us.
--
pants ahoy
As much as I hate spam, I can't help but think that this would have to be percieved as an unconstitutional restriction on speech. I don't think that requiring an opt-in policy in all cases would fly here.
-- Adam
The EU has decided to pass "opt-in" legislation which will be next to impossible to enforce. Lovely. Maybe they'll outlaw nose picking, nail biting and other bad habits.
BUT, it's a nice thought.
- jhon
I hope they require a proper click box for opt in, rather than imbedded in a clickthrough license agreement...
Either way opt-in is the way to go wrt email from commercial interests, I hope my country (US) adopts such restrictions for its corperations.
According to the spam I get daily, I "opt-in" to tens of spam every day. Unfortunately, I havn't. While it's a nice idea.. spam must be banned completely. No one wants spam.. it's just a fact legislators are going to have to accept.. opt-in spam is just spam.
I would find it extremely annoying (if it were the case that I was living in Europe, which saddly enough it isn't), if I started to receive e-mail in several different languages all trying to opt me into some SPAM-list.
Achtung! Die spammingmessagezunzuzkriben is nicht fer yer fingerpokin! Clicken-zie to unsubzkriven spamhaus und wilkommen billiards und billiards of weightenlozen, Paenisenlonginment und CowboyNealen mail.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
One reason the EU might be more advanced is because of the widespread use of mobile phones and the belief (one day) that a mobile device will be your main Internet connection. With per-minute or per-bit charges, getting spammed is going to end up costing people some serious coin if spam continues to grow out of control.
I think this is a point a number of US politicians need to understand. With some of the charges proposed for 3G in the US ($2 a mb in some places) the end user could end up paying for a lot of crap e-mail.
I'm moving to Europe, the real land of the Free! At least there they somewhat listen to the people.
IANAL... But I play one on
I wish our wishy-washy Liberal government had the guts to extend the telemarketing rules to spam emails. I say "good show" to the EU for setting a precedent.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
...and I live in the UK
I have seen several opt in schemes which have tricked users into opting in, or have been fraudulantly opted in, and its then a pain in the backside to opt out again...
Is it gonna be mandatory that if someone wants to get away from something they opted in to that they can quickly and easily?
Had me for a moment...very good.
the same chunk of legislation also contains some truly dreadful provisions regarding retention of ISP traffic and logs - seven years, I believe, and I'm not sure if they've yet backed down from the original hilarious requirement that ISPs maintain archives of *all data* they transit for the same seven years. See extensive coverage from the last year or so at The Register and the BBC plus of course numerous issues of Need To Know.
What I don't understand is why "they" (gub'mint's everywhere) seem to think that the answer to the failures that lead to 9/11 is more of the same. Unless... but that would just be paranoia.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
I can only hope they adopt such measures in the united states. Even my quarrantined e-mail accounts get spam leaks and, like cockroaches, once you see one "Get hard, stay hard!" e-mail there's always more.
I often wonder who these spammers are. What made then see thier souls? I mean no one likes junk e-mails. Did they open thier AOL accounts one day, see the 100+ messages telling them to buy useless shit, get all dowey-eyed, and then have the epipheny that that's their meaning in life?
They have cut on the line to hell, right in front of the lawyers, meter maids, and IRS agents. With the click of a button they waste thousands of man hours and decrease the mood of far more people than they will ever meet.
If karma exists, it would be legal to hunt them.
This is, indeed, great news. Sending spam in the EU is effectively illegal, and I assume this will help, at least a bit. At any rate, this is a step in the right direction and a signal that Spam won't be tolerated in the future. ...
Of course, this won't immediatly get rid of a lot, if any, spam. Most of it already is sent from countries outside EU legislation, which won't be affected at all by this. I don't know whether EU companies can legally set up a server in Asia and spam people inside the EU from there, though - hopefully that's not allowed.
Actually enforcing these laws is another very difficult thing. After all, copyright violation is illegal, too, and still very widespread on the internet. On the other hand, spam should be easier to get rid of than piracy, since piracy is a (more or less) underground movement with (more or less) secret organisation, while spam by its very definition is being sent out in the open. But still, spammers can hop servers just as easily.
So, this won't acually change a whole lot, but as I said, it totally is a step in the right direction. Now if the EU would only rethink their DMCA ideas
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
They should have to show in some way that you have opted in in the e-mail itself. Some sort of unique number that you gave them (or even an IP address, but this wouldn't be good enough). They would then have to have an e-mail AND some number to match up. There must also be a huge fine to back this up. This way, any business that sends an e-mail that says you opted in, can be automatically fined.
...now I gotta move to France. Shit.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
"" - it's Jap-tastic!
Here in the UK were piss poor at implemeting EU legislation, infact we normally opt-out.
here are a few examples:-
Bad opt/2 outs
Human Rights (we don't really have any!!)
Health and Saftey (working time directive, [covers breaks, holiday, maximum length of a continius shift, number of hours in a week])
Free trade (good for bypassing high taxes in the UK)
Good opt outs
The Euro (well done for opting out i say)
Bad opt ins
Metrification (well we opted out for a while, now the evil metric system has been forced upon us)
That farmers things that created the butter mountains &co.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
And even without 3G, we're already paying for the medium - it's just cheaper. It's a no-brainer that systematic unsolicited communications where the receiver pays for delivery should be illegal.
I think the U.S. ultimately likes it because legislators are being told these kinds of communications are good for the economy because they stimulate business by creating new transactions. But of course, you could say the same for legalizing fraud. Both approaches have long term conseunces which are bad in the end.
-David
We're on the road to Tycho.
Spam is nearly impossible to stop via laws - I think the market will and is solving this problem with more intelligent filters that will make it un-rewarding.
Unfortunately the same legislation also allows police forces to demand that ISPs retain logs of customer activity. The BBC has a more detailed story.
As a businessperson in an Internet-related field that necessitates the accumulation of valid email addresses and efficient mail dispatching, this frightens me.
Europe and the US need to stop ganging up on legitimate businesses.
Just my $0.2 cents.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
what we need are just better spam filters to tweak the signal to noise ratio of our inboxes. but unfortunately i firml believe that no matter what we do, spam will be here forever.
btw its illegal to distribute marijuana but some how it still happens. the war on spam will be equally as unefective as the war on drugs.
I want 2D games back.
Do you really think so?
Due to the nature of the internet, a lot of the spam that is circulating does not even originate within europe. Isn't this measure effectively useless as they would have to prove the origin of the email first, if there was any attempt to take any action? This is difficult enough as most spam is spoofed and relayed like hell anyway. I suppose it's a good move, but I truly doubt it will discourage anyone.
Most of the junk mail I receive is from China ... and I live in the US.
Sounds great, how exactly will this be enforced?
Suppose after the directive is passed I get a spam from china, promising great wealth and free pr0n, what do I do?
Complain to my ISP? - "Sorry sir, we just forward the mail, we don't do filtering."
Complain to the sender? - Like that ever worked.
Complain to some sort of police force? - The most they can do is inform to the spammers' ISP, & get ther account terminated, which I can to myself without any fancy new law.
If this is to work, there will need to be effective, quick, and hash penalties against ISPs that fail to block spam. Something similar to the usenet death penalty might work.
Without enforcement, this kind of directive will have no more effect than when King Knute ordered the tide not to come it.
I can't believe this. What a godsend! You can opt in to receiving spam now! Who would have ever thought! I'm just wondering... where do I sign up? I mean imagine that... countless unsolicited emails flooding your inbox every day. What kind of world would this be if we DIDN'T have the ability to request that type targeted advertising with the click of a mouse button! It's a good thing to see that technology is progressing, so much so that we can take what tripe we already receive in our email boxes and multiply it by an unlimited factor with just a few key strokes and a mouse click!
Seriously, who in their right mind would opt-in. That's insane. That's like buying a huge sticker for your car that says "Nice stereo inside - doors usually unlocked - no alarm!" Nobody in their right mind would sign up for this type of tortue. The only thing goodo about an opt-in service like this would be the ability to sign someone ELSE up for this type of tortue.
Not only ISPs; all telecoms. All data. Seven years. The EU draftsman, Marco Capatto, is not happy with the data collection/retention clause, and has written a report on the proposal-- an interesting read. The problem is that this is a step away from the various governments independently deciding how to handle data collection and retention; the bill forces them to enact legislation that collects and retains in accordance with this bill. stop1984 has issued a press release on the subject.
Do something about world hunger. Click here
How in this enforced with respect to locations? Is this only applicable to domain names hosted in europe or if I claimed I was from Europe when I signed up for my hotmail account would I be protected by the Opt-in clause. If so how would they regulate this, do I have to be a resident of an European nation or do I merely need to route my e-mail through there? This decision is a great start but does anyone know if it will be truely effective and if so how can we on the other side of the pond benefit as well.
I stole this Sig
Most of the junk mail I receive is from Africa ... and I live in China.
Most of the junk mail I receive is from the UK ... and I live in Africa.
Jailing white-collar criminals is incredibly effective in stopping specific types of activity. You put one CEO in jail, and it really gets the message across. When some GE executives went to jail for antitrust violations in the 1960s, it stopped antitrust problems for almost a decade.
i have to agree with the parent, i have numerous accounts and i have never recieved spam in a foreign language or advertising a foriegn product, its always porn,penis,webcam,mlm,viagra
.coms so this would be impractical for me.
its always an american outfit either advertising or doing the spamming.
if it was illegal in the USA things might change especially if people where put in prison (jail)
if i could block mail from a country USA is where i would start, unfortunatly a lot of UK firms use
land of the free ? bah, some c**t needs to pay my bandwidth bill and we will see how free USA is
flame on
But, what if we started offering public execution of spammers? Maybe something slow and painful like crucifiction, or being drawn-and-quartered? How many people do you think would spam if they ended up looking like this? Not too many. Let's stop being easy on these people and let them know how much we really hate them and the crime of spamming.
I just don't know how any kind of legislation could ever stop or even noticeably slow spam. And I wonder how tightly you'd have to word something like this so you didn't go after legit mailers. I run an ultra-low volume mailing list at work and I get semi-indignant messages all the time from people saying they never signed up, when in fact they've usually forgotten they signed up in the first place (we don't do any address gathering or harvesting).
I always honour the unsubscription requests, even going as far as sending a note of apology, so I wonder how this would affect folks like me that try to be responsible. Having said all that, I'm still all for trying this out, on the off chance it actually works.
And I guess the spam opt-out should be in Esperanto to make sure we can all read it. :P
Reason #1 is Belgian beer.
:)
Mmmm. Belgian Beer.
I knew I lived here for a reason. See reason #1 for why I'd forgotten
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
After a turbulent debate on Wednesday of yesterday the European parliament accepted the compromise today in the late morning on the for a long time disputed guideline "over the processing of personal data and the protection of the privatsphaere in electronic communication" after second reading. Conservative ones and Social Democrats had obtained an agreement over until last contentious points, which the absolute majority of the parliamentarians agreed now despite numerous doubt carriers on all political sides with the advice represented by the Spanish presidency.
.
Dissatisfied the correspondent of the responsible citizen legal committee, the left Italian Marco Cappato is particularly future with the decision for, externally stored data storage possible within the European Union. The member states may loosen existing protection regulations, which fix the deletion of connecting data, from now on legally to accomplish around "prosecutions or to protect national and public security". This should be permitted exactly the same as other monitoring measures only in the case of a "necessary, appropriate and relative measure within a democratic society" and in agreement with the European human right convention. But first the citizen right rushing shot for a clearly sharper formulation had expressed itself, according to which the wire-tapping should remain on e-communication generally a strict exception
Even if the guideline does not prescribe externally stored data storage, it would permit raids nevertheless as a check of the InterNet internet-Surfer like the request tomorrow in the German Upper House of Parliament for tuning at least. Cappato pointed therefore any responsibility for the voting result from itself and deplored "solid cuts into the civil liberty rights".
Better maps have from Spam the Genervten with the new guideline. The parliament changed nothing more in the "common position" with the advice: May their (potenzielle) customers marketing-assigned in the future only their agreement by advertisement by E-Mail, fax or automatic telephone services begluecken. This strict Opt in system, which after long effort of the Providerlobby at all in Brussels as passable way was only judged, may be only loosened, if the enterprises rank the receivers of the advertising messages among their firm customer master. Also in the question of the Cookies the parliamentarians adapted to the European Union advice. The software cookies, with which information about the user behavior can be collected, are permitted. However the compromise requires that users before setting a Cookies can receive and thus also reject clear and detailed information about the use in advance. In addition the parliament inserted a clause, to that-according to the guideline after three years to be examined is.
It does not concern to those nevertheless the SpamMails or few Cookies.
The only purpose, why a softening of the data security taken place, is the monitoring of the citizen "of age". But those leave themselves break in always haarstraeubendere excuses. e.g. those internal security is endangered, those youth must protected against violent contents from the InterNet become, Seeking out child pornography and now this stupid excuse! What will come probably tomorrow?
All lying and Heuchelei!
Spam used to get me really mad and/or annoyed. I thought about the scammers out there, I thought about my wasted time, I thought about wasted resources, etc.
Recently, I've installed Spamassassin, and I've been running it for a few months.
Nowdays, spam doesn't bother me too much. Spamassassin tags nearly all of it. Deleted without much trouble or effort on my part. I still report the ones that get through the filter. I haven't had much of a problem with false positives either.
These days I'm thinking that passing more laws to stop spam isn't the answer. I'd rather we use technological solutions for now. If/when we finally all start using authenticated, encrypted e-mail, spam will cease to be a problem at all. In the mean time, a good filter aleviates the need for legislative solutions, in my opinion.
All e-mails are read by the authorities
and if it concerns Spam it's filtered.
That would be beautiful, wouldn't it?
OK, let's just say there is a standard fine for each spam mail sent... For EU companies, this makes sending spam fairly impossible. They will be tracked, and then a financial disaster awaits them.
About Non-European spammers... well, I've got some doubts about making chinese companies pay. On the other hand, if they are just advertizing say EU products and doing the dirty work, the ones paying for the ads should be blamed as well.
Finally, there are international law treaties at least with most "industrialized countries"... and if we are speaking of international companies, there is always a local EU branch that can be MADE to pay. (Sorry guys, that's how it works.)
Here's my spooky prediction. We'll see "traffic congestion thinking": sure, everyone else should take the bus, but it can't hurt if I keep using my car, right?
Likewise, every country in Europe will say "Sure, we don't want those bastard Germans, French and Brits [insert or delete as appropriate] spamming our citizens, but could it really hurt that much if we enact lax legislation so that our businesses can scam^H^H^H^H market themselves globally and reap nice fat tax generating revenues, right?"
Remember, each member state can decide for itself exactly how to interpret this resolution, and how strongly to police and enforce it.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If my computer is "legally" someone else medium for free speech, then why do I not get e-mails trying to extoll the virtues of the KKK or maybe the newsletter for the US Communist party?
Yet either group can pass out handbills in the street to passers by.
My computer is not a method of deployment for someone else's free speech.
ability to send mail to multiple recipients.
So here is an idea how to fight spam:
- We need to limit number of users in messages
in To: Cc: and Bcc: for a reasonable amount
(about 30)
- All messages that bear more addresses in To: Cc: and Bcc: should be junked on servers automatically.
- If you have a legitimate need to use mass mailing - you should use DIFFERENT system. Not mail system.
Better to use news for that purpose, but current NNTP-based newsgroups are way to hard to maintain and adding new group is a nightmare for
"regular user"
I see that mailing lists that have only your "to" will go through this filter - but that proposed measures will junk a lot of spam already! The remaining should be a task for intellectual mail filters on a client side.After doing so many wrong things they go and do occasional things like this. Argh!! It just means I can't hate them totally unreservedly.
Sparing my 0.0000000000000001% respect for the Harris (Legacy) Tories since 2000.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
look no further than here. Note - you may find some of the content to be of the flame-causing variety (self implosion because of either protaganist is not unlikely).
Nearly every spam I get (and I get 10,000 a day, no kidding) says "You have received this because you have opted in" or words to that effect.
Many of these emails were sent to "honeypot" email addresses embedded on a spamcatcher site. They couldn't possible have opted in.
I do a word frequency analysis on incoming "honeypot" spam and generate a fingerprint that's compared to email to be delivered to my inbox. If the fingerprint matches, I discard the email. I never had a false positive that I know of (I do spot checks).
To "Opt-In" really should mean that the user has signed up, and then responded to a confirmation email. Anything else isn't opting in because people often use false email addresses.
--
Ask the Ya-Hoot Oracle Anything!
I don't understand how any laws passed in Europe prevent one from spamming Europeans from another location.
It's as though I decreed that the sun shall shine every day over my house. It's not really within my jurisdiction.
Most of the Africa I receive is from the US ... and I live in Canada.
Which means they pay theier connection by the minute. And this means that they pay to see advertising or downloading spam.
So your argument don't hold. And even in the case of flat fee, you are wasting my time by forcing me to read something I did not request. My freedom to choose not to receive your spam is at stake.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
No, actually, it's not.
But I have the option not to answer, and thus not to pay.
By the way, have you heard the latest ruse with cell phones? Some packages now let you subscribe to information services that charge you for using them, and apparently most mobiles are vulnerable to having someone dial you and then bill your account as if you'd subscribed to such a service, without any consent on your part at all. This is already happening, and is where unsolicited commercial messages are headed. Do you really, really think this is a good thing, and just like answering a long-distance call?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Not to fan any flames, and by no means take this to read as an endorsement, but would'nt it be grand if all those kids out there with tons of time and resources just decided to use there 'mad hacking' skills to take out some of these spammers?
In a perfect world laws would be written, and enforced. But right now, they are not. As a general rule, I'm not a proponent of taking the law into your own hands, but I'd sure like to see some smack down on whoever hits the 'send' button on this crap I get in my e-mail box.
The Internet is generally stupid
_All_ the spam I get is from the US anyway...
Except that in Europe you don't have to pay to receive either SMS messages or phone calls (unless your receiving it when roaming abroad, but that's pretty irrelevant), so that hasn't got anything to do with it.
Germany has had a similar law before, and it didn't do anything.
I've reported spammers to the cops repeatedly, and usually got a letter 2 weeks later stating something along the lines of "yes, they violated the law, but we won't go after them for such a small offense because they're too busy with real crime (It's not like they're committing a major crime jike going 55 in a 50 zone, or crossing a traffic light 5 seconds after it turned red...)
I don't think this piece of legislation will be any different.
Legitimate businesses that may worry about their reputation never sent spam in the first place.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Also, ya know those vile pre-recorded telemarketing calls ya get? Those are almost always a competitor trying to get someone in trouble. Now prove that you didn't send the spam? I dare ya...
On the other hand, same as when you waste someone's fax paper/toner, what should be illegal is the theft of service that takes place.
I don't think very many spammers actually send mail from their own ISP. They tend to use open relays and broken mail servers instead.
That's the only thing that should be illegal.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
Some people around here actually didn't realise that was a joke, did they?
Slashdotters of the world, we really need to get out more...
One reason the EU might be more advanced is because of the widespread use of mobile phones and the belief (one day) that a mobile device will be your main Internet connection. With per-minute or per-bit charges, getting spammed is going to end up costing people some serious coin if spam continues to grow out of control.
;)
.de - unless you're fortunate enough to live in a place that has DSL (available only in and near bigger cities ATM), your only option is pay-per-minute dialup (the concept of free local calls is US specific).
In most European countries, you don't need a mobile connection to pay per minute.
At least in
spam has always cost Europeans real money.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
But I do want an easy way to inflict a large burden on those who send it to me repeatedly, especially if they continue to do so after I request that they stop.
The problem right now with SPAM is that the SPAMMERS are preying on morons who think that SPAM works. These poor home-based business owners really think that SPAM companies are going to send their adverts to 5 million real people, as opposed to 1 million dead addresses, 1 million duplicate addresses, 1 million domain-name registrants (or ex-registrants), and 2 million people who will instantly trash the message. Maybe the best course of action is a crackdown on fraud laws?
I just had to cancel my email address of 5 years due to being overspammed. I was deleting mail that I needed because I was deleting blocks of 10, 20, 30 at a time. And now I will lose contact with old friends for a while. I would really like to be able to make some of those cocksucker spammers pay for it.
-dbc
Not only must Spammers Die, they must Die in a horrible, fearsome fashion, to scare off the other knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, pee-drinking, unethical low lives that might think of spamming on their own. A Spammer's death must teach the other hairy, rat-molesting Spammers a lesson that they won't forget.
Email spam is theft. Theft must be punishable. We must punishe email spammers.
What slashdot fails to mention is that the law is ONLY for spam which is selling financial services.
http://www.newsbytes.com/news/01/170700.html
This should have been posted as a joke more than a legitimate law.
In Europe, would the following message be illegal?
"Hi. I've been following your company for a while and I think it's doing great work. In particular, what you're doing in the field of XXXX is exactly what I want to do with my career and I think your company is going to win. Do you have any openings for somebody with YYYY skills?
I've got a lot of experience doing that."
I suspect this message would now be illegal unless it was sent in response to a job solicitation. With smaller companies and departments that don't have an explicit HR department, how would one send a message if you were genuinely interested in the company? I know people who have been hired this way.
To show that you opt in, you have to sign a document linked to your public key and email address. This document should also show the agreement whereby you agree to receive their emails, and from exactly what company, and even what type of email. Then they can't fake that you signed up, and everyone encrypts their email, lowering fraud by other means as well. --Michael
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
Why focus on small, itinerant spam senders? We may never know who sent a given spam, but it is always clear what is being advertised in that spam. Spam lawsuits should hit the parent companies hawking products and their partners.
Kill the companies upstream to stop the revenue stream. No money, no spam.
How about we simply require all Opt-In or Spam to use a prefix of ADV: or LIST: or ADULT ADV: in thier email? That way, they can send as much crap as they want without having to deal with Opt-In or Opt-Out?
Proving your case would be easy...
How to get our governments to listen...
Why aren't we spamming our government with the same rules our government lets businesses spam us? I'm not adovacating hacking or obliterating thier systems with spam. We would be labeled terrorists if we did that.
We can keep it reasonable by asking anyone you know to forward thier favorite piece of spam along with a message to every Congress Critter, asking them why they haven't legislated a simple and obvious spam law like the one I just proposed.
Heck start some chain emails...
Here are the Congress Critter's email addresses (Just Copy+Paste+Forward)
Don.Young@mail.house.gov, sonny.callahan@mail.house.gov, Terry.Everett@mail.house.gov, bob.riley@mail.house.gov, robert.aderholt@mail.house.gov, budmail@mail.house.gov, snyder.congress@mail.house.gov, asa.hutchinson@mail.house.gov, talk2jay@mail.house.gov, faleomavaega@mail.house.gov, matt.salmon@mail.house.gov, ed.pastor@mail.house.gov, j.shadegg@mail.house.gov, jim.kolbe@mail.house.gov, m.thompson@mail.house.gov, doug.ose@mail.house.gov, doolittle@mail.house.gov, lynn.woolsey@mail.house.gov, George.Miller-Pub@mail.house.gov, sf.nancy@mail.house.gov, barbara.lee@mail.house.gov, ellen.tauscher@mail.house.gov, rpombo@mail.house.gov, petemail@stark.house.gov, annagram@mail.house.gov, campbell@mail.house.gov, zoegram@lofgren.house.gov, samfarr@mail.house.gov, gary.condit@mail.house.gov, george.radanovich@mail.house.gov, lois.capps@mail.house.gov, brad.sherman@mail.house.gov, tellbuck@mail.house.gov, Howard.Berman@mail.house.gov, jer@mail.house.gov, grace@mail.house.gov, Millender.McDonald@mail.house.gov, Stephen.Horn@mail.house.gov, ed.royce@mail.house.gov, talk2geb@mail.house.gov, dana@mail.house.gov, loretta@mail.house.gov, christopher.cox@mail.house.gov, rep.packard@mail.house.gov, brian.bilbray@mail.house.gov, TalkToBobFilner@mail.house.gov, degette@mail.house.gov, mark.udall@mail.house.gov, rep.schaffer@mail.house.gov, tom.tancredo@mail.house.gov, bozrah@mail.house.gov, rep.shays@mail.house.gov, Delaware@mail.house.gov, fl01@mail.house.gov, rep.boyd@mail.house.gov, thurman@mail.house.gov, cstearns@mail.house.gov, John.Mica@mail.house.gov, bill.mccollum@mail.house.gov, fl09@mail.house.gov, Rep.Charles.Canady@mail.house.gov, miller13@mail.house.gov, porter.goss@mail.house.gov, fla15@mail.house.gov, mark.foley@mail.house.gov, pdeutsch.pub@mail.house.gov, alcee.pubhastings@mail.house.gov, jack.kingston@mail.house.gov, mac.collins@mail.house.gov, cymck@mail.house.gov, john.lewis@mail.house.gov, ga06@mail.house.gov, barr.ga@mail.house.gov, saxby.chambliss@mail.house.gov, john.linder@mail.house.gov, guamtodc@mail.house.gov, neil.abercrombie@mail.house.gov, leach.ia01@mail.house.gov, nussleia@mail.house.gov, rep.boswell.ia03@mail.house.gov, Rep.Ganske@mail.house.gov, tom.latham@mail.house.gov, ask.helen@mail.house.gov, bobby.rush@mail.house.gov, comments@jessejacksonjr.org
luis.gutierrez@mail.house.gov, judiciary@mail.house.gov, danny.davis@mail.house.gov, jan.schakowsky@mail.house.gov, jerry.weller@mail.house.gov, jfc.il12@mail.house.gov, dhastert@mail.house.gov, speaker@mail.house.gov, lane.evans@mail.house.gov, tim.roemer@mail.house.gov, souder@mail.house.gov, pease@mail.house.gov, John.Hostettler@mail.house.gov, rep.carson@mail.house.gov, jerry.moran@mail.house.gov, dennis.moore@mail.house.gov, tiahrt@mail.house.gov, ed.whitfield@mail.house.gov, ron.lewis@mail.house.gov, rep.northup@mail.house.gov, write.kenlucas@mail.house.gov, ernest.fletcher@mail.house.gov, jim.mccrery@mail.house.gov, congressman.cooksey@mail.house.gov, john.olver@mail.house.gov, jim.mcgovern@mail.house.gov, mtmeehan@mail.house.gov, joe.moakley@mail.house.gov, william.delahunt@mail.house.gov, ehrlich@mail.house.gov, rep.cardin@mail.house.gov, Rep.Cummings@mail.house.gov, rep.morella@mail.house.gov, rep.tomallen@mail.house.gov, baldacci@me02.house.gov, stupak@mail.house.gov, tellhoek@mail.house.gov, rep.ehlers@mail.house.gov, davecamp@mail.house.gov, jim.barcia-pub@mail.house.gov, talk2.fsu@mail.house.gov, rep.smith@mail.house.gov, debbie.stabenow@mail.house.gov, dkildee@mail.house.gov, david.bonior@mail.house.gov, slevin@mail.house.gov, public.dingell@mail.house.gov, gil.gutknecht@mail.house.gov, mn03@mail.house.gov, vento@mail.house.gov, martin.sabo@mail.house.gov, tell.bill@mail.house.gov, tocollin.peterson@mail.house.gov, oberstar@mail.house.gov, rep.talent@mail.house.gov, gephardt@mail.house.gov, ike.skelton@mail.house.gov, blunt@mail.house.gov, joann.emerson@mail.house.gov, rep.hulshof@mail.house.gov, roger.wicker@mail.house.gov, thompsonms2nd@mail.house.gov, ronnie.shows@mail.house.gov, gene.taylor@mail.house.gov, rick.hill@mail.house.gov, EClayton1@mail.house.gov, bob.etheridge@mail.house.gov, congjones@mail.house.gov, david.price@mail.house.gov, Richard.BurrNC05@mail.house.gov, howard.coble@mail.house.gov, CongMcIntyre@mail.house.gov, robin.hayes@mail.house.gov, myrick@mail.house.gov, cass.ballenger@mail.house.gov, repcharles.taylor@mail.house.gov, nc12.public@mail.house.gov, Rep.Earl.Pomeroy@mail.house.gov, talk2lee@mail.house.gov, Rep.Sununu@mail.house.gov, cbass@mail.house.gov, rob.andrews@mail.house.gov, lobiondo@mail.house.gov, rep.roukema@mail.house.gov, frank.pallone@mail.house.gov, franksnj@mail.house.gov, bill.pascrell@mail.house.gov, steven.rothman@mail.house.gov, donald.payne@mail.house.gov, rodney.frelinghuysen@mail.house.gov, rush.holt@mail.house.gov, menendex@mail.house.gov, ask.heather@mail.house.gov, joe.skeen@mail.house.gov, tom.udall@mail.house.gov, mail.gibbons@mail.house.gov, mike.forbes@mail.house.gov, lazio@mail.house.gov, peter.king@mail.house.gov, write2joecrowley@mail.house.gov, jerrold.nadler@mail.house.gov, major.owens@mail.house.gov, vito.fossella@mail.house.gov, rep.carolyn.maloney@mail.house.gov, rangel@mail.house.gov, jserrano@mail.house.gov, dearsue@mail.house.gov, ben@mail.house.gov, mike.mcnulty@mail.house.gov, Rep.Boehlert@mail.house.gov, rep.james.walsh@mail.house.gov, mhinchey@mail.house.gov, louiseny@mail.house.gov, portmail@mail.house.gov, mike.oxley@mail.house.gov, john.boehner@mail.house.gov, rep.kaptur@mail.house.gov, stephanie.tubbs.jones@mail.house.gov, budget@mail.house.gov, sherrod@mail.house.gov, pryce.oh15@mail.house.gov, telljim@mail.house.gov, bobney@mail.house.gov, ok01.largent@mail.house.gov, rep.coburn@mail.house.gov, wes.watkins@mail.house.gov, rep.jcwatts@mail.house.gov, istook@mail.house.gov, replucas@mail.house.gov, greg.walden@mail.house.gov, write.earl@mail.house.gov, peter.defazio@mail.house.gov, darlene@mail.house.gov, robert.a.brady@mail.house.gov, robert.borski@mail.house.gov, curtpa07@mail.house.gov, pawizard@mail.house.gov, paul.kanjorski@mail.house.gov, murtha@mail.house.gov, mel.gipprich@mail.house.gov, rep.toomey.pa15@mail.house.gov, pitts.pa16@mail.house.gov, rep.doyle@mail.house.gov, robert.weygand@mail.house.gov, sanford@mail.house.gov, floyd.spence@mail.house.gov, jim.demint@mail.house.gov, Rep.Spratt@mail.house.gov, jclyburn@mail.house.gov, jthune@mail.house.gov, rep.jenkins@mail.house.gov, jjduncan@mail.house.gov, van.hilleary@mail.house.gov, bob.clement@mail.house.gov, bart.gordon@mail.house.gov, john.tanner@mail.house.gov, rep.harold.ford.jr@mail.house.gov, max.sandlin@mail.house.gov, tx02wyr@mail.house.gov, rmhall@mail.house.gov, petes@mail.house.gov, rep.barton@mail.house.gov, rep.brady@mail.house.gov, nick.lampson@mail.house.gov, lloyd.doggett@mail.house.gov, texas.granger@mail.house.gov, rep.paul@mail.house.gov, Rep.Hinojosa@mail.house.gov, silvestre.reyes@mail.house.gov, texas17@mail.house.gov, tx18@lee.house.gov, rep.gonzalez@mail.house.gov, martin.frost@mail.house.gov, ken.bentsen@mail.house.gov, ask.gene@mail.house.gov, rep.e.b.johnson@mail.house.gov, cannon.ut03@mail.house.gov, owen.pickett@mail.house.gov, rep.goode@mail.house.gov, talk2bob@mail.house.gov, tom.bliley@mail.house.gov, jim.moran@mail.house.gov, ninthnet@mail.house.gov, tom.davis@mail.house.gov, bernie@mail.house.gov, jay.inslee@mail.house.gov, jack.metcalf@mail.house.gov, brian.baird@mail.house.gov, george.nethercutt-pub@mail.house.gov, dunnwa08@mail.house.gov, adam.smith@mail.house.gov, paul@ryan98.org, tammy.baldwin@mail.house.gov, ron.kind@mail.house.gov, jerry4wi@mail.house.gov, telltom@mail.house.gov, tompetri@mail.house.gov, mark.green@mail.house.gov, sensen09@mail.house.gov, bobwise@mail.house.gov, nrahall@mail.house.gov, cubin.webmaster@mail.house.gov, email@murkowski.senate.gov, Senator_Stevens@stevens.senate.gov, senator@sessions.senate.gov, senator@shelby.senate.gov, blanche_lincoln@lincoln.senate.gov, Senator.Hutchinson@hutchinson.senate.gov, info@kyl.senate.gov, John_McCain@mccain.senate.gov, senator@boxer.senate.gov, senator@feinstein.senate.gov, administrator@campbell.senate.gov, senator_allard@exchange.senate.gov, senator@dodd.senate.gov, senator_lieberman@lieberman.senate.gov, senator@biden.senate.gov, comments@roth.senate.gov, bob_graham@graham.senate.gov, connie@mack.senate.gov, senator_max_cleland@cleland.senate.gov, senator_coverdell@coverdell.senate.gov, senator@akaka.senate.gov, senator@inouye.senate.gov, tom_harkin@harkin.senate.gov, chuck_grassley@grassley.senate.gov, larry_craig@craig.senate.gov, senator_fitzgerald@fitzgerald.senate.gov, dick@durbin.senate.gov, senator_lugar@lugar.senate.gov, sam_brownback@brownback.senate.gov, pat_roberts@roberts.senate.gov, jim_bunning@bunning.senate.gov, senator@mcconnell.senate.gov, senator@breaux.senate.gov, senator@landrieu.senate.gov, senator@kennedy.senate.gov, john_kerry@kerry.senate.gov, senator@mikulski.senate.gov, senator@sarbanes.senate.gov, Olympia@snowe.senate.gov, senator@collins.senate.gov, senator@levin.senate.gov, michigan@abraham.senate.gov, senator@wellstone.senate.gov, mail_grams@grams.gov, kit_bond@bond.senate.gov, john_ashcroft@ashcroft.senate.gov, senator@cochran.senate.gov, senatorlott@lott.senate.gov, max@baucus.senate.gov, conrad_burns@burns.senate.gov, senator@edwards.senate.gov, jesse_helms@helms.senate.gov, senator@dorgan.senate.gov, chuck_hagel@hagel.senate.gov, mailbox@gregg.senate.gov, opinion@smith.senate.gov, senator@torricelli.senate.gov, Frank_Lautenberg@Lautenberg.senate.gov, Senator_Bingaman@bingaman.senate.gov, senator_domenici@domenici.senate.gov, senator@bryan.senate.gov, senator_reid@reid.senate.gov, senator@dpm.senate.gov, senator_voinovich@voinovich.senate.gov, senator_dewine@dewine.senate.gov, jim_inhofe@inhofe.senate.gov, senator@nickles.senate.gov, Oregon@gsmith.senate.gov, senator@wyden.senate.gov, senator_specter@specter.senate.gov, jack@reed.senate.gov, senator_chafee@chafee.senate.gov, qmail@hollings-cms.senate.gov, senator@thurmond.senate.gov, tom_daschle@daschle.senate.gov, tim@johnson.senate.gov, senator_thompson@thompson.senate.gov, senator_frist@frist.senate.gov, senator@hutchison.senate.gov, philgramm@gramm.senate.gov, senator@bennett.senate.gov, senator_hatch@hatch.senate.gov, senator@robb.senate.gov, senator@warner.senate.gov, senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov, vermont@jeffords.senate.gov, senator_murray@murray.senate.gov, Senator_Gorton@gorton.senate.gov, russell_feingold@feingold.senate.gov, senator_kohl@kohl.senate.gov, senator_byrd@byrd.senate.gov, senator@rockefeller.senate.gov, senator@enzi.senate.gov, craig@thomas.senate.gov
How on earth do you "opt-in" for something that you don't know exists?
If your website is a member of an affiliate program, has advertising banners or accepts paypal payments from users that have bootlegged your IP but want to pay you for it, what are you classified as? How about I put in a message in a mass-mailing to users on a mailing list a site I administer runs saying "while you're there please buy something through the affiliate store or click on an ad?" AFAIAMC (As Far As I Am Concerned) politicians should be civilally and criminally liable if their bills are considered generally destructive and outside the bounds of the country's constitution. Yes, I believe the USSC should be allowed to summarily imprison members of Congress who voted for the DMCA for say... 1 year and that each state supreme court should have the equivalent power. When the state acts, it can act only through violence implicitly or explicitly. When members of the civil body politic fuck up, they hurt people. They should be held accountable on a level that ordinary people are not.
This gives you a *Legal* basis to act against someone who repeatedly spamms you. Of course it won't stop a lot of spam, but if you can prove a company is repeatedly spamming you, you can finally act.
Giving cynical comments about how this won't help etc, however doesn't do anything. Spam assasin etc would be better of course but it doesn't have any legal basis and it seems that quite a few politicos in the US have a vested interest in outlawing efforts such as that.
So anyone and anyorg who is not in business to Make Money Fast(tm) is still allowed to harvest and exchange addresses unchecked?
Add the EU to the list of orgs that don't get it.
Again.
How about we simply require all Opt-In or Spam to use a prefix of ADV: or LIST: or ADULT ADV: in thier email? That way, they can send as much crap as they want without having to deal with Opt-In or Opt-Out?
Proving your case would be easy...
How to get our governments to listen...
Why aren't we spamming our government with the same rules our government lets businesses spam us? I'm not adovacating hacking or obliterating thier systems with spam. We would be labeled terrorists if we did that.
We can keep it reasonable by asking anyone you know to forward thier favorite piece of spam along with a message to every Congress Critter, asking them why they haven't legislated a simple and obvious spam law like the one I just proposed.
Heck start some chain emails...
Here are the Congress Critter's email addresses (Just Copy+Paste+Forward)
Don.Young@mail.house.gov, sonny.callahan@mail.house.gov, Terry.Everett@mail.house.gov, bob.riley@mail.house.gov, robert.aderholt@mail.house.gov, budmail@mail.house.gov, snyder.congress@mail.house.gov, asa.hutchinson@mail.house.gov, talk2jay@mail.house.gov, faleomavaega@mail.house.gov, matt.salmon@mail.house.gov, ed.pastor@mail.house.gov, j.shadegg@mail.house.gov, jim.kolbe@mail.house.gov, m.thompson@mail.house.gov, doug.ose@mail.house.gov, doolittle@mail.house.gov, lynn.woolsey@mail.house.gov, George.Miller-Pub@mail.house.gov, sf.nancy@mail.house.gov, barbara.lee@mail.house.gov, ellen.tauscher@mail.house.gov, rpombo@mail.house.gov, petemail@stark.house.gov, annagram@mail.house.gov, campbell@mail.house.gov, zoegram@lofgren.house.gov, samfarr@mail.house.gov, gary.condit@mail.house.gov, george.radanovich@mail.house.gov, lois.capps@mail.house.gov, brad.sherman@mail.house.gov, tellbuck@mail.house.gov, Howard.Berman@mail.house.gov, jer@mail.house.gov, grace@mail.house.gov, Millender.McDonald@mail.house.gov, Stephen.Horn@mail.house.gov, ed.royce@mail.house.gov, talk2geb@mail.house.gov, dana@mail.house.gov, loretta@mail.house.gov, christopher.cox@mail.house.gov, rep.packard@mail.house.gov, brian.bilbray@mail.house.gov, TalkToBobFilner@mail.house.gov, degette@mail.house.gov, mark.udall@mail.house.gov, rep.schaffer@mail.house.gov, tom.tancredo@mail.house.gov, bozrah@mail.house.gov, rep.shays@mail.house.gov, Delaware@mail.house.gov, fl01@mail.house.gov, rep.boyd@mail.house.gov, thurman@mail.house.gov, cstearns@mail.house.gov, John.Mica@mail.house.gov, bill.mccollum@mail.house.gov, fl09@mail.house.gov, Rep.Charles.Canady@mail.house.gov, miller13@mail.house.gov, porter.goss@mail.house.gov, fla15@mail.house.gov, mark.foley@mail.house.gov, pdeutsch.pub@mail.house.gov, alcee.pubhastings@mail.house.gov, jack.kingston@mail.house.gov, mac.collins@mail.house.gov, cymck@mail.house.gov, john.lewis@mail.house.gov, ga06@mail.house.gov, barr.ga@mail.house.gov, saxby.chambliss@mail.house.gov, john.linder@mail.house.gov, guamtodc@mail.house.gov, neil.abercrombie@mail.house.gov, leach.ia01@mail.house.gov, nussleia@mail.house.gov, rep.boswell.ia03@mail.house.gov, Rep.Ganske@mail.house.gov, tom.latham@mail.house.gov, ask.helen@mail.house.gov, bobby.rush@mail.house.gov, comments@jessejacksonjr.org
luis.gutierrez@mail.house.gov, judiciary@mail.house.gov, danny.davis@mail.house.gov, jan.schakowsky@mail.house.gov, jerry.weller@mail.house.gov, jfc.il12@mail.house.gov, dhastert@mail.house.gov, speaker@mail.house.gov, lane.evans@mail.house.gov, tim.roemer@mail.house.gov, souder@mail.house.gov, pease@mail.house.gov, John.Hostettler@mail.house.gov, rep.carson@mail.house.gov, jerry.moran@mail.house.gov, dennis.moore@mail.house.gov, tiahrt@mail.house.gov, ed.whitfield@mail.house.gov, ron.lewis@mail.house.gov, rep.northup@mail.house.gov, write.kenlucas@mail.house.gov, ernest.fletcher@mail.house.gov, jim.mccrery@mail.house.gov, congressman.cooksey@mail.house.gov, john.olver@mail.house.gov, jim.mcgovern@mail.house.gov, mtmeehan@mail.house.gov, joe.moakley@mail.house.gov, william.delahunt@mail.house.gov, ehrlich@mail.house.gov, rep.cardin@mail.house.gov, Rep.Cummings@mail.house.gov, rep.morella@mail.house.gov, rep.tomallen@mail.house.gov, baldacci@me02.house.gov, stupak@mail.house.gov, tellhoek@mail.house.gov, rep.ehlers@mail.house.gov, davecamp@mail.house.gov, jim.barcia-pub@mail.house.gov, talk2.fsu@mail.house.gov, rep.smith@mail.house.gov, debbie.stabenow@mail.house.gov, dkildee@mail.house.gov, david.bonior@mail.house.gov, slevin@mail.house.gov, public.dingell@mail.house.gov, gil.gutknecht@mail.house.gov, mn03@mail.house.gov, vento@mail.house.gov, martin.sabo@mail.house.gov, tell.bill@mail.house.gov, tocollin.peterson@mail.house.gov, oberstar@mail.house.gov, rep.talent@mail.house.gov, gephardt@mail.house.gov, ike.skelton@mail.house.gov, blunt@mail.house.gov, joann.emerson@mail.house.gov, rep.hulshof@mail.house.gov, roger.wicker@mail.house.gov, thompsonms2nd@mail.house.gov, ronnie.shows@mail.house.gov, gene.taylor@mail.house.gov, rick.hill@mail.house.gov, EClayton1@mail.house.gov, bob.etheridge@mail.house.gov, congjones@mail.house.gov, david.price@mail.house.gov, Richard.BurrNC05@mail.house.gov, howard.coble@mail.house.gov, CongMcIntyre@mail.house.gov, robin.hayes@mail.house.gov, myrick@mail.house.gov, cass.ballenger@mail.house.gov, repcharles.taylor@mail.house.gov, nc12.public@mail.house.gov, Rep.Earl.Pomeroy@mail.house.gov, talk2lee@mail.house.gov, Rep.Sununu@mail.house.gov, cbass@mail.house.gov, rob.andrews@mail.house.gov, lobiondo@mail.house.gov, rep.roukema@mail.house.gov, frank.pallone@mail.house.gov, franksnj@mail.house.gov, bill.pascrell@mail.house.gov, steven.rothman@mail.house.gov, donald.payne@mail.house.gov, rodney.frelinghuysen@mail.house.gov, rush.holt@mail.house.gov, menendex@mail.house.gov, ask.heather@mail.house.gov, joe.skeen@mail.house.gov, tom.udall@mail.house.gov, mail.gibbons@mail.house.gov, mike.forbes@mail.house.gov, lazio@mail.house.gov, peter.king@mail.house.gov, write2joecrowley@mail.house.gov, jerrold.nadler@mail.house.gov, major.owens@mail.house.gov, vito.fossella@mail.house.gov, rep.carolyn.maloney@mail.house.gov, rangel@mail.house.gov, jserrano@mail.house.gov, dearsue@mail.house.gov, ben@mail.house.gov, mike.mcnulty@mail.house.gov, Rep.Boehlert@mail.house.gov, rep.james.walsh@mail.house.gov, mhinchey@mail.house.gov, louiseny@mail.house.gov, portmail@mail.house.gov, mike.oxley@mail.house.gov, john.boehner@mail.house.gov, rep.kaptur@mail.house.gov, stephanie.tubbs.jones@mail.house.gov, budget@mail.house.gov, sherrod@mail.house.gov, pryce.oh15@mail.house.gov, telljim@mail.house.gov, bobney@mail.house.gov, ok01.largent@mail.house.gov, rep.coburn@mail.house.gov, wes.watkins@mail.house.gov, rep.jcwatts@mail.house.gov, istook@mail.house.gov, replucas@mail.house.gov, greg.walden@mail.house.gov, write.earl@mail.house.gov, peter.defazio@mail.house.gov, darlene@mail.house.gov, robert.a.brady@mail.house.gov, robert.borski@mail.house.gov, curtpa07@mail.house.gov, pawizard@mail.house.gov, paul.kanjorski@mail.house.gov, murtha@mail.house.gov, mel.gipprich@mail.house.gov, rep.toomey.pa15@mail.house.gov, pitts.pa16@mail.house.gov, rep.doyle@mail.house.gov, robert.weygand@mail.house.gov, sanford@mail.house.gov, floyd.spence@mail.house.gov, jim.demint@mail.house.gov, Rep.Spratt@mail.house.gov, jclyburn@mail.house.gov, jthune@mail.house.gov, rep.jenkins@mail.house.gov, jjduncan@mail.house.gov, van.hilleary@mail.house.gov, bob.clement@mail.house.gov, bart.gordon@mail.house.gov, john.tanner@mail.house.gov, rep.harold.ford.jr@mail.house.gov, max.sandlin@mail.house.gov, tx02wyr@mail.house.gov, rmhall@mail.house.gov, petes@mail.house.gov, rep.barton@mail.house.gov, rep.brady@mail.house.gov, nick.lampson@mail.house.gov, lloyd.doggett@mail.house.gov, texas.granger@mail.house.gov, rep.paul@mail.house.gov, Rep.Hinojosa@mail.house.gov, silvestre.reyes@mail.house.gov, texas17@mail.house.gov, tx18@lee.house.gov, rep.gonzalez@mail.house.gov, martin.frost@mail.house.gov, ken.bentsen@mail.house.gov, ask.gene@mail.house.gov, rep.e.b.johnson@mail.house.gov, cannon.ut03@mail.house.gov, owen.pickett@mail.house.gov, rep.goode@mail.house.gov, talk2bob@mail.house.gov, 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That all countries of the EU are allowed to monitor and record data transmissions. This vote passed this morning, they're still debating over exactly what they're allowed to store (i.e. web URLS, web content itself, usenet etc)
:)
Sounds like I'm gonna have to move back to the US, or somehow find an ISP that's gonna work around all this. What I was wondering about was exactly where they want to scan the data. At the ISPs or somewhere at the backbone?
A little more information can be found here, if you can read Dutch
...that if they outlaw spam, only criminals will have spam!
I mod down anyone who uses M$ in their posts. I like to live on the edge.
First Face of Slashdotter: The gubment oppresses us and the gubment should not regulate the internet.
New law passed, the gubment regulates spam.
Second Face of Slashdotter: Oppress me almighty gubment, take a way my rights and save me from spam because I am a moron and do not know how to stop it myself.
Amazing hwo some people will sell themselves to the gubment for such a little price.
In real life you don't want any email from un-known people. Can anyone remind me a case when I am OK to receive email from un-known email address? Key was in the meaning of public key
It's nice to be proven wrong that the opposite of progress is congress, or the English equivilent.
Without uniform global enforcement, spammers will just work thru agents in some country where they don't have any equivalent laws, or they do but the local sheriff can't find any of his cousins^H^H^H the spammers to serve papers on.
Without sender verification, spammers can tie up enforcement and prosecution resources by simply forging a sufficient percentage of UCE/SPAM from Cmdr. Taco or from you (thus using the legal system to help with klez-uce DDoS attacks).
My guess is increasing volumes of SPAM & UCE will add to the push towards some sort of protocol layered on top of the existing one, where most peoples mail transport agents will simply bit-bucket email either not on a white-list, or not digitally signed with a signature issued some really big agent (post office, major bank, big brother, etc. (e.g. an agent that knows where to find your body, bank account and hard drive)). Almost nobody will bother wading through terabytes of cruft to find one message from a old long lost school budd somewhere in Nigeria. Grandma may have to learn how to use a signed signing mail agent.
I'm not going to repost my previous comment on this, instead I will completely re-write and re-word it for those that think recycling one's own precious electrons that they themselves created is a waste.
Let me start by introducing myself. I'm 29, born and raised in san Jose, had a computer in my house since I was 5. Up until the .com crash I had a nice
7 year long career as a sysadmin for a lot of different companies. So yeah, I do
know a thing or two about computers, networking in general.
Well, I had been laid off for about 6 months or so. Wife n I bought a house a week before I got laid off, she got laid off 2 weeks later. Everyday this unemployed sysadmin would fax out résumé's trying desperately to get off the top ramen diet I had been on all while the words "Must not eat, must pay mortgage" played out in my head. I had dropped in weight from 240lbs down to 196. Poor desperate and at the end of my rope I decided to try and scrounge up some contract work.
Around that same time, a friend of mine told me something rather intriguing. His father down in Bakersfield apparently had a T1 line, and was running a spam operation out of his house and might need my help in making it better. It would be an all expenses paid trip (gas for his car, 7-11 burritos, big gulps, smokes) I told him I had sort of a moral objection to eat so let's go!
Well as we started out our trip I talked to my bud about how I was going to install list managers for his dad and how it would help him stay "legal" We switched subjects from our acid trippin days as teenagers to who was having kids these days. It's weird, as you approach 30ish it seems like you and all your friends wives are just shooting out babies and placenta like AA fire over Baghdad. Well 5 hours later we arrived at his fathers house and I began to surmise the situation.
*Thinking to self* Hmm I bet myself any money that it's just DSL... Nono... wait a minute what is he using that cisco2500 for??? Wait a minute, look at those orange lights flickering at 60hz Holy SHIT thats a CSU DSU! Wait lemme count...1.2.3.4 YES!! 4 COPPERS!
I looked over the rest of the room and saw that it was wall to wall screwdriver shop computers, all of them running win98. Then I opened my mouth.
"Wow, you really got your act together here!" He started showing me the different systems and softwares of his operation. To my horror and shock he was running a windows based open relay SMTP scanner!
*Open mouth, Insert Foot* "Uhhh sir? Using other peoples SMTP servers without authorization is trespass." Well I opened up the floodgates of this 53ish former Green Berets patriotic side. Oops!
"THE INTERNET WAS CREATED BY THE GOVERNMENT WITH MY TAX DOLLARS!! IF THESE SERVERS ARE OPEN RELAY'S THAT MEANS THEY WANT ME TO USE THEM! DON'T TELL ME I KNOW IT ALL! ALL THESE LAWS THEY'RE PASSING ARE INTERFERING WITH MY AMERICAN RIGHT TO DO BUSINESS!!"
At that point I had to think quick, c'mon toq, what would you say whenever someone was absolutely ballistic at the office. Somehow my ramen fed mind uttered the phrase, "I never thought of it that way, I think you're right!" Holy shit it worked! He calmed down after that.
The way home was spent driving faster than we had gone going there and explaining to my friend how what his father was doing was bad. He really didn't get it until I told him it fucks up his counter-strike and penciled in bandwidth calculations. 3 days of sleeping on a floor in a run down apartment complex wasn't really that fun. That and his father tried to shanghai us down to the army recruiters. Despite the negative involved it was a growing and learning experience because I saw exactly how the REAL down in the GHETTO spammers live. It's not pretty.
Sort of an update to the story, my buddies father is out of business. Not from an ISP shutdown though. His wife left him so he moved to the Philippines to avoid paying alimony. Myself, I've fully adjusted to eating less, working out more, and living on a string of contracts for everything from doing web work to 3D renderings of industrial machinery.
__
Choose mnemonic identifiers. If you can't remember what mnemonic means, you've got a problem. - Larry Wall
I work for a company that collects customer feedback for companies (based upon the customer contact list that is sent to us). We use the list to send invitations to take a survey to give feedback. (Yes, that's all -- no advertising of new products, no pushing people to buy). All our invitations have an opt-out feature; hit reply and we'll put you in the opt-out file so we don't hit you again. Yes, we're registering with Safe Harbor, and we have an EU lawyer advising us on stuff, etc. so we stay legal.
Recently we had an issue with a German customer of one of our corporate B2B clients. The German guy was a lawyer, so he was well up to date on EU law. He opted out to the first invitation, and due to a technical glitch on our side (he had a weirdly formatted email address), we didn't get him in the opt-out file - our bad, but a typical technical thing that can happen (what, your software never has bugs?). So he was sent the second/resend invitation.
He responded with an email billing us for a chunk of euros (forget how much, but it wasn't trivial) and demanding full written documentation of all our emailing and QA procedures to prove that we weren't spammers. Needless to say, we made sure this time to get him properly logged in our universal opt-out file.
I don't know if we paid him or not, we had our EU lawyer call him to discuss.
Well, you can get GPRS in Finland for a flat monthly fee of 16,65 Euros. Yes, it's a bit high, it's what dial-up was years back and you get some 3 - 4kB/s with it.
I believe this includes full internet access, and that there is a cheaper WAP only GPRS that's 4.70 Euros per month.
These prices are from DNA Finland, the rest of the operators have per megabyte prices.
The vast majority in Europe (which was part of civilized society, last I checked) pays by the second.
On the other hand, and provided you don't receive cell phone calls while roaming in other countries, cell phone reception is free as in beer.
Overall and givcen the really rotten mess called mobile phone services in the US, my assessment in that specific respect is:
Europe 1 : US 0
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Would you like it if your phone is rendered useless because it's beeping every ten minutes day and night to tell you it's received a new SMS spam until the SMS memory fills up and you wipe them all, then a backlog of another 50 rush in...
There are now reverse-charge SMS messages which are paid for from your monthly bill/pre-pay credit balance. The idea is to use it to pay for news/ringtones/logos/etc... services. There are already reports of companies spamming without any opt in, costing you £1 ($2ish) a pop.
Thanks for the info, I am just a lowly programmer, and not into law very much. ;-)
What is your opinion of class action lawsuits? Will they change anything fundamental in the current system, and in what way?
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Each country KEEPS it's own SPAM. :-P
And then we can feed the starving millions
The most effective deterrent to junk mail has been postage increases and anthrax.
I own an advertising agency that bulk mails (junk mail) advertising materials. Since the anthrax mail scares and postage increases of 3-5 cents junk mail business has dropped 60%.
Maybe isp need to charge for sent mail (lowering bandwidth charges to legit users) and someone needs to start dumping viruses into a bunch of "stiffin' you pole" e-mails.
Europe now has the lead, but for a long time there was more protection against spam in the US than in Europe. And while the US may have sewers such as sprint, there are some major spam sources in, e.g, CN, HK, KR, OZ, SG, TW, UK.
-
Publish a policy that any employee who spams will
be promptly terminated without a character
-
Publish a policy that all corporate mailings will
use confirmed (closed loop) opt-in. Use random
unique tokens in the confirmations.
-
Retain records of the opt-ins and confirmations,
including IP addresses and time stamps.
Of course, you didn't explain what you meant by accumulation of valid email addresses; if you're talking about harvesting from Usenet, web crawling or buying address lists, then you aren't running a legitimate business.Makes NO difference. Off-shore email servers or email servers in countries which will not extradite or enforce this law for Europe make it moot.
Face it folks. The only way to beat spam is to create an "invited" list of people which you accept email from, and send the rest to a "read at your own risk" folder.
Ya Sure! You Betcha!, The_THOMAS
Socker is bad enough. If you had public executions of spammers, how would you keep people from being trampled by spectrators trying to get in?
First Post!! Yeah!!!!
Full credit to the European Parliament for its stand on spam, and on privacy in principle.
But also note that the same session also
went, is on the verge of going, for pre-emptive
retention of email routing and IP connection time
data for the benefit of law enforcement.
I'd be more precise, but the Register story is mysteriously unavailable. 'Zit been /.ed? Should be a briefing soon-ish at the Foundation for Information Policy Research .
So do I have to move to Europe, or can I just find a host for my email there?
Business idea: charge $5 a month or something like that for email addresses hosted under European jurisdiction.
I'll move if I have to.
Dear Mr Guns n' Rses Trll,
Please see this page. The relevant characters are near the bttm f the page.
Cut and paste prbably will nt wrk, it is mre likely that you will need t use &#cde; instead.
Hpe this helps.
Kind regards,
Jimmy F J Sandwich-Burglar (esq)
>Not only must Spammers Die, they must Die in a horrible, fearsome fashion
No!!! they must LIVE in a horribly painful situation, preferably without limbs, senses and bound to a stockade in the middle of town for people to spam them with.. say.. rotten tomatoes, eggs, and cans of SPAM(tm).
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
I think the reg (www.theregister.co.uk) said it best........
"Europe bans spam"
..."Bless"