Spamming Gets Expensive in Utah and Ohio

bradipo writes "A large number of lawsuits have been filed against companies that have not complied with the anti-spam statute in Utah. I'm not sure how this will turn out, but it should be interesting nonetheless." And reader spoton writes "The governor of Ohio has signed into law a bill that allows internet subscribers to sue for up to $50,000 and ISP's for up to $500,000. It allows you to sue for $100 per email + court and lawyer fees incurred. Looks like the cost of spamming is going up."

Comments

what about jurisdiction

[JPawloski]

for you to collect, the e-mail must have been sent FROM an Ohio company FROM an Ohio ISP TO an Ohio recipient. Obviously, no one is going to send spam from Utah/Ohio anymore. This serves to making their Spam-friendly ISPs uncompetitive, which ultimately only hurts the state.

Re:what about jurisdiction

[siskbc]

Jurisdiction on internet is typically the user - recall mid 90's when a NY porn site was busted in TN for things that were legal in NY but illegal in TN. They should be able to extradict.

Re:what about jurisdiction

[Jim the Anti-Bob]

If the recipient is in Utah, then the law technically applies. If the offender is in another state and refuses to hear the lawsuite, I believe the court could still try the case. The real question is what happens when the defendant, from another state, simply refuses to pay?

The majority of the really vicious SPAM offenders I have been up against lately are using dial-ups in the European, Asia-Pacific, and Russian regions, so we are basically shifting this problem to offshore sources. Until we also start going after the sites/companies that hire these a$$holes and start addressing this problem on an international basis, we really won't see any change... although Federal legislation (still "pending" in Congress after all these years), would be a great place for us to start(!?)

Re:what about jurisdiction

[Viewsonic]

Most likely, they will do what I believe Washington is doing (Or is it Oregon...). If the spammer is out of the state, they will be served with a summons to court. If they chose not to show up, the person suing will win by default, and the spamming company will owe the person. If the spamming company doesn't pay, I believe that in itself is another law broken, and there will most likely be warrants out for people. The people who will be making the most money out of this? Bounty Hunters. They will go anywhere in the country to round these guys up if they get some pay. Of course, you'll have to put something up front first just in case the guy in question is really broke.

Re:what about jurisdiction

[www.sorehands.com]

You can get the judgment enforced in that state to be paid. Then you can hand it to a collection agency. Or have your state's court attach funds that go through companies in your state.

The spam may be from dial up European sources, but they are usually US spammers using services from there. Go after the people hiring them. If I tell you to break the law, I am still breaking the law.

Re:what about jurisdiction

[wo1verin3]

by your logic it was right to arrest Dimitri in the US even though he broke no law in his country and home

Re:what about jurisdiction

[Maniakes]

Jurisdiction on internet is typically the user - recall mid 90's when a NY porn site was busted in TN for things that were legal in NY but illegal in TN. They should be able to extradict.

By that principle, the Saudis could extradite Americans for posting blasphemous material on Slashdot.

Re:what about jurisdiction

[SethJohnson]

Everything you were saying is on target. The part where you go a little off the tracks is with the bounty hunters. These are civil suits. Not criminal. Bounty Hunters only go after felons. The government won't incarcerate you for not paying these fines. They will just put the kaybosh on your credit.

I would agree with you that bounty hunters should round up spammers, though.

Re:what about jurisdiction

[NeMon'ess]

But its not as though the US would comply. OTOH, if the accused and accuser are merely in different states, its much more likely there will actually be a verdict.

Re:what about jurisdiction

[byran lei]

>for you to collect, the e-mail must have been sent FROM an Ohio
>company FROM an Ohio ISP TO an Ohio recipient. Obviously, no one is
>going to send spam from Utah/Ohio anymore. This serves to making their
>Spam-friendly ISPs uncompetitive, which ultimately only hurts the
>state.
>
How is this going to hurt the state? It's not like spammers were paying any sort of sales or income tax to begin with.

Re:what about jurisdiction

[langed]

Many of the policies tend to be quite clear on this issue. For example, my state:

5. JURISDICTION. Transmitting or causing the transmission of unsolicited bulk electronic mail to or through an interactive computer service's computer network located in this state shall constitute an act in this state.

That legalese, I think, is sufficiently clear to stand by itself. That said, of course, IANAL.

On another note, Utah and Ohio are somewhat known for tighter legal control.
After all, they are among the states that get special mention on those satellite channels that give titillating promos for the porn channels.
And they're the states that were the reason for the "you may have other rights, which vary from state to state" you find in most license agreements; these states are the ones that have laws that specify that even a license that completely disclaims all liability can't be held up in court.
In short, if I agreed a little more with some of their more unconventional laws, I'd move to Utah in a heartbeat.

But FWIW, I have begun documenting my spams. Occasionally I do unsubscribe, but most I just send to the Federal Trade Commission. I figure that someday there might be a precedent, and I wouldn't mind making $500 per unsolicited email. :)
Anyway, I got the idea for spamming the FTC from here.

HTH. HAND.

Re:what about jurisdiction

[AndroidCat]

The Asia-Pacific spams are usually through open relays and proxies. While I do get some Korean language spam, most of the stuff I get through Korean is by American spammers. Most of the Linux servers in the country seem to have been installed from the same flawed setup.

The best one was an open proxy spam for Russian Babes through the firewall machine for the South Korean naval HQ. (And right after I reported it and suggested they tighten security, the whole naval crisis between North and South Korea happened. Coincidence?)

Re:what about jurisdiction

[lordkuri]

yes they can... it's called contempt of court

Re:what about jurisdiction

[ambisinistral]

Once the you receive a judgement in your favor the next step is to request liens on the defendants assets. That's where the spammers will really get nailed by the Feds -- because you know they are going to pull every sleazey trick in the book to disguise their assests. With that, they enter the realm of tax fraud. What I expect to see is a spammer pushing the case up through the appeals process. And I don't think that is any kind of a guaranteed slam dunk victory It's hard to say how the Supreme Court would blance spam/Freedom of speech.

Re:what about jurisdiction

[heinsj]

The way I understand it is.. to do business in a state a person (or entity) has to agree to that states Uniform Commercial Code (UCC).

Colorados anti-spam law is tied into its UCC. Under Colorado law: 4-1-105 - Territorial application of title - parties' power to choose applicable law "(1) Except as provided hereafter in this section, when a transaction bears a reasonable relation to this state and also to another state or nation, the parties may agree that the law either of this state or of such other state or nation shall govern their rights and duties. Failing such agreement, this title applies to transactions bearing an appropriate relation to this state." I assume other states are similiar.

Unfortunately our law limits the damages to $10 + court costs (includes costs of serving papers?)per email, so its kind of like going up against a tank armed with only a 22.

Re:what about jurisdiction

[scalis]

FYI, Europe is getting an opt-in on spam making it illegal to send spam to anyone that has not explicitly said that they want it. The rules in Europe are harder than those in the US.
This law is supposed to work not only on European spam (from/to) but also spam sent from the US to Europe for example.

Re:what about jurisdiction

[Stephen Samuel]

From my reading of that text, it appears tht as long as your your actions are associated with that state (as either source or destination) you're liable to that law. It simply allows you to limit (by agreement) a transaction between two people to one of the states or the other (the, "in the case of dispute, you agree to be bound by the laws of X state" clause in many contracts).

It might catch on

[Spad]

Now if the rest of the world follows suit, we might have a reasonable chance of greatly reducing the amount of crap that gets shoved through our inboxes every day.

Re:It might catch on

[Adrian Voinea]

I'm starting to thing most of the /. moderators smoke weed.
How can this be redundant? It's one of the first posts in the story!

Re:It might catch on

[BionicElf]

It's redundant because it's stating the obvious.

Re:It might catch on

[kavau]

If I am informed correctly, similar laws have been in effect for the longest time regarding phone solicitors: You can ask them to put you on a no-call list, and if they ever call you again, you can go to a small-claims court and collect $500 (see e.g. this site for some basic info).

But have these laws stopped telemarketers? No, because the public at large doesn't know or doesn't care about them. The few people agressive enough to sue them for $100 will not even make a small dent in the budget of a big spam-producing company. But the upside is: those of us who are willing to take them to court can have an easy source of extra income!

Where's my broker!

[jukal]

sell 1000000000 spammers now! Sell sell sell!

Re:Where's my broker!

[roybadami]

CD containing genuine postal addressed of over 10,000 spammers. High quality addresses only, good for law suit.

Send $20 to...

Re:Where's my broker!

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF?

money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ? money ?

Is that all you think of?

Something is missing in your life!

Re:Where's my broker!

[Hater's Leaving, The]

Funny, Roy!
Mark me down for 2 please.

THL.

Hmm, nice income

[tot]

Let's see, I get around 20 spam per business day, on weekends much less.

This would get me 20 * 220 * $100 = $440k per year. Let them spam.

Re:Hmm, nice income

[rmohr02]

But you'd have to file suit with each of them, and filing 20/day seems a bit excessive.

Re:Hmm, nice income

[Jim the Anti-Bob]

But it would fall under the jurisdiction of the Small Claims court which means you don't have to pay for a lawyer...

Re:Hmm, nice income

[scott1853]

What, there's no Perl script on CPAN for this yet? Should just be a one-liner.

Re:Hmm, nice income

[Anonymous Coward]

But it would fall under the jurisdiction of the Small Claims court which means you don't have to pay for a lawyer...

Small claims court is as useful as tits on a boar when it comes to collecting. You've got a judgement and it's up to the sheriff or other LE to enforce the judgemrnt. By the way, they will find "more important" fish to fry. Their discretionary power is the whole show. And they're not very discreet for stuff at this level. Now maybe seizing my pr)n collection might generate some interest. Especially if it's well-indexed.

Interesting

[Coke in a Can]

$50,000? That'd be one hell of a way to get me a new G4 /me puts up main e-mail address on Usenet

I have a simple, but to the point comment:

[Kith_Me]

It is about damn time... Simple. This should be everywhere.

Ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

For some reason now that awful porn email is sounding arousing. ch-ching!

The one problem with this...

[Anonymous Coward]

is going to be tracking down spammers. How much spam do you know that comes from legitimate addresses that can easily be tracked down? I suppose if a lawyer can organize a class action suit and spend enough money tracking down spammers, they might make some money. Then again, any intellegent spammer will set up his company with no assets, hide the profits, and bankrupt the company once he gets caught - assuming he's even incorporated in the U.S.

Re:The one problem with this...

[Jim the Anti-Bob]

On any e-mail, it's a simple enough process to track it back to the originating ISP just by examining the message headers and looking up the first IP address at ARIN. You can never really trust the From: address - just look at how easily KLEZ.H screwed everyone up...

Also, if legal action is pending, ISPs will no longer honor their TOS Privacy Policies - which makes this a pretty simple process.

Re:The one problem with this...

[Ryu2]

Problem is, most of these emails are relayed through servers in foreign countries (usually in Asia) using SMTP daemons which don't accurately record the IP address of the connecting host in the Received: lines (they just record whatever the HELO command gives, which is obviously prone to spoofing). Therefore, you could trace an email to Asia, but then the trail stops there.

As previous /. stories have described, getting the sysadmins in Asia to do something about it is easier said than done.

What a great way of making money

[burgburgburg]

Create a hotmail email address, sit back and wait. If that isn't fast enough for you, post a Usenet message. Better yet, sign up for AOL.

Re:What a great way of making money

[Anonymous Coward]

No joke, my boss created a Hotmail account. He didn't use it *at all*.

He remembered the account a few months later, logged in and had 20 or more pieces of spam.

I'm beggening to feel you cant trust Microsoft...

MAKE MONEY FAST

[Anonymous Coward]

come on, someone please make a dumbass joke, I'm too bored

Whare's the Love?

[Anonymous Coward]

OH NO! This means I might get less e-mail, which could could cause me to feal alone and depresed! Will not even spammers send me e-mail now? Oh woe is me! Where's the Love!?

The first step in the right direction

[Sivar]

Now we just need to make global laws that mandate prison and castration, and probably torture, for repeat college degree/pornography spammers. :)

Re:The first step in the right direction

[tot]

Castration does not work for females, and most of the spam is either female porn or viagra. Wouldn't that mean that most of the spammers must be females?

Laws are great when they are enforced

[rbanzai]

If laws like this are actually applied and not just presented to the media to polish the legislator's apple then it will kill spam. No matter how big the industry seems no one who makes a living at it could survive the fines. Just like mail and the telephone e-mail is there to be a convenience for the user, not the advertiser. Any abuse of this should be punished.

Re:Laws are great when they are enforced

[StevenMaurer]

No. It will kill spam from legit businesses. The frauds and hucksters will still be at it.

IF SPAM IS OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL USE SPAM!

(sorry - had to)

Re:Laws are great when they are enforced

[stewby18]

Any abuse of this should be punished.

Easily said, but not so easily done. How much of the spam that you receive can you actually track to its source? How do you sue someone you can't locate? Sure, you can track them down sometimes, but by the time you've done that, found a lawyer, etc, etc, what's your hourly wage for that $100? Not much.

As nice as it is that the law provides for individuals to sue, in practice it's only going to be practical for ISPs in 99% of the cases.

Re:Laws are great when they are enforced

[crisco]

These laws put the onus of enforcement on us, the network user. Sure, at times a DA may pick a particularly egregious offender and make an example of them. But by and large, it will be up to us to act.

I compare these to the current junk fax laws on record. They are part of the TCPA act passed in the early 90s that, among other things, made it against federal law to send unsolicited faxes. The penalty is $500. Yet the machine at work averages about 10 a week. Why haven't all of us retired with a bank of fax machines generating income from the junk faxers? Because it is up to us to file against the faxer and pursue them to collect. Some judges believe it is an abuse of the court system to try to collect on these. Others listen to the junk faxers and believe it is a free speech issue. Aside from that, the time and effort involved in tracking down the faxer aren't always worth the money.

Tracking down a spammer for $20 or $100 will be the same. Sure, it will feel good to collect that money from someone. You might even be able to track a number of spams to one company and make it worth your while. But it will be a losing game of whack a mole. 3 more will pop up and the tide of trash in your inbox will not abate.

Re:Laws are great when they are enforced

[kasperd]

If you outlaw spam. Only criminals will have spam?!

Re:Laws are great when they are enforced

[Anonymous Coward]

If laws like this are actually applied and not just presented to the media to polish the legislator's apple then it will kill spam. No matter how big the industry seems no one who makes a living at it could survive the fines. Just like mail and the telephone e-mail is there to be a convenience for the user, not the advertiser. Any abuse of this should be punished.

More and more spam comes from China, etc.

Who's going to be in charge of bringing up anonymous foreigners?

Curious as to what the laws are in YOUR state?

[johnthorensen]

http://www.spamlaws.com/state/

Re:Curious as to what the laws are in YOUR state?

[Anonymous Coward]

When did the other 25 states leave the union? I would have thought that would have made the news.

Re:Curious as to what the laws are in YOUR state?

[kkith]

I think it means that the "missing" states are the states that don't have spam laws yet?

what costs $15k

[linuxislandsucks]

Usually after they recieve an email from me stating that every new email from them will cost $15,000 plus court costs they stop..

Theb you get one or two idiots like Bruce Cullen one fo the extras from the Movie Outbreak who are so focused on the myth tha tthey wil earn money that they will attempt tot attack you with DOS attacks, email slpamming, and other attacks..

But striking back is fun..:)

Re:what costs $15k

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should stop striking your head against the wall. Other people find you unintelligible.

Gimme a break!

[schematix]

Talk about rediculous! I think we can all agree that spam is annoying but this is absurd. This will serve to do little but clog courts with people complaining that they received an e-mail that they didn't want. So what?!? I get over a hundred spam messages a day but I just ignore them. Its pretty obvious what is junk and what isn't. No harm is done to the user so why should they have the right to sue? And come on, $100 per message? This isn't reasonable.

Just my $.03

Re:Gimme a break!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ridiculous, Asshat.

Re:Gimme a break!

[Jim the Anti-Bob]

For some of the spammers I have had to deal with, a sentance to Attica on a false kiddie-raper charge seems more appropriate than $100/message... but that's just me, and these people REALLY piss me (and my customers) off.

Re:Gimme a break!

[God! Awful]

Why should a government that tolerates (even encourages) junk mail pass laws against spam? It's simply a matter of proportion.

Junk mail gets discount postage rates, but it still costs money to send; therefore it is self-regulating. Also, a moderate portion of junk mail is stuff that people might actually want, like supermarket flyers. Finally, you can put a sign on your door requesting not to receive junk mail and the postman will respect it. Spam costs almost nothing for the spender, but it uses up a huge amount of disk space and bandwidth to deliver it. I receive much more spam than junk mail, and my automated spam filters are much less reliable than my ability to sort my mail (which I do in the elevator on the way up to my apartment so there is no time wasted).

Anyway, I'm sure that the $100 figure is mean to represent punative damages rather than compensatory ones.

-a

Re:Gimme a break!

[nomadic]

Because 100 spams a day is too much to easily ignore for most of us. I don't like wading through junk, I don't like seeing something as astoundingly useful as e-mail rendered less so, and I certainly don't like subsidizing their annoying me through higher ISP charges.

Re:Gimme a break!

[ijikeru]

Governor Taft is running for re-election. It's grandstanding, nothing more.

Re:Gimme a break!

[fmaxwell]

I think we can all agree that spam is annoying but this is absurd.

No, we cannot all agree that "this is absurd."

No harm is done to the user so why should they have the right to sue?

So who do you think pays your ISP for the bandwidth, storage, and additional mail server horsepower necessary to handle the influx of spam? Hint: The person paying is staring at your screen right now! Spammers try to say that the cost per spam is small and, while that's true, if I could steal one penny from every person in the United States, I'd never have to work again.

If the maximum amount was $1 per spam, no one would sue and the law would do nothing to decrease spam. The fine is set high to make the law work and to discourage spam.

Re:Gimme a break!

[two-bookoo!]

if I could steal one penny from every person in the United States, I'd never have to work again.

No, you would blow the 2.5 mil on p0rn, and would have to go back to work, Just like i did!

Re:Gimme a break!

[freaq]

YOU are paying to receive it, YOU are paying to store it, YOU are paying to retrieve it, and YOU are paying to delete it. you have been used. it's all fine and good that they want to make some money for themselves selling some goods/services/scam (who doesn't?), but why should you have to pay for their privilege? spam == theft.
and as for that time spent sorting junkmail not being wasted, well, you could have spent that same time ogling your hot nieghbour, or planning a romantic dinner, or just plain old relaxing.
<bait> stop thinking like a victim </bait>
</clue by four>

hey, i'm getting better at rattling this off (i) quickly, and (ii) without getting apoplectic!

Re:Gimme a break!

[God! Awful]

Why should a government that tolerates (even encourages) junk mail pass laws against spam? It's simply a matter of proportion.

Hmmm... your message confused me until I realized that my earlier statement was completely ambiguous and could be read either way.

I meant that governments should treat junk mail differently than spam because of the difference in proportion.

P.S. lose the HTML.

-a

Re:Gimme a break!

[stor]

Lemme guess, you've never administered a mailserver.

Or DNS... Your email address has never been discovered through WHOIS.

I spend way too much time each day just creating filters for SPAM. That's company time wasted. It is not equitable that people may send me junk, wasting my (and thus the company's) time, utilising the company's resources for little cost to them.

Cheers
Stor

Re:Gimme a break!

[heinsj]

It goes to small claims court and is usually resolved in about 10 minutes. $100 per message is BS... should be more like $500, especially after you participated in the spammers "OPT-OUT" procedures.

No harm is done except they (the SPAMMERS) steal my time and my money by sending me crap I don't want or need.

Re:Gimme a break!

[Anonymous Coward]

This will serve to do little but clog courts

Oh shit, NO!!! We'll clog the courts!!! So fucking what? This is the standard, last-resort bullshit when there's no other argument left in your favor. It's usually sung out by businesses who want to make sure it's their own fat asses clogging the courts screwing individuals over.

Don't believe it? Stop by the courthouse some day and read the small claims court docket for the day. The last time I did so, fully one third of the cases were one single lowball jewelry chain using the court system as its own private collection agency. And the percentage they had to pay to file was a hell of a lot less than a real collection agency's take.

Re:Gimme a break!

[Anonymous Coward]

...and my automated spam filters are much less reliable than my ability to sort my mail (which I do in the elevator on the way up to my apartment so there is no time wasted).

My big time-savings comes in the kitchen where I sort the mail over the garbage can. All junk mail is handled by gravity except for credit card offers which get shredded up the chimney in the living room.

Re:Gimme a break!

[scalis]

Think about how rich you would get! =)
(and please remember that I was the one that told you, and i'd very much like a new car...)
I'm going to anounce my email EVERYWHERE just to make sure im in a good position to sue everybody!

Re:Gimme a break!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the standard, last-resort bullshit when there's no other argument left in your favor.

I thought that was "it's unpatriotic!" :o)

Additional legislation is not the solution

[atrowe]

I'm dislike spam as much as the next guy, but I don't think that laws prohibiting spam is a desirable solution. We have many spam blocking software applications and other technological methods already which are quite effective in discouraging spammers. Our society is already far too full of bureaucratic red tape and unnecessary or unenforcable laws. Furthermore, anti-spam legislation has the potential to curb one's right to free speech, and would violate the Constitution.

Many of the personal e-mails which I send are unsolicited and, while I am certainly not a spammer, could violate anti-spam laws because the recipient did not specifically request to be sent e-mail. I don't generally send mailing list removal instructions with my personal correspondance either. Does this mean that I am in violation of anti-spam laws?

Legislating one's right to communicate freely goes against everything this country was founded upon, and anti-spam legislation is just another example of an overly powerful government taking away the rights of its citizens. I, for one will not support any such law, or any lawmaker who supports such a law.

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to post your phone number? We'll all call you dozens of times in the middle of the night to tell you how much we disagree with you.

*EVIL LAUGH*

C//

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[catfood]

Many of the personal e-mails which I send are unsolicited and, while I am certainly not a spammer, could violate anti-spam laws because the recipient did not specifically request to be sent e-mail. I don't generally send mailing list removal instructions with my personal correspondance either. Does this mean that I am in violation of anti-spam laws?

You're right. Those arguments could not possibly have occurred to the legislators and people who advised them. *cough*

Have you tried reading the linked articles, or even reading the laws as passed? Maybe then you could show us which parts are unconstitutional?

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[qslack]

Spamming is not a technological problem, it is a problem of society. Trying to use technology to solve our problems that weren't created by technology is not going to get us very far. References: face recognition at the airport, censorware, and anti-spam filters.

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[coyote-san]

Nobody wants to outlaw legitimate replies. That's a red herring thrown out by spammers so the guillable will ignore the real issues.

What's at issue is the attempt to transfer advertising costs from the seller to the potential buyer. Note the key words "seller" and "buyer" - this particular issue only applies when somebody is trying to sell something to somebody else when there's no prior sign of interest. Today it's annoying, but without other economic brakes put on this process it will become a real burden on consumers. Already we're hearing of people who lose mail because the spammers have completely filled their 5- or 10-MB mailbox in a short time, and at the rate of increase I wouldn't be surprised to see many people essentially knocked off of email (due to the sheer volume of crap) within a few years.

Then there's the legal issues involved with spammers forging headers, often criminally impersonating third parties. Nobody has the right to impersonate a third party for commercial gain. These victims can sue, but it's difficult and costly and many courts still don't understand how much damage it can cause (e.g., by harming reputations, or having domains added to simple-minded RBLs).

If that's not enough, there's the fact that spammers often bounce their messages off of servers owned and maintained for the benefit of third parties. That's no different than somebody deciding to borrow your car to run some errands since you're not using it. Even if they return it, undamaged, before you need it again it's not acceptable behavior in our society.

Finally (on the commercial spam side), there's the fact that most of the spam is sent out with fradulent names, through hijacked mail relays, etc., since it's flat-out illegal. In an ideal world we could have the FDA go after the diet/baldness/penis + breast growth people, the SEC go after the "sure stock" people, etc., but in the real world they have other priorities and jurisdiction is often unclear. These anti-spammer laws are te best way to get the illegal crap off of the network fast.

As for the moral point that spammers have "the right to speak," you're absolutely right. But more importantly, I have the right to tell them to shut up. Every time I get a piece of mail with forged headers, fradulent subject lines, etc., all I see is some arrogant asshole saying that he's the center of the universe and I have no value other than being an easy mark. If somebody repeatedly knocks on my door, I can have the police arrest him for trespassing. If they repeatedly call me on the phone, I can have the state fine them many thousands of dollars for violating the DNC orders. Yet you would have me believe that I'm have no right to stop somebody from sending me, oh, an announcement of an exciting new insurance policy every single fucking day for close to six months now? Sure, I have the technical ability to filter that crap out (and I do), but because I don't run my own email servers I still have to absorb the bandwidth to get the damn message into the server *and* to get the damn message a second time from the server before it's deleted, unread.

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[SimplyCosmic]

atrowe says:

Many of the personal e-mails which I send are unsolicited and, while I am certainly not a spammer, could violate anti-spam laws because the recipient did not specifically request to be sent e-mail. I don't generally send mailing list removal instructions with my personal correspondance either. Does this mean that I am in violation of anti-spam laws?

Um ... no ... At least not unless your email qualifies as an "advertisement", defined under section 4931.55 of the Ohio Revised Code as "a message or material intended to cause the sale of realty, goods, or services." If your message didn't meet this test, then the rest of the requirements do not apply.

So no personal emails would qualify under this law, but advertisements would still be safe, provided they provide accurate email contact info and a clearly laid out method of opting out of future advertisements from that source.

Not that this law will really stop the flood of spam, but it also won't cause you to get fined for a single email to a person who's not particular fond of you.

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[Telastyn]

Anti-spam laws are quite definately in favor of 1st amendment rights. The supreme court has, multiple times, upheld that commercial speech is "less free" than personal speech, especially with regards to speech that is not directed (TV,radio).

Spam prevents personal speech by forcing the recipient to deal with it instead of communicating with an individual's email send to the recipient.

Technological methods of stopping spam will only require spammers to get better technological methods themselves. This is quite similar to copyprotection mechanisms, if you can hear the song, you can copy it. If you want to allow arbitrary people to send you email, they will.

While I concur that bureaucracy runs amok, this is perhaps a case where the government should give people legal recourse against something that is near universally abhored.

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[intuition]

"atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa [mensa.org] member. I have no toleranse for stupidity."

Intuition BEATS atrowe over the head with his Mensa card.

I have no TOLERANCE for your spelling errors in your sig. I digress

"Our society is already far too full of bureaucratic red tape and unnecessary or unenforcable laws."

There is no bureaucratic red tape surrounding these laws. Send SPAM and you are liable to be sued. Explain to me exactly what red tape this law creates. No new goverment agencys, no red tape, no additional paperwork. nothing. All these laws do is internalize the costs of spamming to the spammer, much like anti-pollution laws do.

"Legislating one's right to communicate freely goes against everything this country was founded upon"

Anonymous Coward BEATS atrowe over the head with the Constitution of the United States.

and with the ceremony completed...

Hey card carrying mensa dude - The United States was founded with legislated free speech as core to our values. Maybe you have heard of the first amendment? Or perhaps you just live in China?

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[Chasuk]

Furthermore, anti-spam legislation has the potential to curb one's right to free speech, and would violate the Constitution.

Companies don't have a right to free speech (and this includes everything from mom-and-pop businesses to multi-national corporations).

Many of the personal e-mails which I send are unsolicited and, while I am certainly not a spammer, could violate anti-spam laws because the recipient did not specifically request to be sent e-mail.

No violation would exist, because you are not sending bulk unsolicited e-mail. The key word here is BULK. While I know that the definition of bulk is open to quibbling, most such arguments are disingenuous, and ridiculous.

Legislating one's right to communicate freely goes against everything this country was founded upon, and anti-spam legislation is just another example of an overly powerful government taking away the rights of its citizens. I, for one will not support any such law, or any lawmaker who supports such a law.

That statement is so rah-rah and flag-waving that it is cloying. Our country was presumably founded by individuals with common sense (remember Thomas Paine?). I imagine that if spamming would have been possible in their day, the spammers would have been summarily executed. :-)

P.S.

As an aside, I consider the founding father's original intentions to be largely irrelevant. When they framed the Constitution, women and blacks were excluded from its protection. We are now going through a similar fight and readjustment with homosexuality.

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[John Harrison]

Companies don't have a right to free speech (and this includes everything from mom-and-pop businesses to multi-national corporations).

Ha! What country do you live in because I want to move there! In the USA we have the strange concept of corporate personhood which grants companies all the rights of a citizen! Luckily a corporate citizen can't hold elected office, but in the USA they have greater political influence than your average human citizen. And yes, they do have freedom of speech.

As an aside, I consider the founding father's original intentions to be largely irrelevant. When they framed the Constitution, women and blacks were excluded from its protection. We are now going through a similar fight and readjustment with homosexuality.

Also as an aside, how long have homosexuals been unable to vote? In what way does the constitution exclude them? Are you proposing a constitutional ammendment to correct this oversight? Yes I realize that there are issues to resolve but I don't think they rise to a constitutional level.

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll ditto the other responder... very well said.

All I'll add is this: I'd like to remind the next person that suggests that spammers have a right to force us to receive their mail that I spent my last Saturday at work implementing & testing Vipul's Razor, which is now adding even more load to our taxed mail servers, bouncing some 20% of our incoming mail. All this extra utilization of company resources just so our staff can get their stupid jobs done in peace and not have to deal with dozens of porn and viagra spams being crammed into their mail boxes each day.

This is as exactly as much "a freedom of speech" issue as it is when someone walks into your office off the street and takes a shit on your desk, then comes back in once every hour to fling it in your face again.

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[TGK]

I'll admit straight off that I don't know shit about what makes email work. I run communicator and email arives. That's about it. In fact, I still can't get sendmail to work on by box. But that's neither here nor there.

Point is that I've been reading and posting to /. long enough to understand that when it comes to digital rights management (in any sence of the phrase) the answer is NOT legislation, it is technology.

No one faulted the MPAA etc for encrypting DVDs. That was fair and all. We cracked it, but it was fair. We faulted them for making it illegal to try to crack it.

Apply the same logic here. The answer to the spam problem is not legislation, it is technology. Now, I know that those spam filters in place on mail servers eat system resources. They have to... that's a LOT of mail. But I also know how easy it is to forge headers. I know that many programs and websites are capable of sending mail from accounts which don't exist.

Why do these holes in the system exist? Why can't they be patched? Sure... I know we're talking about a protocol which is on literaly millions of machines, but it seems to me that the best way to stop spam is to remove the walls that make it possible to hide behind annonimity with your email. Once that is done... well... it becomes easier to catch these people.

Secondly, micro-pay. We see this tossed around a lot. Now, I don't like the idea of paying for email, but perhaps that's what it will take to remove spammers. Could someone create a "premium" email service which would require that senders pay .001 cents to send a message TO the account? Would this discourage spam? I think so.

I don't know what would or wouldn't work... but these seem like the ideas I see frequently here... why can't they be applied to email rather than just websites and cyphers?

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[bagofbeans]

Well put!

errr.... that's it! Just some praise.

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[heinsj]

"Legislating one's right to communicate freely goes against everything this country was founded upon, and anti-spam legislation is just another example of an overly powerful government taking away the rights of its citizens. I, for one will not support any such law, or any lawmaker who supports such a law."

As a citizen of this country, I have a right to choose not to listen to your "free" speech. Especially when I am the one paying for your medium of choice.

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[sl3xd]

No one faulted the MPAA etc for encrypting DVDs. That was fair and all. We cracked it, but it was fair. We faulted them for making it illegal to try to crack it.

The difference is that the MPAA has a leagal (and, in the U.S. a constitutional) right to protect their content; to prevent its copying. The MPAA paid for the research and development of CSS. (although they didn't get their money's worth). The MPAA invested millions to make DVD's a widely-accepted standard. The MPAA recoups the investments a few pennies at a time for every DVD sold. Consumers pay for it in the end-- but they get a real product in return. There's nothing forcing us to buy the movies. We aren't required to pay for DVD's encryption if we don't use it.

Spammers & spam is a totally different story. Consumers (and businesses) are involuntarily forced to shoulder nearly all costs (free netzero here, a hacked server there; no bills, no money to pay), and recieve absolutely nothing -- no product, no service -- in return.

The only other form of involuntary, forced payment is taxes and fines-- but the payment provides products and services (education, roads, police...). While taxes & fines take, they give back.

Secondly, micro-pay. We see this tossed around a lot. Now, I don't like the idea of paying for email, but perhaps that's what it will take to remove spammers. Could someone create a "premium" email service which would require that senders pay .001 cents to send a message TO the account? Would this discourage spam? I think so.

A big reason why people don't like micropay is that it requires personal information (how else to pay?). The other problem, of course, is the idea of paying for the service (the same one as outlawing weapons): Only legitimate, leagal users would respect the system.

However, since spammers already use forged headers and hacked servers -- not to mention the con jobs involved -- there is no reason why they would send via a cost-per-message service.

In addition, there's the other, real problem: What's to stop spammers from creating their own servers to (Which they already do) to bypass the fees and restrictions involved?

Think of it like waste water (sewage):

There is the leagal, lawful way that costs money, and for which there is a bill. In some cases (chemical plants, hospitals, food processing plants) the sewage is monitored, and 'dirtier' water costs more.

There's also the storm drain, which is free and untraceable.

Spammers often create their own software; perfectly secure, patched software only means they won't be using my server. It doesn't mean they can't roll their own software that flat-out breaks e-mail addressing standards: Leave incorrect routing, source IP address, invalid everything to make it untraceable. Our e-mail system is designed to deliver mail -- not to be traceable. Even if everything else is bogus/forged, as long as the message contains a valid destination, the message will be delivered. Creating a system that ensures the message arrives at the recipient is easy; having a valid, traceable trail is much harder-- espescially when everything can be forged.

The only real method I can think of is a forced abandonment and change of the entire e-mail system to a completely closed, centralized, audited, encrypted, and controlled email system, with an unforgeable key for each user-- and that would only reduce spamming until the system is compromised.

And how do you force everyone to abandon an old, free email system for a new, metered system of dubious security/privacy & de-spamifiedness?

So, making it leagal to target spammers (both the spamming bodies, and the organizations/people they send spam for.) is the only fair way to combat it-- if advertisers actually have a financial penalty per victim, it won't be the rampant problem we now have. And if it's more expensive than alternatives, then advertisers will choose a cheaper method.

Technology is expensive and even worse than our imperfect leagal system. Spam-blocking often also blocks valid emails (like when I opt-in to a list that tells me a patch is available for my software). Using a techical solution still forces the consumer to shoulder the full cost of blocking spam. It doesn't cost spammers anything if the spam is blocked. They don't pay for the spam-blocking software. They don't have to invest time and talent in implementing it.

When I see ads on TV, in print, or hear them on the radio-- there is a real, desireable product (media, news, etc.) delivered in exchange for the chance to advertise to me. I accept the intrusion of advertisement in exchange for the products and/or services I recieve between commercials.

At least NetZero gives me free internet access in exchange for having ads pushed to my desktop.

However, spam provides me with absolutely nothing-- no product, no service. What's more-- I am the one shouldering nearly all the cost! I have to take the time to download (even parts of) them. I pay for the bandwidth. I pay the price for the email box; either directly (ISP) or banner ads (Hotmail). And I have to go to the effort of identifying and deleting them. The spammer's only cost is time.

Advertising is a heavily regulated & legislated industry for a good reason. Legislating spam is the continuing efforts of lawmakers to regulate the advertising industry. Thanks to legislation, advertisers cannot:

Drive down the street with a thunderous PA system blaring their piece at maximum volume (ice cream trucks can only play music-- but they can't have any lyrics or other non-instrumental content)

Solicit wares door-to-door (without a licence to identify them and provide leagal accountability)

Telemarketers can only call during certain hours-- and they bear a great financial cost to make the calls.
And in all 3 of the above cases, there is a significant operating cost to 'reach the audience'. In the case of spam, there is no financial difference between one and one million targets, and they provide no service or good for the privelige.

Try to remember: Every law can be broken-- but every technology can be defeated. The difference is breaking a law has a penalty.

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[Real_Mce]

-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa [mensa.org] member. I have no toleranse for stupidity. If that is true you certainly couldn't have posted the message to which I'm replying. So either you are lying in your tagline or you are pulling everyone's chain

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[philipdl71]

I am forced to agree with the above statement. Anti-Spam legislation, however well intentioned, is a violation of the first ammendment. The government can't even stop drugs from coming into the country. Does anyone actually think they're going to be able to stop SPAM?

The solution to the SPAM problem is _not_ legislation.

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[Anonymous Coward]

So no personal emails would qualify under this law, but advertisements would still be safe, provided they provide accurate email contact info and a clearly laid out method of opting out of future advertisements from that source.

Absofuckinglutely NOT!!!!!!!!! No bullshit opt-out. Only confirmed opt-in, based i=on dolicitation of mail by the recipient. At the absolute least, NO action should be required of the recipoient to opt out. If you fucked up in the first place by sending something unsolicited, NO ANSWER = SEND NO MORE!!!

None of this bullshit like "Respond with 'No, thanks' only in the subject header" or "go to this website, click on fuckoff...."

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Also as an aside, how long have homosexuals been unable to vote? In what way does the constitution exclude them? Are you proposing a constitutional ammendment to correct this oversight? Yes I realize that there are issues to resolve but I don't think they rise to a constitutional level.

So you've never heard of "equal protection under the law"? What constitution are you reading, Alabama's?

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[jonadab]

> Also as an aside, how long have homosexuals been unable to vote?

Exactly. Homosexuals are citizens like everyone else, except
that they feel the need to WHINE a little more. If there's a
group of people we should be revising the constitution to
protect, by granting them citizenship, it's the young. Why
can't children vote, for example? Aren't we suppressing them
by legislating them without representation? (Okay, well,
I'm not sure I believe that either, but it's something to
think about anyway. Children are much further from being
first-class citizens than homosexuals are, in any event.)

Although, politics being what they are, we're slightly more
likely to grant rights to animals, plants, and software...

Re:Additional legislation is not the solution

[John Harrison]

As a rule I usually don't reply to ACs. I'll make an exception in your case.

So you've never heard of "equal protection under the law"? What constitution are you reading, Alabama's?

Did you read my original post or just decide to get offened? What part of the US constitution does not protect homosexuals? You are citing a section that DOES. That only furthers my argument that the constitution does not need additional changes to protect homosexuals. Other additional laws might be needed, but not an ammendment to the constitution.

If you reply again as AC the you will have the last word.

It is likely that...

[cmowire]

It is likely that the best solution to spammers skipping town would be to make ISPs legally liable for certain spam-related infractions -- primarily signing pink contracts with spammers or not taking steps to verify the identity of a customer.

Which would make the business of being an ISP suck, but would probably eliminate the problem.

Re:It is likely that...

[sys$manager]

I worked at an ISP that provided broadband access plus e-mail and web hosting and so on. We had a server specifically set up for the spammer customers. Rather than getting rid of the spammers, that company charged them WAY more than a normal customer and let them loose on the high volume SMTP server.

I'm glad I don't work there anymore.

Re:It is likely that...

[orthogonal]

So log in as Anonymous Coward and NAME NAMES!

We can't boycott unless we know the ISP's name.

Re:It is likely that...

[cmowire]

You can probably figure that every ISP that isn't going bankrupt is either hosting pornsites or spammers, or both.

i get LOTS of spam

[Anonymous Coward]

i get LOTS of spam, and when this oppurtunity gets to my state i am going to sue the hell out of spammers, i hate the bat rastards, i want to own their computers and their homes and cars, and their wives and children too...

i will make their wives my personal whores and make thier children do yard work till thier little hands bleed from pulling weeds in the front yard, no riding lawnmowers either, just a rusty push mower...

hahahaha hehehe, you spammers better stop and go get a real job or i will own you...

Bounty Hunters

[DickBreath]

You can sue for $100 per message + lawyer costs. What is unclear is whether you can sue for the cost to track down the spammer.

If you could, then I predict a small industry would spring up of bounty hunters who would go to any lengths necessary to track down the origin of a spam message. Heck, they would even pay you (or other affected parties along the route) to put in necessary monitoring equipment/software, etc. in order to be able to track down the origin of a message without interferring with the operation of your mail server.

So this law needs to be ammended to allow you to recover costs associated with tracking down the spammer. Bounty hunters would be knocking at your door to offer to help track down spammers. After all their fee becomes part of your cost to track down the spammer, and therefore part of the amount you could sue for.

Re:Bounty Hunters

[Jim the Anti-Bob]

It's not that difficult to do! All you would have to do (assuming this all takes place within U.S. jurisdiction) is examine the message headers, lookup the originating ISP in ARIN, file a complaint which will get a subpeona for the ISP, which will then turn over their logs and subscriber contact information. You then have a defendant and proof that they sent the e-mail in question.

To survive as a U.S. spammer under this model, you would have to break the law (by using stolen accounts or hacked zombie systems) just to send SPAM in the first place - which is much more dangerous under current legislation than getting busted for SPAM.

Re:Bounty Hunters

[reyalsnogard]

I can just imagine it now: Bounty Hunter Spam

"Being spammed? We can help!"

Personally, I'd rather receive a call from Mr. Happy Dude asking for $1.

Re:Bounty Hunters

[AJWM]

You make it far more complicated than necessary.

Simply sue the provider of the good or service offered in the spam (ie, whoever is paying the spammer to spam.) He'll probably be happy to tell you who he hired to send it.

Re:Bounty Hunters

[eyepeepackets]

"...(assuming this all takes place within U.S. jurisdiction)..."

Actually, I can see the Russian mafia folks wanting to get into this business. Get the legal stuff straight on this end, offer them a cut to get the bucks out of the hide of the Russian spammers. Might work in China too. If there's enough money in it, you might even get their governments involved for a cut of the pie. And if you're talking about really, really big money, the U.S. Congress might even want to get their fingers involved in solving the problem.

Okay, that last one is a stretch.

Re:Bounty Hunters

[Anonymous Coward]

Read about tracking down a spammer here. This is actually quite funny. I read this on NANAE.

No one cares about free speech?

[expro]

I find it odd that no one seems to be worried about free speech implications of this sort of action. As a participant in standards forums, I get dozens of spams a day, and I plan to set up filtering. Filtering seems to be a much better answer than government legislating what email I can and cannot send. I can think situations where this type of legislation and further logical progressions of outlawing unwanted email will come back to haunt those who valued the past freedoms of the internet. I am willing to put up with spam or create a filter in the name of freedom.

Re:No one cares about free speech?

[Anonymous Coward]

i bet you own a spam server yourself or you would not be defending such a shitty deal, i hate spam, i did not ask for it and i don't want it...

and spam is not free speech, speaking ones mind is free speach, unsolicited salesmanship that are questionable at best is not free speach, i would not buy anything from a spam email, because who knows who is on the other end of that spam, probably some con-artist drooling over the possibility of getting someones creditcard numbers so he can reload his crack pipe...

Re:No one cares about free speech?

[Anonymous Coward]

Filtering does not address the increase in bandwidth usage and storage requirements. Maybe as an individual user you don't care about those things, but if you are an ISP, spam does cost money.

Sure, you have the right to speak, but you don't have the right to consume huge amounts of my resources to force me to listen.

Re:No one cares about free speech?

[expro]

How much do you bet? Or were you just spamming me with your completely-false argument? Put up or shut up, as the saying goes. If you put up a sufficiently-high amount of money with reasonable rules for an uninterested jury to resolve the question, I would happily cash in on your ignorance and donate the results to the FSF.

Your argument is a little bit like responding to an editorial in a newspaper against racial bigotry by accusing the writer of being a minority, "because any non-minority would know how disgusting a minority is." Your opinion is false and based upon stupid assumptions.

The trick with free speech is permitting it when it is offensive to you, or it really isn't free speech.

I, too, would buy nothing from a spam email, and even on the rare occasion I have seen a subject line that slightly aroused my interest, I have deleted the email rather than reading it based upon the extreme rudeness of the person sending me the unsolicited email.

But putting people into jail for sending emails to lists of people seems as wrong as putting someone in jail for port scanning or other things where there are likely to be legitimate actions that will be outlawed. Perhaps a senator who is getting too many spams from slashdot readers who all copied the same DMCA protest email should start sending those of the opposite opinion to jail?

Re:No one cares about free speech?

[elflord]

But putting people into jail for sending emails to lists of people seems as wrong as putting someone in jail for port scanning or other things where there are likely to be legitimate actions that will be outlawed.

What if they use a forged email address, and the mail is not tagged with anything that is easy to filter (like adv) ?

The real difference between portscanning and sending spam is that portscanning does not waste my time or money. Spamming does. Personally, I think each spammer deserves a black eye from me, for having the arrogance to intrude on my personal email facilities. OTOH, someone who scans my network doesn't annoy me as long as they don't attack one of my machines.

Personally, I'm waiting for...

[myov]

From: (Forged Address)
Subject: GET RICH QUICK! READ THIS NOW!

Make money in your spare time suing spammers! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!

For instructions, send $20 to...

Re:Personally, I'm waiting for...

[paranoidia]

I would say it would be more of $101, gotta make a profit don't ya know (maybe a little more for lawyer fees)

Re: probably not..

[destiney]

It's very doubtful these new laws will have anything but a minimal effect if that. Just because a law exists doesn't mean the law won't be broken. Laws do not prohibit crime or wrong doing. If they did no one would ever purchase illegal drugs or drive drunk.

An excellent solution to the problem is white-listed only procmail rule:

:0
* ? (echo "$FROM" | $FGREP -i -f $HOME/whitelist.txt)
mail

Excessive litigation?

[fermion]

Many in congress, particularly those of a conservative bent, complain about the costly litigation against the saintly American companies, allegedly brought by greedy and evil consumers and lawyers. They want to pass legislation that will limit rewards and otherwise protect companies from the liabilities of their products. In fact, few consumers actually bring lawsuits against companies due to the inherent expense and risk of such litigation.

The real reason to limit consumer is exactly these types of laws. Companies have been spamming consumers and ISPs to death. We have tried to establish voluntary laws to solve the problem. We have tried opt-in list and verified opt-in lists. We have begged web hosting companies to make sure commercial email sent from domains they host have real headers with valid email addresses, and clearly identify the source of the product and emailer. All has been to no avail.

So we are at a point where the only recourse is litigation. Is this the fault of greedy consumers or lawyers? Or is the fault of an industry that does not have the integrity to define and enforce rules that insure consumers and agents are treated with respect.

I am sure that conservatives have and are going to complain that this law and litigation are indicative of a decline in the basic moral fiber of the American consumer. At the same time, they will be raking in profits from the backs of those same consumers.

SPAM is not Free Speech

[Jim the Anti-Bob]

First off, forging e-mail headers should constitue fraud, not free speech. Secondly, why is it your right to tie up my system resources at will, while I have no recourse (other than purchasing expensive filtering software) to make you quit.

Just because I have your cell phone number, does that give me the right to call you 20 times a day?

Re:SPAM is not Free Speech

[wolfgang_spangler]

expensive filtering software?
Mimedefang download
I don't like spammers, and don't agree with the methods they use, but more legislation is NOT the answer.

Re:SPAM is not Free Speech

[expro]

If there is a demand for filtering, it becomes provided in an efficient way by the marketplace, either by the clumsy techniques we have today or by a whole new email format that is cryptographically secure. ISPs actually do this already using clumsy techniques, without significantly increasing the price of the email service.

Making email headers unforgeable is mostly a technological problem, not a political one, although I suspect that in true cases of significant fraud based upon header forgery, fraud laws already apply.

If the email header specifies the name of someone who does not exist, how is this different from writing anonymously or under a pseudonym, which the writers of the constitution were quick to do when it suited their purposes (Publius). Anonymity is an important political freedom, not just in the ballot box, but in other situations.

If being called by the same person 20 times in a day is a problem, I can locate the user's telco service provider and complain, or I can use easily-available options to block the call. The quality of the blocking is a technological issue, which should be determined by contract, not by government mandate. The same actions are already easily available on the web.

The web is too big to go legislating what a particular person finds offensive, such as advertising, although I would pursue death threats and similarly-illegal communications in the same way I would do it in any other medium.

Do you think we should make junk mail illegal, too? It is much harder to make the argument that you can easily filter it, and it is much more of a physical annoyance.

Re:SPAM is not Free Speech

[Jim the Anti-Bob]

Have you seen the licensing agreements for MAPS ? It sure as hell isn't cheap. I'm so sick of this "more legislation is NOT the answer" argument bull$hit - some things simply should be illegal. It's just idiotic to think that the ability to forge e-mail headers is somehow a 'god-given' or 'constitutionally protected' right... that's such crap!?

Re:SPAM is not Free Speech

[Jim the Anti-Bob]

First off, fraud laws do not already apply. Your insinuation of this only demonstrates your lack of knowledge on this subject.

Secondly, there are already anonymous forums - including your e-mail address. Assuming you have done nothing illegal, an ISP (or at least everyone I've worked with on SPAM investigations) are bound by their TOS to not reveal any of your personal information. That works up and to the point where they receive a subpeona/warrant to release this information.

Your baseless FUD that anti-spam laws will somehow hinder one's rights to free speech are unfounded and idiotic.

Re:SPAM is not Free Speech

[expro]

I would assume that fraud laws apply to fraud. Just because it is the internet does not mean that such laws are suspended. Forging an internet header can be a part of fraud or other crimes, such as perhaps in the case of the Nigerian get-rich-quick scheme perhaps claiming to come from an official of the Nigerian Government. But forging an internet header is not automatically fraud, nor should it be, nor did I claim that it was under existing legislation.

I think you just insinuated that the source of all messages sent should be verifiable by court order. So you would make Freenet illegal, since it exists to strongly protect the anonymity of the creaters and users of information even against a court order? Freenet and the higher-grade anonymity it provides is all about free speech, and I value this sort of anonymity greatly.

EMail was created without strong authentication. If you want it, then make another protocol that clearly supplies it and let people who value that use it. If you do it on another port and spam attempts are never successful, then spam will not happen. This is clearly a security hole because email was left unauthenticated. Fix the technological security holes with technology, not with legislation -- it applies in this case as well as many others. An email filter, which operates after the bandwidth has been consumed, is not the ideal solution, but that does not mean that a good solution eludes most experts.

Whining that the current wide-open email system is abused is about as useful as whining about your web page getting unexpectedly slashdotted. That is the nature of the protocol. If you want something different, design it and standardize it.

Re:SPAM is not Free Speech

[wolfgang_spangler]

did you check the link I posted last time? Good spam filtering software that is free. Actually spamassasin is the filtering software....

More legislation isn't the answer, I'm sorry if you are sick of it, but that isn't going to solve anything. There is already too much legislation in the US, and the only people it serves are the lawyers.

I don't think it is a God-given or constitutionally protected right or some such other crap. I think that this is a LONG way down on the list of stuff to do. Lets spend more time enforcing the laws we do have rather than making the system even more screwed up.

Re:SPAM is not Free Speech

[elflord]

I would assume that fraud laws apply to fraud. Just because it is the internet does not mean that such laws are suspended.

Assume all you like, but that's not going to make it true. Don't blow smoke, and don't speculate. The problem with your assumption is that it's certainly not true in general. You can tell lies, and cheat at golf, without being sued. Not all acts of dishonesty are covered by fraud legislation.

I think you just insinuated that the source of all messages sent should be verifiable by court order.

No. He believes that having an email address doesn't give every spammer the right to use it as their advertising space.

So you would make Freenet illegal, since it exists to strongly protect the anonymity of the creaters and users of information even against a court order?

There are some forms of electronic communication where anonymity is appropriate, and some where it isn't. I don't know a whole lot about freenet. In the case of usenet, I'd certainly say anonymity is appropriate, but then, usenet is not my personal mailbox.

EMail was created without strong authentication. If you want it, then make another protocol that clearly supplies it and let people who value that use it.

There are disadvantages of having strong authentication, mostly that it's inconvenient.

Whining that the current wide-open email system is abused is about as useful as whining about your web page getting unexpectedly slashdotted.

I don't want to whine about it. I'd rather sue the bastards into oblivion, and then let them do the whining, while I laugh all the way to the bank.

Re:SPAM is not Free Speech

[Anonymous Coward]

When last I checked it was against the law to forge email headers.

Re:SPAM is not Free Speech

[expro]

So you would also sue someone for slashdotting your web page. Now we get to the real problem in your position.

Re:SPAM is not Free Speech

[elflord]

So you would also sue someone for slashdotting your web page. Now we get to the real problem in your position.

No, I wouldn't. My webpage is intended for access by the general public. My email is not. It is a personal communication facility.

Re:SPAM is not Free Speech

[Jim the Anti-Bob]

I think you just insinuated that the source of all messages sent should be verifiable by court order

No, I was just stating the current law - for every ISP I have worked with (investigating SPAM), they will not give one single detail about the user unless unless they have a court order. This is a very strong protection, which I have no problem with. I had no intention of insinuating anything with that statement.

What I am saying is that having Internet access shouldn't give you the right to do whatever the hell you want without fear of repercussion. I have been involved in investigations of e-mails (both valid and SPAM) ranging from harassment, to threatening, to some sick SOB who tried to bounce child pornography off of our relay. There are occassions where the TOS for any service provider can and should be bypassed.

I could debate more but my time at work is over... no hard feelings, but I do disagree...

Damn...

[bigsexyjoe]

Strict law. Do we have the RIAA's lawyers and lobbyists on our side now?

I'd hate to be the poor bastard who

[(H)elix1]

had a real address who the spammers used for the fake header. William.Gates@microsoft.com has a large legal department, but imagine your_mom's_emai@yahoo.com having to fend off all the angry folks who look at only the "sender's" email address as the person who did the spamming?

Re:I'd hate to be the poor bastard who

[Styx]

I've had that happen to me a couple of times now. Probably because I'm a pain-in-the-ass anti-spammer.
No one has complained to either me nor my provider,though.
The only reason I know of it, is that I got all the bounces. Fortunately, there's procmail for that.

Re:I'd hate to be the poor bastard who

[Jherico]

If you've gotten the bounces but not angry replies, then you're not in the from address of the message. Bounces go to whoever is specified as sending the message in the SMTP protocol, which doesn't examine the header, but uses the MAIL FROM and RCPT TO commands to determine source and destination.

I know this because I wrote a 'mass-emailing' engine for Disney that allowed them to improve the scale, frequency and level of customization of their 'subscription' mailing lists.

Yes, I built a bomb once.

Beware the strawman!

[John Harrison]

Many of the personal e-mails which I send are unsolicited

Are you sending them to people that you've never met in any way? If so, then how are they personal? Otherwise you are just sending email to someone you know. I am sure that they know how to ask you to stop, unless they fear offending you.

I don't think that we need to go into a definition of "spam" here. We all "know it when we see it".

Now on to my rant!

Sending thousands of unsolicedted emails (spam) is not "communicating freely". It is an electronic slap in the face. You don't respect me as a person to keep yourself from wasting my time and resources. You have no right to my time and resources. Telemarketers are nobler than spammers, at least they bother you on a one-to-one basis rather than vomiting their filth onto every person they can possibly find at once.

Finally, I at least get to play mind games with telemarketers!

Re:Beware the strawman!

[TGK]

Not necessarily. Most telemarketers today use a computer and a massive bank of modems to call people. The first line that picks up the phone gets personal attention, if it's not an answering machine. If it is they just spew some recorded message onto your tape at the sound of the tone. Behold... telephones now have SPAM.

FEH

Re:Beware the strawman!

[foobar104]

Finally, I at least get to play mind games with telemarketers!

Ah, yes. My personal favorite-- I can't take credit for this, but I don't remember where I first heard the idea-- goes something like this:

Me: Hello?

Bastard: Can I speak with Mr. (absurd mispronunciation of my last name), please?

M: Speaking.

B: Sir, I'm Tim calling from Wanyermoney Enterprises, and--

M: Did you say Tim?

B: Yes, sir, my name's Tim and I'm calling from Wanyermoney--

M: Tim, huh?

B: That's right, sir, and I'm calling to offer--

M: Hey, Tim?

B: Yes, sir?

M: What are you wearing?

At this point, either Tim hangs up or I crack up. The way I see it, they're asking for it.

My girlfriend pulled a good one about a year ago when she saw the caller ID. She picked up the phone all breathless and shaky and screamed, "Oh, god, help me! Oh--" and hung up. I was actually a little afraid that the police were going to show up, but of course they never did. I can only hope that a Bastard got a little shaken up by that one.

Make 'em work for it, that's what I say.

Re:Beware the strawman!

[ramzak2k]

you heartless bastard ! how could u do such a thing to those kind people working 24/7 to provide you those great offers.

Re:Beware the strawman!

[scalis]

He didn't to it to the Gator people. He ment telemarketers.

Re:Beware the strawman!

[jonadab]

> I don't think that we need to go into a definition of "spam"
> here. We all "know it when we see it".

The legislations in question all define it, and among other
things their definition stipulates that it's commercial in
nature. Personal mail doesn't qualify. Although, the
forgery stuff at the end of the Ohio bill seems to apply
to *all* electronic messages, but what legitimate user
forges headers on personal mail? Hmm... What about
usenet? Can a lawyer comment on the common usenet practice
of address-mungeing with respect to section H of the Ohio
bill? Do messages posted to usenet qualify as electronic
messages under the bill, even though usenet is a broadcast
rather than a person-to-person medium?

netdom@netdominationezine.com

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys should be shot, you wouldn't believe how much spam they send me!

Follow the money!

[www.sorehands.com]

Spammers usually have you respond somehow. Track them that way.

Damn straight.

[PseudoThink]

I think I'm going to consider setting up a honeypot ISP in the state(s) with the best record(s) for convicting spammers. This ISP would only serve enough customers to qualify as an ISP. Its primary purpose would be to house honeypot email accounts, simply to harvest spam. The ISP's business model would be to make profit from suing spammers. While I think this may present some ethical issues I have to spend more time considering, I wonder if it would actually work as a business model, and if this could be a practical strategy in the war on spam?

Re:Damn straight.

[AndroidCat]

You're brad.madison and I claim my $5! :^)

Re:Damn straight.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I'm going to consider setting up a honeypot ISP in the state(s) with the best record(s) for convicting spammers. This ISP would only serve enough customers to qualify as an ISP. Its primary purpose would be to house honeypot email accounts, simply to harvest spam. The ISP's business model would be to make profit from suing spammers. While I think this may present some ethical issues I have to spend more time considering,....

Name one. It sure as hell isn't entrapment. You're just innocently standing by. :-)

Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[Inexile2002]

One of the central tenets of free speech is that I'm free to ignore you. I am not censoring anyone if I plug my ears. Although telemarketers are legal, they are not protected under free speech laws. No one has the right to call me up and force me to listen.

With email spammers are utilizing my resources (the bandwidth I pay for, the processor time my computer requires to handle them etc) to send me an uninvited message. They do not have any right to use my resources to disseminate that message. Nor do they have the right to use public resources to disseminate a message. If someone paints a message on the wall of the town hall, no one is censoring that person when they paint over it. People can use their own resources to say whatever the hell they want, but as soon as they start using my resources, they need my permission. Spammers automatically do not have my permission.

Regardless of the content of the spam, and regardless of the intention of the spammer, they do not have a right to send me anything. If they have a message, they can either pay to circulate it and then I will fight to the death to defend their right to do that - or they can rely upon agreed upon public forums. My inbox is not a public forum.

It isn't even a legislation issue. Spammers are trampling on other people's rights. The one thing that pretty much everyone will agree upon is that the government's role is to protect the rights of the citizen. Giving the citizen a legal recourse to go after people who use their resources without consent is exactly what the government should be doing.

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[Maniakes]

I see spammers as equivilent to Jehovah's Witnesses. They do come to my door and waste my time, but I can always tell them to go away, or I can just close the door. It isn't that much of a burden to do so.

If it becomes and excessive burden, I can put up a "No Jehovah's Witnesses" sign and call the cops if the JWs don't stop bothering me.

However, banning the JWs or putting them on a strict opt-in policy would be a restriction on their free speech. They do have a right to offer to talk to me unless I ask them not to.

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[Inexile2002]

Not quite an accurate analogy though. The JW wouldn't come into your work. If they started to, it would be perfectly reasonable to ban them from work places. The reason is that when you're at work, you're on someone's pay roll and they're paying you for your time. For someone to come in and occupy that time would be wrong.

Coming to my door is fine, I have no problem with that because it's personal, it isn't something someone can do at the click of a button to a million people and most of all, it doesn't cost me anything. If I had to pay every time someone rang my door bell, even if it was a trivially small amount, I would not want unwelcome people at my door. If dozens, some days hundreds of people showed up to talk about hot wet teens and penis enlargement, I'd call my local government and pester them to get rid of these people.

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[AJWM]

So, how do I do the equivalent of putting up a "No Spammers" sign on my mail server? That's not the same as a filter -- a filter is equivalent to hiring someone to answer the door for you to chase away the JW's.

(Maybe SMTP could be extended with a response to connection code that means "no spammers", but I doubt they'd pay attention to it, and changing all the mail software out there to conform would take years.)

If somebody wants to talk, they can put up a web site or use conventional advertising routes.

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[expro]

Nothing is forcing your computer or that of the ISP to process those packets flying past. If a more secure and authenticated email protocol is needed for certain classes of communications, then so be it. That should be up to the technologists to create, not up to the governments to legislate.

If a server never answers on a port, no significant resources are consumed. If channels are publicly open, then expect to have to consume resources filtering it, just like you filter TV commercials, door-to-door salesmen, and junk mail.

There was never a right not to receive spam, unless it was created technologically, or by contract. If you really cared deeply about the issue, you would be heading up a standards body to create this more-secure tier of email. Instead, you would trample the rights of others just because their patterns of preferred behavior do not match yours. It is a very small step between outlawing the typical spam of today and outlawing forms of free speech you may care more about but other powerful players hate.

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[Anonymous Coward]

If dozens, some days hundreds of people showed up to talk about hot wet teens and penis enlargement, I'd call my local government and pester them to get rid of these people.

You know, if they would just send the hot, wet teens to our doors to enlarge our penises, we'd all stop complaining, even if there were hundreds per day. The problem is that as it stands, it's all just too impersonal.

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[expro]

You have identified the problem. It is a technological one. The email protocol designers didn't leave a spot for a no-spammer's sign.

So you are going to make spammers illegal instead of simply adding this to internet protocols in such a way that it can be securely and efficiently enforced.

Today, as much as we hate them, spammers feel perfectly justified because there is no technological "No Spammers" sign. It is irresponsible, having now identified the deficiency, to legislate instead of solving the problem technologically.

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[two-bookoo!]

Maybe there is a solution to "putting up a NO SPAMMERS" sign on your mail server.

My idea just occured to me, while this would not prevent the unathorized spammers to send out their email, there could i would imagine, be a very simmilar set up for spammers that are tring to do it legally.

Someone - an Org maybe, could host some form of DNS server that would list all the mail servers that DO NOT WANT SPAM, and the sender would query that server for every message, and in the event that that domain is infact listed, it would not parse the message to the intended recipient.

Downsides of this, is who is going to sponsor/setup/maintain this database. Based on the # of spam emails that are received everyday, It would be worse the /. effect on 9/11. 24/7/365.

The other option, could be a list that could be downloaded, provided by once again, a service, that you and I could list our mailservers on, and it would be the responsibility of the spammer to maintain adherance to that list. In the event that you are listed and receive unsolicted email, then you would have means to go after offending spammer. in fact this site would be pretty easy to set up, a simple CGI, where you would submit domains, they would be appended to a text file, and that file downloaded by spammers that have a desire to spam. I would imagine that you could also use it for individuals as well, slthough, that would create a MASSIVE list of email addresses that would most likly just get used for malicious intent. My $0.15

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[AJWM]

Okay, since you favor technological solutions...

When SMTP was designed, the Internet (or was it still ARPAnet in those days?) was decidedly, and by law, non-commercial. It is therefor fair to say that the mail protocols were designed to a default of "no spammers", and that any extension to the protocol would be something like an "unsolicted commercial email okay" response from the mail server at first connection.

There we have it: the technological solution is a "spam okay" response from the server. In the absence of that, the user does not want spam, and any such email is trespassing. We probably want some legislation to punish those who go ahead and spam without getting that "spam okay" response.

Funny, that's just what the current legislation does...

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[Saeger]

Sorry, but I don't think "Do Not SPAM" lists could ever work as well as the "Do Not Call" registries we have now. It probably won't stop politicians from passing similar law though, so they can appear to be "doing something" about it.

Do Not Call lists work because telemarketing is more expensive and more accountable than the cheap fly-by-night nature of spamhouses. It's in the telemarketers best interests to save money by not bothering people who don't want to be bothered, or else. It's in the spammers best interests to use a Do-Not-Spam list as a free source of victims to spam(!) because their cost is next to zero anyway and they can change their outgoing "phone number" whenever they like.

Besides filters and whitelists, the best technological way to stop spam is to either increase the cost to send (not necessarily in dollar terms), or require each new sender to pass a test that only a human could pass, before you accept their mail and add them to your friends list.

--

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[Shelled]

Then you're for legislation against unsolicited phone calls?

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[Ian Bicking]

You do not have any right not to be bothered at a public address -- email, phone, or physical.

Commercial speech is not afforded the same protections under the first ammendment as other forms of speech. You'll note that all anti-telemarketer legislation only applies to commercial calls -- non-profits can call you at any time. The same is true of spam laws -- they do not apply to non-commercial emails.

So it isn't that spam can be made illegal because emailing is not protected by free speech. It can be made illegal only insofar as it is commercial.

I think there are certain provisions about communications in which the receiver pays the cost, and email does (somewhat) fall under this. I'm not sure if even a non-profit can call you unsolicited at a cell number -- though maybe they could, I don't know. The cost of email is so low, though, that I don't think you could make that argument unless the emailer was being particularly aggressive -- e.g., sending email to random addresses at a domain.

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[lecter,hannibal_md]

it is actually a huge burden to try to keep people from sending unsolicited email, once your address is aquired by some capitalistic company, it is about time to get a new account somewhere. no matter how many filters, blocked addresses, etc you have, some will still get through. one good thing that i have noticed is that most email providers now require some sort of proof that you are not a bot... such as 'enter the letters you see in the image' at least the jehovah's witnesses will actually go away, most of the time spam isnt actually from the address it says it is. so if you send an unsubscribe email, it falls not even on deaf ears, but no ears at all.

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, you're good. I've never seen the basic issues put so well.

Personally, I think the concept of "the corporate person" is the most poisonous concept America has ever come up with. The corporate person has all the rights of a real person, plus a hell of a lot more.

You want the "accountability" that Bush so often wants to impress on teachers, unions, etc. (but never corporations; don't believe the latest bullshit law he signed) -- destroy the corporate person and it'll be here inside of a week.

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[Anonymous Coward]

Not quite an accurate analogy though. The JW wouldn't come into your work. If they started to, it would be perfectly reasonable to ban them from work places. The reason is that when you're at work, you're on someone's pay roll and they're paying you for your time. For someone to come in and occupy that time would be wrong.

And how do you distinguish the value of my employer's time, money and resources as being something to protect versus my time, money and resources as not being worthy of protection? How is it I become valueless outside the context of my working life?

Coming to my door is fine, I have no problem with that because it's personal, it isn't something someone can do at the click of a button to a million people and most of all, it doesn't cost me anything.

Again you argue my time is of no value outside of a workplace. Telemarketers and JWs are both a waste of my time. I'll cut the JWs some slack because they only show up a few times a year. Different telemarketersucks have called me five times within fifteen minutes. If the JWs were joined by Christian Scientists, penis enlargers, replacement window contractors, insurance agents, Viagra peddlers, mortgage brokers, Catholics, Jews for Jesus and the rest, all day, every Saturday, then yes, I'd like all of the bastards banished from my property, under heavy penalty of law, just as you do. So it also becomes an issue of the total time devoted to dealing with them. I don't mind missing the crucial part of a mystery on tv to talk to a friend, but I damned well don't extend that right to every self-important shit who wants to call me by my first name and sell me something.

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[Anonymous Coward]

You have identified the problem. It is a technological one. The email protocol designers didn't leave a spot for a no-spammer's sign.
So you are going to make spammers illegal instead of simply adding this to internet protocols in such a way that it can be securely and efficiently enforced.

Today, as much as we hate them, spammers feel perfectly justified because there is no technological "No Spammers" sign. It is irresponsible, having now identified the deficiency, to legislate instead of solving the problem technologically.

You're dead wrong. First off, they have no damned right to "feel perfectly justified". They know they're unwelcome -- they just don't care. If I put up a sign at my door saying "No solicitors, etc." the guy who knocks on the door is pretty well identified and can expect a good cussing out. He's not likely to return. But the spammer, by definition, will not observe the sign and I can't effectively cuss him out. And he _will_ return. Again and again. (As backup for this statement, I have a collection of twelve daily emails, each with its own Klez virus attachment that I'm following up with someone's ISP's upstream on, since the ISP doesn't care.)

If you think a simple "No spammers" tag will do the trick, think again. How many spams a day do you get where the bastard goes to great length to assert he's not a spammer. Total denial, not to mention barefaced lying. How about the robots.txt file on your website that's no more than a polite request not to intrude in specific ways? Do you think Google or any other of the newsgroup archivers give a damn about your "X-No-Archive: Yes" header? Get serious about this technological/protocol fix stuff. It's a waste of time. There are already a shitload of RFCs and other IETF oozings saying how the net is to be used.

It's as simple as this -- spammers don't give a rat's ass about yout RFCs, protocols, "netiquette" or anything else. Nothing short of severe, swiftly-applied sanctions will change their behavior.

Someone may somehow stumble into your house uninvited once, but once he's been told to stay out, absent some extenuating circumstance like mental deficiency, the second time he comes in, blow the son-of-a-bitch's head off. As an example to the fifteen guys behind him.

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[expro]

Like it or not, my first use of SMTP was on machines that did not even communicate on the ARPAnet, and there was no law or policy stating that I could not use it within my commercial enterprise.

Non-commercial restrictions of ARPANet soon went by the wayside and commercial machines using SMTP extended their use for commercial purposes became connected, which was clearly only a restriction on the network, not on the protocol.

Your argument doesn't fly at all. If you believe commercial uses of internet are not permitted, you are really out of touch, and should be tilting at the whole issue/windmill of using the internet for commercial purposes.

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[expro]

If you are basing your security on spammer's caring, you have no security. A proper RFC would make it mathematically infeasible for spammers to use the protocol. I don't understand why you think this case is so different from all other security issues, that it can only be fixed by legislation and not technology.

The bits do not enter your house unless your machine accepts them. Just because you have a very stupid protocol that allows all bits to enter without checking whether you want them, is no reason to outlaw sending messages that some recipient may object to.

The "I know it when I see it" argument for SPAM is what is also used for Pornography to outlaw all kinds of things, that are much less obvious to others including classical art and literature. Once you open up the can of worms of litigating people who send messages you do not like, it is a very slippery slope.

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[scalis]

Or, even worse....
the "unsubscibe" is used as a validator that someone actually accesses the mailbox and opened the mail! Hell, let's send him another thousand of 'em!

Re:Cutting off Spam Doesn't Threaten Free Speech

[Datafage]

There already is a quite non-trivial amount of legislation against unsolicited commercial phone calls, and telemarketers bear the cost of the call. Notably, they are forbidden from calling cell phones, as the cell phone's owner bears the cost of those calls. Email brings a significant cost to ISPs in transferring it, and the spammer pays little to nothing. This is legal grounds for regulation.

How sad!

[fmaxwell]

This serves to making their Spam-friendly ISPs uncompetitive, which ultimately only hurts the state.

What a tragedy! Spam-friendly ISPs being forced out of business in Utah/Ohio. This is almost as bad as laws that make kiddie-porn-friendly ISPs uncompetitive. Imagine the revenue loss!

When society finds something unacceptable (in this case, spam) and enacts laws to reduce it, there is an understanding that those who make a living from it will be financially harmed. Ohio convenience stores would have a competitive advantage if they could legally sell alcohol and tobacco products to minors. That doesn't mean that Ohio should make it legal.

Sometimes the good of society outweighs the financial interests of corporations.

Re:How sad!

[Shelled]

Sometimes the good of society outweighs the financial interests of corporations.

It still doesn't make sense to go after the ISP, no more so than it does to sue telcos for the actions of telemarketters. Making the ISP responsible will have a chilling effect on Ohio's internet services, and that could only hurt the state's technology sector. Go after the spammers yes, the ISP no. Nice "save the children" hot-button press though.

Re:How sad!

[nanoakron]

Well, come on...your whole point is certainly valid - I've just got to pick bones with you about who you consider to be 'minors' when it comes to alcohol and tobacco....

Most of the rest of the world defines 'minor' with respect to cigarettes to be 16 years of age, and with respect to alcohol to be 18 years of age...so with the US sticking to 18 and 21 respectively, they're criminalsising and de-normalising a large proportion of their population...isn't this in itself more concerning than any number of unwarranted e-mails?

-Nano.

Re:How sad!

[Anonymous Coward]

It still doesn't make sense to go after the ISP, no more so than it does to sue telcos for the actions of telemarketters. Making the ISP responsible will have a chilling effect on Ohio's internet services, and that could only hurt the state's technology sector

BFD. In the first place, telco is a defined common carrier. In the second place, the ISP has a TOS. Make the fucker enforce it or snuff him.

Lost revenue to the state? Kiss my ass. If a state is suporting itself on spam, kick their ass out of the Union.

Re:How sad!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because in the rest of the world, most of the kids aren't complete idiots. :)

Re:How sad!

[fmaxwell]

isn't this in itself more concerning than any number of unwarranted e-mails?

No. When cigarettes can cause a life-long addiction, cancer, emphysema, and death, the last thing you want is to risk having children decide to start smoking before they are young enough to understand the risks.

Alcohol is an issue because of the number of vehicular deaths caused by drunk driving. I don't trust an 18 year old to drink responsibly and I'm not willing to put society at risk so that high-school seniors can have keg parties.

It's really idiotic for us to even allow people to start smoking given what we now know about the health effects. You can talk all you want about personal freedom and responsibility, but people who live with smokers have a much higher incidence of respiratory illness, too. If cigarettes were just invented today, there would be zero chance that anyone would be allowed to sell them. Congress should pass a law banning the sale of cigarettes to anyone who is not 18 at the time of the bill's passage. It's time to say "enough" and keep people from taking up this stupid, offensive, and dangerous habit.

Re:How sad!

[Anonymous Coward]

it makes sense to go after the ISP if they can't tell you who the spammer is. esp. if they have anonymous relays enabled, don't monitor for abuse on their systems and effectively allow it, or aren't keeping their systems secure against at least known vulns and such. Once they've taken the first step, then you can go after the spammers (because you might actually have a chance at knowing who they are). But if they aren't pulling their part of the bargain, if they haven't done at least due diligence, they are just as bad as the penis enlargement spammers.

Re:How sad!

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I'd like to see both raised to 80. Of course more people would start reach that age if they weren't killed by a drunk driver and weren't breathing second-hand smoke.

Now this would work..

[brunox]

Oh well, this could work, cause main reason to send spam is that it is cheap and that it would be very hard to punish someone for doing such a thing.

A law like that one could stop spammers, but it will not, just because, spam, as well as mp3 sharing, can be done with the use of a remote host, which can be anywhere outside Utah, outside the US (outside earth? not yet.... )

Im not sure on how to stop spam, blocking lists seems to be a good option, but the law just don't reach the Internet.

Spammers, free speach freedom fighters?!?!?

[Calculus Brown]

A recent court decision came down on the side of long distance phone carries who relentlessly call people who are perfectly happy with thier current LD carriers. If I recall correctly (that means I couldn't find the original artical) the suit was based on a state passing a law impossing fines and/or restrictions on who and when the companies could call. ....So here is the tightrope, get spammers (and the companies that back them) to get spam and thus HTML code recognized as free speech at these companies expense. Then use that as a precedent for other types of code thus saving the EFF some serious bucks! Is spam a small enough price to pay for this?

Calculus Brown
So, line up, sign up, AND BEND OVER!

Not a good idea

[WCMI92]

I DESPISE SPAM'ers, but I despise the thought of the government and trial lawyers getting their greasy mitts into the net even more.

What irks me the most about some of the SPAM I get (over a hundred a day, so many that I've just started filtering whole domains, especially foreign ones) are the ones from LEGIT companies and sites, stuff I've signed up to get.

Such as news headlines from All Access, etc (I run a radio news site, and like to keep up on news items to post). Well, they, among others, have started using the lowball techniques that VeriSign's SPAMM'ers (easily the MOST obnoxious non-porn or scam SPAM on the net), in randomizing their e-mail sender.

The purpose of which is to defeat you inbox filtering (I use Agent) which I use to shunt mailing list e-mail, and news updates from All Access among others to their own folders so as to make the 200+ emails a DAY I get organized so that I MIGHT actually be able to make sense of them...

All of which is done, of course, because for some reson, marketers think they MUST be in your Inbox or else, they don't want you filtering.

In my case, getting into my Inbox makes you LESS likely to be read...

Also, I've pretty much had to make up folders and filters for the domains of all the popular "free" e-mail services, such as Yahoo! and Hotmail, so much SPAM arrives from those addresses daily. Which makes it LESS liklely that anyone needing to send me something using one of those services to get my notice, as 99% of the stuff I receive from those two domains are SPAM.

Anyone else resorted to this? I'm starting to get more and more SPAM from aol.com, as well, making me consider doing the same to them...

Re:Not a good idea

[paule9984673]

If you'd really get that much SPAM, you could make a living selling it. Hint: It's spam you're talking about. SPAM is a meat product.

Re:Not a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're filtering based on email address, your filters are ineffective. It also is an indicator that you are using Outlook Express which has the lamest filtering of any email package. If you simply made a filter that moved spam not containing your email address in the To: or Cc: field, all your spam would be filtered. But, alas, you can't make a filter like that in OE.

libility and finding the bastards

[_ph1ux_]

only problem with this is that finding the source of the spam and actually holding them accountable will likely be a big problem.

also - who is truely responsible for the *sending* of the email e.g: the guy who was on /. a while ago about making such a great living at being a spammer etc - he provides a service to people who want to send out shitloads of spam. Under this law - who is liable for the spam - the _sender_ or the _client_ of the service?

so - if you go after spammers and you find that the email you are getting comes from someone like this said spammer guy, do you have the legal right to demand client info from him - and can you sue both him (sender) and his client for 100/email each (totalling 200/email)

the other isue is the time it will take to try to track down these people when you have false headers etc.. and when they are in china or some such country where it would be hopeless to track them....

Re:libility and finding the bastards

[benwaggoner]

Well, from a legal perspective, you want to make BOTH crimes. Already anti-spam pressure has kept most legitimate businesses away from doing it.

In essence, we want to make it as socially and legally difficult to admit to being in any way distributing or profiting from spam as, say being in any way distributing or profiting from stolen car parts.

Re:libility and finding the bastards

[Saib0t]

Under this law - who is liable for the spam - the _sender_ or the _client_ of the service?

I don't really know the answer, but my guess would be both. My logic is the following:
It is illegal to kill. Both the hit man and the person who paid him to kill are liable.

I think a basis is that you cannot shield yourself from the law by having someone else break the law in your stead.

Just my 2 Eurocents.

Re:libility and finding the bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

so - if you go after spammers and you find that the email you are getting comes from someone like this said spammer guy, do you have the legal right to demand client info from him - and can you sue both him (sender) and his client for 100/email each (totalling 200/email)

Nope. Make it his call -- turn his ass out with financial penalties. If he wants to relieve his pain by handing over the client, hand him the forms to sign. Otherwise, keep pumping. And call a few oversize friends.

Last time I checked...

[acydophyte]

Last time I checked, its pretty difficult for ISPs to trace where an email came from. So under this surmise, how would the wonderful state of Ohio instate these fines? Spammers suck, but most aren't stupid enough to break the law and make themselves traceable too.

Re:Last time I checked...

[deaconblues]

Actually, it's not difficult. Headers are pretty instructive to trace stuff back. Besides, in order for a spam run to make any money, there has to be some way for someone to contact the spammer: email, telephone, webpage, whatever. That's a link to trace from as well. I would venture to say a very, very large portion of all the spam out there comes from a handful of spammer gangs that are fairly notorious in the anti-spam community. A law that holds ISP responsible for pink contracts would cripple these gangs overnight. The biggest thing this kind of law will do is to raise the costs of spamming to a point where it's not profitable to do it anymore. Right now, spammers are at risk of losing an ISP account or a webhosting contract. Under this sort of law, they are at risk of losing their homes.

A nice idea

[SquireCD]

This news makes me pretty happy for our futures of spam but... This being Utah & Ohio could create a bigger problem with shared information on the internet. If the boundies of this(these) law(s) are confined to Utah & Ohio then spammers will either ignore the law all together OR they will start passing off information of where you live, as to avoid states with this new bill. That's a little worrysome to me.

I don't know if a Federal law would help much either. That could do the exact same thing. None the less, this changes the rules a little and that is comforting to me.

Here's a tip for all you guys who hate spam as much as I do. Check out SpamCop.net. I've noticed a slight (any decline is good to me) decline in my spam since I've been using spamcop. You forward (with the header) the spam to the email address you signed up to get and they will process and track the spam and then allow you to email the spam's ISP straight from their forum. It's really nice. Check it out, and it's free!

What about snail mail junk mail?

[lord13]

This is all well and good, but what about the miscellaneous crap that fills my snail-mail box at home? I'd love to fill out a card at the post office to stop recieving all of that junk, which I never even read (except the Victoria's Secret catalogs). I would think that all of the paper that stuff is printed on consumes a far greater number of natural resources as opposed to spam email.

**sigh**

Re:What about snail mail junk mail?

[deaconblues]

You have to understand that those of us in the lumber cartel (tinu) are working very hard to elmiminate electronic commerce so that we can continue to sell lumber to be cut down for postal mailings. Really, it's quite obvious if you look at it. Lumber Cartel member 2423

Re:What about snail mail junk mail?

[Jim the Anti-Bob]

But USPS gets paid for every piece of junk mail that gets delivered. Do you think they are complaining? Hell, they can't even cover their a$$ as is...

Re:What about snail mail junk mail?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't mess with my winter energy supply :)

Don't forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Services like Spamcop, you don't need to pay for it, and I've managed to reduce my spam to almost nothing, and it really hurts the spammers

Re:Don't forget

[/dev/trash]

Spamcop is okay. But I still get 3 or 4 daily spams from customoffers.com.

Hoo-Rah

[Jim the Anti-Bob]

Very well said!!!

Make spam even more expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Click this link. This is where the spamware authors advertise their vile services. Use the slashdot effect, click every link and make them pay!

Additional legislation *IS* the solution

[dananderson]

This is a good example of capitalism, with all it's faults, helping solve the problem. No need to depend on government prosecutors or police to stop spam (they have enough to do!).

Yes, give the lawyers (like them or not), CASH INCENTIVES to stop spam now and GET RICH QUICK!!!!! HURRY--DON'T DELAY. SPAMMERS ARE STANDING BY!

It workes without legislation.

[cornice]

I live in Utah. Yea, yea, I know. Anyway, a few months ago one of the users on my network stopped me in the hall to say he had just sent an e-mail in reply to a spam requesting that he be removed from the spammer's list. I got all upset and explained (again) that all that does is confirm to the spammer that he has a live address. Then he explained that he had told the spammer that he would sue him under some bogus Utah law. He made up the number and title, etc. I was only mildly amused until the next day when he received a personal reply from the spammer. He apologized and said he would not use the address anymore. I was amazed. I don't expect this to ever work again but at least now we have the law behind us. Oh yea, I also find it typical that the Utah law has as much to do with stopping sexually explicit mail as it does with stopping spam in general. I guess that this is where the political support comes from. Don't you wish your state had it's own Porn Csar?

Re:It workes without legislation.

[Jim the Anti-Bob]

explained (again) that all that does is confirm to the spammer that he has a live address

That isn't necessarily a truism. Just as there are different types of religions in the world, there are differnt types of a$$holes in the world of SPAM. Some 'spammers', like the kind your user apparently ran into, have bought lists of addresses and legitimately (through what particular delusion I don't know) think this is a lsit of users that wants to buy his/her product/service/whatever. This of course doesn't apply to the jacka$$es that forge headers and use open relays, but it does apply to at least some section of the spammer population.

Now, don't get me wrong, this crap pisses me of as much, if not much more, than the next Messaging SA. I just wanted to point out that some unsubscribe links are valid...

BTW, interesting info on the Utah law. It's always nice to see creepy religious conservatism working towards the common good. I think this might be the second time of heard of that happening... wait... never mind... this is the first :)

Re:It workes without legislation.

[tfoss]

Don't you wish your state had it's own Porn Csar

Hell yeah, sign me up for that job.

Oh wait.... nevermind.

-Ted

spammers vs. lawyers

[borg]

So now the spiel will be:

"Injured as a result of medical malpractice? Injured as a result of unsafe working conditions? Had an automobile accident? Received unsolicited commercial email? Call 1-800-scumbag now!"

I know the enemy of my enemy is supposed to be my friend...but this is pushing the limits.

Re:spammers vs. lawyers

[Tired_Blood]

The funny part is that the phone number looks legit. Would be funnier if it WAS that type of lawyer. And what about, "Decided to hop your neighbor's fence for a swim in their pool and drown?" (that one bends the rules of the 'attractive nuisance' laws).

I've found that the most annoying part of the spam I receive is forged headers. By simple inspection, most of them are forged. The way I see it, much of it could be eliminated by adopting a standard which uses semi-signed emails.
It doesn't have to be complicated either:

• Server 'A' (origin) sends to server 'B' (destination)
• 'A' keeps record of the signature and the destination.
• If the signature/destination entry doesn't get accessed (response) within X minutes, then the sender at 'A' will get the familiar error message.
• If 'A' does not have the signature on record, then 'B' dumps the email.

I've seen email services that provide signature-checks (hushmail, for one), but that's overkill for this example. Just some random number that gets put into the header and logged with destination at the origin. Delete the entry after some time since last access or when destination requests verification.

Also, this could be done at certain locations along an email's path, not necessarily at all of them. The verification requests would be a small price to pay wrt to traffic (limited qty of bytes per request/response) when compared to the multiple-k sized spam I tend to get.

Tracking emails would be much easier. Which brings up the disadvantage. The only disadvantage I can see is the inherent lack of anonymity, but most of this audience seems to be less concerned with that property of SMTP. If you're using un-encrypted email (most users) then you're not concerned with Big Bro or anonymity and this idea would most likely be embraced by most users.

I've heard bits and pieces of this idea before, but I haven't seen a complete construction.

Write your government officials

[Heem]

About the only recourse left in this society is to write your government officials. Ask them to help pass a law like this in your state. It's been mentioned that this will only stop spammers from those states - ok, well the more states that pass this law, the better for us.
Vote-Smart.Org
will help you to look up the Postal and Email addresses of everyone you need to write to.

Re:Write your government officials

[Jim the Anti-Bob]

Hmmm... so what would happen if we got them all listed with one of those SPAM outfits that really just won't quit sending mail (you know the ones I'm talking about)?

I wonder how long it would take for legislation to get passed then(!?)

Sorta OT, sorta not (alleged "opt-in" spams...)

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

On the subject of spam and legalities, I've lately gotten a couple of those "blackmail" spams, you know the ones politely worded "we request your permission to contact you" in the subject, but with instructions that essentially boil down to "If you don't want us and our affiliates to spam you senseless, reply to us so we can confirm your email address and sell it to another spammer".

Is this even legal? Basically, they are asserting that if I don't actively decline their "offer", (and open myself up to be spammed by anyone they sell my "confirmed" address to), they claim I am "consenting" to be spammed by them and all of their affiliates.....

If I refuse to contact them and they spam me anyway, will that constitute harassment of some sort?

Ironically, BOTH of the last two spamming companies (both of them seem to be set up specifically to spam on behalf of others) that have done this claim on their websites that they only use "triple opt-in" addresses, which is obviously a falsehood considering they wouldn't be contacting me at all if they weren't harvesting my email address from some other not-opted-into spam list or a website or something...and only the twisted mind of a spammer thinks "refusing contact" is the same as "Oh, please, spam me!"...

Re:Sorta OT, sorta not (alleged "opt-in" spams...)

[Jim the Anti-Bob]

So what happens if you reply to them and then have your messaging SA block their IP address range?

Re:Sorta OT, sorta not (alleged "opt-in" spams...)

[Dr.Dubious DDQ]

So what happens if you reply to them and then have your messaging SA block their IP address range?

That wouldn't do me much good when they take my name off of THEIR list then sell it to some other spammer with a different IP address...

I think public beatings may be the only potentially effective deterrent to spammers sometimes...

Re:Sorta OT, sorta not (alleged "opt-in" spams...)

[Jim the Anti-Bob]

I maintain a constantly growing list of 1,000 or so blocked addresses for one of my systems. There are a number of pay and free sites that host extremely comprehensive downloadable lists of known spammers/dialup servers/open relays etc... It's actually one of the better ways to prevent spam from entering your system...(?)

That's how I do it at least(?)

two sides to this... be careful what you wish for

[fortinbras47]

Utah passes anti spam legislation...

French court rules Yahoo can't host auctions for nazi memorabilia... Yahoo says it can't tell who is French...

Australian individual sues the Wall Street Journal (in Austrlia) for libel over an American news story on an American web server...

I'm all for anti-spam, but I would be more cautious before rooting states on in trying to assert their jurisdiction over the Internet. If US states can pass anti-spam legislation, sales tax laws won't be THAT far off. Just be careful what you wish for.

It isn't "Free Speech"!

[fmaxwell]

I think I'll exercise my right to free speech by scratching a message into the paint on your car. Certainly you would rather pay to have your car painted occasionally than give up a cherished right like free speech!

I have spent hours setting up filters, blocking domains, blocking IP blocks, setting up complex forwarding schemes, maintaining lists of trusted senders and domains, etc.. I have purchased spam filtering software and, more importantly, spent what could have been billable time configuring it. And I still have spams that get through occasionally and every now and then I bounce a legitimate message. No, spammers don't have a right to put me through that.

Free Speech means that you have a right to express yourself at your own expense, not mine. That's why junk faxes are illegal (47 USC 227).

Use of your bandwidth and storage

[yerricde]

But putting people into jail for sending emails to lists of people seems as wrong as putting someone in jail for port scanning or other things where there are likely to be legitimate actions that will be outlawed.

If somebody repeatedly sends you unsolicited messages with 120 KB Flash attachments, what are you to do? Let your ISP's provided mailbox fill up?

Re:Use of your bandwidth and storage

[expro]

Only if you have an incredibly bad ISP. If I were a simple AOL or MSN user, and I experienced this problem, I would take it up with AOL and expect a solution or get a different ISP. I seriously doubt good ISPs are not able to solve this problem.

Just because we have no law protecting children's feet does not mean that children have no shoes available to protect their feet, but it gives each provider the ability to balance the restrictions against the protections as appropriate, just as ISPs or others may provide.

Re:What a great way of mak^H^H^Hpaying money

[Anonymous Coward]

You've forgotten already that you're going to have to pay for your hotmail right about soon?

Pay to read spam

[yerricde]

As a participant in standards forums, I get dozens of spams a day, and I plan to set up filtering.

How do you filter a message that you haven't received? If you're talking about a procmail recipe or other client-side filter, then by the time the mail enters your local spool, you've already received, and paid your ISP to receive, the spam. It costs money to download data and to store it.

I've said it before....

[inherent]

...and I'll say it again....

Spam works simply because the marginal cost of 1 additional email is so low that the marginal gain of 1 additional email sent will ALWAYS be greater (which means that some kind of nation-wide policy like this stands a chance at fixing the situation by raising the marginal cost of email).

For example....

Suppose I do television advertising. As I buy more and more advertising, I come closer and closer to saturating my potential market with exposure to my advertisement. Say I'm buying advertisements during sitcoms. For each add I buy, I reach fewer people who have yet to be exposed to my advertisement than the last ad that I ran. Thus the marginal value of each ad I purchase goes down, while the cost remains equal (all other factors equal).

That means that eventually I will reach a point where the marginal cost of the ad is greater than the marginal value. At that point, I'll start losing money on the campaign, and quit running the ad.

Now, let's look at spam....

Each exposure still costs some finite amount of money. The difference is that the cost is TINY compared with television advertising. Suppose I spend $1,000 on a co-located server and the associated bandwidth (a totally arbitrary number). That server can probably send literally millions (if not billions) of emails in the month that my $1,000 paid for. It's obvious that the marginal cost of the spam campaign is TINY compared to the marginal cost of the television ad campaign.

That means that the spam campaign takes MUCH MUCH longer. Indeed, as the marginal cost of the spamming approaches zero (which it gets very close to), the number of mails it takes to reach the point where marginal cost = marginal value approaches infiniti (which means you won't ever stop sending mail).

It's simple economics. The only way to lessen spam (from a purely free-market standpoint) would be to increase the marginal cost of the email (or decrease the marginal value, but that's not going to happen, because there's always an idiot out there that can be scammed into sending you a $5 check). Increasing the marginal cost of the email could be done in lots of ways - but they mostly all involve giving up some of the freedoms which we're probably not willing to give up in exchange for freedom from some spam.

Re:I've said it before....

[EdMcMan]

Why bother with a colocated server? Most casual spammers will just get dialup or broadband, and use open relays. Otherwise, they just goto Verio, who doesn't really give a f!@# about spammers :(

Re:I've said it before....

[inherent]

My point is simply that even if they do it totally legally, it's profitable, and makes sound economic sense.

Re:sign them up...

[orthogonal]

Gee, and I bet when you were a kiddie you always wished you could be tough enough to be a bully.

SpamCop

[yerricde]

Last time I checked, its pretty difficult for ISPs to trace where an email came from.

If these guys can do it...

How do spammers make money?

[cpeterso]

How do spammers make money if they are difficult to track down? If a spammer uses false email headers and routes his spam through China to hide his identity, how does he expect me to pay him? How do spammers hide from law, but not from "MAKING MONEY FAST"?

Re:How do spammers make money?

[Azog]

Companies that spam know that what they are doing is illegal in many places, of course. They typically attempt to firewall themselves by hiring "independent" people to *cough* "send their advertising only to those who have requested it". You know.... " If you are receiving this mail, it is because you signed up for it!"

Then when those independent people spam every email address on the planet, if you go back to the company to complain, they would say (if you could pin them down), "oh dear, the independent advertising agent we hired must not have followed best practices, we asked them not to spam!"

"No, we can't really help you track them down and sue them, we just have a post office box address and a cashed cheque..."

"good luck... (giggle)"

So then you think: The solution is to make it explicit in law that companies are responsible for the actions of anyone they hire to advertise for them.

No, won't work. The company will claim to have never paid anyone to advertise (spam) for them. How will you prove it?

All you have is the company name and phone number on a spam bounced off some anonymous relay in Korea, and the company claims they had nothing to do with it. They will claim that someone is trying to make them look bad by forging spam from them. It might even be true.

My best idea is public execution of spammers, preferably by hanging. After the first few die on live TV, the others might become discouraged.

Re:How do spammers make money?

[jred]

My best idea is public execution of spammers, preferably by hanging. After the first few die on live TV, the others might become discouraged.

Sounds like a good idea to me. How about we start with murderers and rapists first, though?

Re:How do spammers make money?

[Anonymous Coward]

My best idea is public execution of spammers, preferably by hanging. After the first few die on live TV, the others might become discouraged.

Nope -- too lightweight. Correct answer: inflatable cock rings. Give the squeeze bulb to an ex-girlfriend. Tell her she's paid by the hour. She'll figure out what means job security.

Re:How do spammers make money?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a good idea to me. How about we start with murderers and rapists first, though?

While we're on a problem-solving binge, let's turn the spammers over to the murderers and rapists?

It's NOT A FREE SPEECH ISSUE.

[jcr]

Oh, for christ's sake. For the ten millionth bloody time, spam is NOT a free-speech issue. It's a PROPERTY RIGHTS issue.

The spammer can say any useless thing he wants to say, but he has NO LICENSE to use MY property to do so. My computer, my fax machine, my cell phone, and any other device that these degenerate free loaders want to use to steal their ad placements, are MINE, and not THEIRS.

Now, is that clear enough?

-jcr

Re:It's NOT A FREE SPEECH ISSUE.

[AJWM]

Hear, hear!

That's exactly right. (Although you left out "MY time" to deal with it.)

Re:It's NOT A FREE SPEECH ISSUE.

[foobar104]

I'm not going to get into the middle of the free speech issue, but I have to ask this question.

The spammer can say any useless thing he wants to say, but he has NO LICENSE to use MY property to do so. My computer, my fax machine, my cell phone, and any other device that these degenerate free loaders want to use to steal their ad placements, are MINE, and not THEIRS.

Do you believe that you, as the owner of a fax machine, have the right to control what kind of faxes people send you? This has nothing to do with speech, because you're not trying to control what people say. You're merely trying to control what people say to you. Is that a fair statement of your position?

If that's the case-- that you have the right to refuse any message based on content, sender, or other attributes-- then the question naturally arises, how are you supposed to exercise that control? It's not reasonable, as others have already said, that every person sending a fax or an email or a phone call should have to get permission from the recipient first. Among other things, how are you supposed to get permission without making some kind of unsolicited, possibly unwelcome, contact?

So we have a situation in which you have the right to control what comes into your inbox, or your fax machine, or over your phone. But you have absolutely no way to practically exercise that control without putting an undue burden on everybody else.

I don't necessarily disagree with your argument. It's your computer, so I think it's reasonable to think that you should be able to determine what comes into it. I'm just questioning how you would ever exercise that ability.

If you can't exercise the right, then a law prohibiting violating that right is pretty unreasonable, don't you think? The only law that could be both reasonable and effective would be a complete ban on all communication via that method. Anything less either doesn't work (you get the spam anyway, which doesn't solve your problem) or places an unreasonable burden on senders of email (who have to read your mind to know whether their message would be welcome).

I just don't see any way that a law restricting spam can actually result in less spam.

Myself, I would prefer the technological solution. I don't get much spam, mostly because I jealously guard my email address, so I'm okay with hitting the "bounce" button whenever I receive a piece. (Although that usually doesn't work, because my bounce just bounces.)

For my home phone, I would happily adopt a whitelist system, if I could figure out how. Any number that I don't explicitly accept goes straight into my voicemail system. Anybody that really needs to reach me has my private cell phone number; I've given that number to my mom, my girlfriend, my lawyer, and my accountant.

I've been toying with the idea of building a home telephone system using GNU Bayonne, but I just haven't gotten motivated to look into it.

Re:It's NOT A FREE SPEECH ISSUE.

[ramzak2k]

just applying your analogy wouldnt it be YOUR TV ! YOUR RADIO ! when u see and hear those ads? dont think property issue is the right analogy either. its simply a harrassment issue . Its something like a teenage guy stalking his college hottie

Re:It's NOT A FREE SPEECH ISSUE.

[jcr]

Do you believe that you, as the owner of a fax machine, have the right to control what kind of faxes people send you? This has nothing to do with speech, because you're not trying to control what people say. You're merely trying to control what people say to you. Is that a fair statement of your position?

No, I have no interest in controlling what people say to me, I have an interest in controlling the use of my property. As I said before, the spammer can say whatever they want to say, and they can even say it to me, but they may NOT use MY equipment to do so.

How they go about communicating to me when I disallow the use of my property for that purpose is their problem, not mine.

BTW, spamming made me much less tolerant of telemarketing. When people I don't know call me up to sell me something, (especially if they use an autodialer to do it, and leave me waiting while they route the call to a warm body,) the person who eventually gets connected to me will either hear a blue streak of cursing, a nice loud whistle in their ear, or a truly offensive and lurid description of their mother's sexual habits. My purpose in this is to make telemarketing as unpleasant a job as possible, and raise the cost of attrition for the boiler room operators.

-jcr

Re:It's NOT A FREE SPEECH ISSUE.

[expro]

I am quite certain that there are already caller-id-based whitelist systems available for the telephone. For me, I just watch the caller ID and only answer the phone when I want to talk to the caller.

Re:It's NOT A FREE SPEECH ISSUE.

[foobar104]

No, I have no interest in controlling what people say to me, I have an interest in controlling the use of my property. As I said before, the spammer can say whatever they want to say, and they can even say it to me, but they may NOT use MY equipment to do so.

Okay, but I think you may have missed my point. You really can't exercise that kind of control. It's just not possible. There's no way for you to know what kind of message will be sent until you receive it, which defeats the whole purpose. So the sender is faced with having to secure your permission before sending the message, which is an unreasonable burden.

It just can't work. You may have the right to control how other people use your phone, fax machine, or in box, but you have no practical means to exercise that control. Other than just disconnecting the device or devices entirely, of course.

Re:It's NOT A FREE SPEECH ISSUE.

[foobar104]

My girlfriend is a surgical resident. When she's not working an all-night shift, she goes to bed at about 8:30 or 9:00 and gets up a 4:00 AM. Some people insist on calling our house at 9:00, 10:00, even 11:00 PM. It's almost always a wrong number, but once it was important. I'd like a system that prevents unauthorized callers from ringing my phone and waking up my girlfriend. She's cranky enough on seven hours' uninterrupted sleep. On less, she's a monster.

Like all technological innovations, this one is the result of some guy trying to impress some girl.

Re:It's NOT A FREE SPEECH ISSUE.

[jcr]

You may have the right to control how other people use your phone, fax machine, or in box, but you have no practical means to exercise that control.

It's like any other petty crime. I may not be able to prevent the trespass or theft before the fact, but I can retaliate. The legislation that's being proposed in Ohio and Utah is a means to retaliate. Spammers today face almost no consequences, and that has to change.

-jcr

mcafee spamming for anit-spam

[jimjamjoh]

The irony is that even companies ostensibly engaged in assisting end-users in the fight against spam are perpetuating the problem. Just yesterday, I was spammmed by McAfee with an advertisment for thier new "SpamKiller" product.

These guys are worse than insurance salesmen...

UNIVERSITY DIPLOMA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh drat! Now I'll never earn my free University Diploma online.

Honestly, not trying to troll...

[httpamphibio.us]

I understand the annoyance of spam, I've had the same email address for 10 years and I get several hundred pieces a day. What I simply don't understand is the fact that junk mail is still legal. Yes, I'm aware that spam can theoretically waste time at work, and it takes up electrical enery to send, but real life junk mail wastes tons and tons of paper, gas from delivering it, more time spent by the mail man, etc.

When are we going to see law suits against junk mail? I'd love that.

Re:Honestly, not trying to troll...

[fishbowl]

>When are we going to see law suits against junk
>mail? I'd love that.

When several things change:

1. The junk (snail) mail arrives COD, and paying for it becomes compulsory.

2. The cost of disposal of the junk mail falls on you.

3. The post office will deliver the junk mail even at the expense of not delivering regular mail.

Those are the factors that differentiate spam from junk mail.

Re:Honestly, not trying to troll...

[Vegeta99]

2. The cost of disposal of the junk mail falls on you.

It does. Or, rather, it does in cities that Ban the Barrel/Burner. For years, we would just take our garbage out to the burner barrel, but now it's either pay $whatever/bag or toss it in someone's dumpster.

Won't make any difference for most everybody

[fire-eyes]

This is just a state law. We need to get serious and have a similar law passed at the federal level.

A Resolution!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, I've got a brilliant idea! I'll go move to Utah, go to a porn-site located in Utah, and enter my e-mail address in any textbox I see! I'll be a millionare in no time! Yoopdiedoo!

Siighhh....

When SPAM is outlawed

[evilviper]

When spamming is outlawed in your state, then only people outside your state will be able to spam.

Outlaw everything you don't like and soon no one will be able to do anything. I would much rather seek technological methods of spam filtering (e-mail, faxes and phone calls) than see any more rights revoked.

The quickest way to an authoritarian state is to pass laws that make everyone an outlaw, and selectively enforce those laws.

----
A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them for a century.
--Baron de La Brede et de Montesquieu

Re:When SPAM is outlawed

[foobar104]

When SPAM is outlawed....

I just want to point out that the Hormel people have been incredibly cool about the use of the word "spam" to describe junk email. They could have been right bastards about it, but instead all they ask is that the public use "spam" to talk about junk email and reserve "SPAM" (all caps) to talk about their food product thing.

So let's avoid calling it SPAM, if for no other reason to just show the Hormel people the respect they deserve.

I also want you to know that this comment may have sounded sarcastic, but it really, really wasn't. Amazingly.

Re:When SPAM is outlawed

[evilviper]

You're incorrect. They were bastards about it to begin with.

Even if that was not so, they did not just ask that Spam be refered to in all caps. In fact, they suggested as follows:

Follow SPAM with "Luncheon Meat" or other descriptor.
-- http://www.spam.com/hp/hp_lg.htm

So, you might have had a point if I said "When SPAM Luncheon Meat is Outlawed...".

Given the context, I don't believe confusion between the two is a problem.

Also, the term, although trademarked, can really be considered public domain at this point.

So, I really don't care:

Don't come over here
And piss on my gate
Save it just keep it
Off my wave

--Soundgarden, 'My Wave'

Re:When SPAM is outlawed

[foobar104]

You should have kept reading.

We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE [unsolicited commercial email], although we do object to the use of our product image in association with that term. Also, if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used with all uppercase letters.

It's not about confusion. It's about respecting the wishes of a third party that has every right to get pissed off over this use of the word "spam."

Naturally, if you want to announce that you "really don't care," nobody can stop you. Of course, that would make you an asshole, so that course of action comes with its own set of problems.

Re:When SPAM is outlawed

[evilviper]

It's about respecting the wishes of a third party that has every right to get pissed off over this use of the word "spam."

I'm sure movie makers don't want negative reviews of their movies. I'm sure Microsoft hates the spelling of their TM with a $ in place of the S.

But hey, you've got a good tactic. If it's something you don't like, call it a bad name.

although we do object to the use of our product image in association with that term.

So, go after the /. admins for using a picture of a can of Spam in spam articles. They're certainly much bigger fish than I am.

Re:When SPAM is outlawed

[foobar104]

But hey, you've got a good tactic. If it's something you don't like, call it a bad name.

A more concise definition of "asshole," I've never heard. My hat's off to you. Asshole.

So, go after the /. admins for using a picture of a can of Spam in spam articles. They're certainly much bigger fish than I am.

As I said in my original post, I'm just making a point, here. I'm not "going after" anybody. It's hard to believe, though, that it's too much trouble for you to type "spam" instead of "SPAM."

Re:When SPAM is outlawed

[evilviper]

I'm really not sure if you're Trolling, or astroturfing...

Care to elaborate?

Re:When SPAM is outlawed

[foobar104]

I'm really not sure if you're Trolling, or astroturfing...

Do you actually know what either of those words means? Seriously, can you define them?

Re:When SPAM is outlawed

[evilviper]

Do you actually know what either of those words means? Seriously, can you define them?

Can't look them up on your own huh? No problem.

Troll: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/troll .html

Astroturfing:
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon /html/entry/astro turfing.html

Re:When SPAM is outlawed

[foobar104]

Now that you've learned what they mean, can you tell me (and the rest of our loyal listening audience) how, exactly, you think they apply to me in this situation? Do you think I'm trolling? Do you think I'm a paid employee of Hormel? Are you even remotely thinking these things through before you post them?

Re:When SPAM is outlawed

[evilviper]

Do you think I'm trolling? Do you think I'm a paid employee of Hormel?

As I said, it's one or the other.

Re:When SPAM is outlawed

[foobar104]

If you would like to stop looking foolish, you might consider backing that statement up somehow.

Like I said, that's only if you want to stop looking foolish.

Re:When SPAM is outlawed

[evilviper]

Well, this is past boring. You keep putting out just a little bit to try spuring me on. You're on your own. If you'd like to continue playing the name-calling game, you go right ahead. I won't even waste the energy reading them.

Re:When SPAM is outlawed

[foobar104]

Okay, thanks.

False argument that ISPs need spam revenue

[dananderson]

It's a false argument that ISPs need spam revenue. It's a big headache except for a few ISPs that may specialize in spammers. It causes their legitimate customers to be blocked in spam lists, overloads the ISPs pipes, and gets a lot of abuse complaints for the spam customer.

If the Spam-needed-for-competition argument is true, then China and Korea would have the best hosting companies around.

This wont work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look. Read the articles, people have sued and the spammers used false names and addressses so no one shows up. Impossible to use litigiation to stop spam. The real solution is find a few, 3 or 4 is really all we need, spammers. Show up at there workplace and break there knee caps with a baseball bat. The word will get out. Maybe do another one every 6 weeks or so just to make sure they know were still paying attention. A little violence can go along way. The media will blow it out of preportion like usual, thats what there for. And suddenly. Every spammer thinks, hey, someone could show up and break my knee caps. This will stop it in a hurry. Violence is the only answer that works with some people. The laws dont protect us. There a joke.

Re:This wont work.

[Kredal]

Offtopic, I know... so mod me down, I can afford 2 karma points.

But you used the word "there" three times, incorrectly!!!

There: Somewhere other than here
Their: Owned by them
They're: They are.

Show up at there workplace WRONG
thats what there for WRONG
There a joke WRONG

You're an idiot. (not your)

Utah law--good or ineffective?

[moncyb]

I found the Utah law here.

It looks like you still have to opt-out, so I'm not sure how effective this law will be at stopping spam. One good point, it seems to make forging headers illegal.

Ohio/Utah ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who gives a fuck ?

finding them and making them pay

[NFW]

Spam from china (or anywyere) still usually (IME) advertises a business with a phone number or web site in the US. Spam advertisements only work if there's a way for the recipient to contact the sender so they can do business, so there will almost always be a way to track down the business being advertised.

Then the trick is to show that the business being advertised actually paid for the spamming, and than they weren't framed. You can expect them to deny it.

Re:finding them and making them pay

[hamjudo]

I just recieved a spam advertizing DISH Network, it channels people through redirect.virtumondo.com to www.vmcsatellite.com. I assume that the spammer would get a commission if I signed up through the URL in the spam.

A well crafted law would induce virtumondo.com, VMC Satellite and DISH Network to cooperate in tracking down the spammer. The law should support suing and/or fining non-cooperating businesses.

It's entirely possible that VMC Satellite and DISH Network were framed. If so, they should be happy to help track down the spammer(s).

I live in Michigan, which doesn't have any anti=spam laws yet. It's election time. The state legislature is easy to contact now. What law should I suggest they pass for Michigan?

Re:finding them and making them pay

[Just Some Guy]

A well crafted law would induce virtumondo.com, VMC Satellite and DISH Network to cooperate in tracking down the spammer. The law should support suing and/or fining non-cooperating businesses.

It's entirely possible that VMC Satellite and DISH Network were framed. If so, they should be happy to help track down the spammer(s).

And how much cooperation would you expect from them? Would they be more liable to cooperate than, say, the tiny company I own? What if someone forged spam to look like I sent it. How much do I have to do to clear my name?

Nope, sorry, that won't work at all. Under the Constitution (for us 'merkins), we are considered innocent until proven guilty. You can't force an innocent person to do any such thing as track down their impersonators.

Re:finding them and making them pay

[hamjudo]

Nope, sorry, that won't work at all. Under the Constitution (for us 'merkins), we are considered innocent until proven guilty. You can't force an innocent person to do any such thing as track down their impersonators.

In the USA, you can be compelled to testify in a court of law, if the judge decides that your testimony is material to a case. Likewise, the judge can approve search warrants for your property and/or business records.

The trick is crafting the laws such that innocent parties are not unduly burdened, while preventing companies from using commission based sales as a means to avoid anti-spam laws.

Re:finding them and making them pay

[Anonymous Coward]

It's entirely possible that VMC Satellite and DISH Network were framed. If so, they should be happy to help track down the spammer(s).

Yep -- simple solution -- turn out your proxy or bend over yourself. Law enforcement does it to people on a daily basis and IT WORKS.

we do, but this is not a free speech issue

[NFW]

It's not about what you have to say, it's about how you say it.

I am allowed to say "Buy my artwork." I'm allowed to put that on a web site, tell it to my friends, tell it to random passersby on the street, say it in an on the radio or on TV, etc, etc.

But I'm not allowed to say it while standing on your own at 3am with a bullhorn aimed at your window, nor am I allowed to erect billboards wherever I please to get the message across, nor am I allowed to say it in an email message sent to complete stranger, unless I follow the requirements set forth in the laws of Utah, Ohio, Washington, and other states with laws that regulate this sort of thing.

It's not about free speech. It doesn't run afoul of the first amendment, for the same reason that laws about disturbing the peace do not run afoul of the first amendment. Everyone is still free to say whatever they please - they're just not free to use other peoples' resources to say it.

Re: what about extradition

[freaq]

branching OT:
a friend and i were discussing the peltier case recently, and a good question came up:

when was the last time a u.s. citizen was extradited from the u.s. to canada, to face charges on a crime alleged to have been committed in canada?

or, for that matter, to any country?

YESSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!

[Asprin]

WOOHOO! IT'S ABOUT TIME!

I'm so excited about these developments, I'm gonna send automated emails to everyone in my database letting them know the good news!!!!

Simple scenarios

[expro]

How do recipients of mailing lists decide which messages are off-topic enough to be illegal. Those they do not agree with? What if I know of two big email lists I want to spam. I cross-subscribe them using two simple subscription requests, and it seems not hard to do if I am forging email headers since the request for cross-authentication goes to the whole list. Now, everyone who sends email to one of the lists is spamming the other list, completely off-topic, and can be sued?

Where do these laws pertain?

[sean23007]

I just took the liberty of reading my state's (MN) laws regarding spam and unsolicited commercial email. Apparently, if the email has forged the domain name or contains misleading information in the subject line, I, as the recipient, am eligible for $25 per message, or $35000 per day, whichever is less. In addition to this, if I never consented to receiving such email (which I assume would be nearly impossible for me to prove, considering the fact that all they have to demonstrate is that they have my email address) and the subject line is not started off with the three characters "ADV" then I am eligible to receive $10 per message or $25000 per day, whichever is less.

My question is as follows: if the message originated in my own home state, Minnesota, I am sure I could bring legal action against the perpetrator. If, on the other hand, the message originated in another state, perhaps North Dakota, where there are no laws prohibiting spam, or even another country, perhaps Canada, would I have precedent to bring action against them? They cannot make a case that they do not know what state I am in, considering the fact that my email address is in the .mn.us domain. Does email fall under some kind of interstate trade agreement? If so, wouldn't it be subject only to federal law if it passes state boundaries?

I know these are a lot of questions, but I am surprised and delighted to learn that in my home state I can bring action (and get reimbursed) for each and every unwanted spam email message that I get, and I want to be armed with as much knowledge as possible. Thanks for your time if you have anything to add to this conversation.

How To Get Off A (Snail) Mailing List (and others)

[tlambert]

The Direct Marketing association provides for getting off mailing lists for ADVCO and other snail-mail SPAM, via a registration. They try to get you to pay a $5 fee for doing this online; but they also provide a printable form that has no fee atached (ther than a postage stamp). See:

http://www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailinglistda ve

There is a similar telephone list:

http://www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offtelephonedave

I would recommend *against* registering to opt out of email via this method, since they do not indicate whether the list is published, or if it removes addresses from a list which is uploaded by the marketer (i.e. "remote cleaning"); however, you can do so at:

http://www.dmaconsumers.org/consumers/optoutform _e mps.shtml

There is no fee for email opt-out (probably because it doesn't work; I have yet to see an email advertisement with their magic legal statement).

-- Terry

target Utah

[Anonymous Coward]

So if there's a company you don't like in Utah, you can just forge email in their name (and use their postal address) and send it through a hacked machine in China or someplace to a zillion Utah residents. Sit back and watch a competitor spend all their time defending lawsuits?

Removal link database

[Anonymous Coward]

What about creating a website that collects the required "remove me from your mailing list" links at the bottom of the spams? Then anyone could go there and submit their e-mail address which would automatically be sent to all the opt-out services. Obviously not all spammers include the required removal link but it might help some.

WA rolls on w/case

[Anonymous Coward]

The WA State Attorney General is sending out paperwork for victims of the spammer in Oregon they sued. Looks like it's going to trail soon.

If Porn mail was free speech, my mailbox....

[Anonymous Coward]

would be full of it. If Explicit Pornographic mail was "Free Speech" then why don't we see this in our snail mail boxes? Simple... its because its most likely against the law to fill someone's mailbox up with pornography that is unsolicited.

Re:If Porn mail was free speech, my mailbox....

[expro]

Then why do we get it in our email? It is certainly not less-prosecutable as email. You make the opposite case -- that we need a technological solution.

So, Let's Rearrange the Formula. . .

[PhxBlue]

1. Move to Ohio.
2. Whore E-mail address to spammers.
3. Sue spammers for UCE.
4. ???
5. Profit!

Nah, too many steps. It'll never work.

Speaking from experience...

[Anonymous Coward]

who has sued nearly 20 spammers in WA Small Claims Court, I will note the following.

Location of the spammer doesn't matter, as long as they are in the USA. Most state consumer protection acts state that if you do business in that state, you submit to the laws of that state. In my experience, most of the companies are in CA or FL.

It's more effective to go after the company paying for the spam (the debt consolidator, pill peddler etc) rather than the guy sending the spam, who is usually service and/or judgment proof. The company will often claim they didn't know about the spam, but 99% of the time they are full of BS. Sometimes I do run across someone who appears to have made an honest mistake, so I'll just tell them not to spam me again and I drop it (and then if they do spam you, nuke 'em).

Tracking them down isn't that hard. You can forget about technical methods - focus on social engineering. I respond to the offer with a madeup name and my voicemail number. Keep the voicemail for use in court, and take a screenshot of the form you submitted. Also, remember to take local copies of any websites or other HTML that might disappear.

When you get a response, call them back and ask for their company name and address. I always google on their info to see what else I can turn up as well. Look that up their corporate info at the respective Secretary of State, then send their registered agent a demand for damages by certified mail, and offer to settle for a reasonable amount. If they don't respond, file suit and serve them the notice of the suit.

Many companies won't turn up to court, or they will turn up, lose and then ignore judgments. No problem - once you get the judgment, send it to Dun and Bradstreet collection services (sbs.dnb.com) for $25 and they will try and collect it. If the company doesn't pay, their D&B credit record will be littered with comments about 'unpaid court judgment'. Obviously this works best with larger companies.

Cost for filing a case in WA Small Claims $25.
Cost of service via certified mail $5.
Dun and Bradstreet debt collection service $25.
Total cost $55.

The look on a spammers face when he just ruined his companies credit: Priceless

I have thousands of spams archived (learn to save them) and 70 separate cases I am tracking. I've won or settled every one of the cases I have filed, and the proceeds have paid for a new P4 laptop and a bunch of other cool toys.

Lots more info at smallclaim.info

Oh great, more litigation

[Anonymous Coward]

This is going to bite us right in the ass.

The solution to spam is technology, not litigation.

We need a better e-mail transport technology to eliminate the source of the problem. Why? Because laws can be re-interpreted and misused to screw the people who own less lawyers.

Maybe you're all breathing a sigh of releif, that those nasty spammers are finally going to get what they deserve. But soon, there will be an incident where the big corporation uses the anti-spam laws against the random jaded consumer, to slap them down for daring to e-mail a complaint about poor service. And we'll all say "but that's not what the law was intended for," mouths agape, incredulous that we've been duped once again by the oh-so-reliable American judicial system.

Ludicrous? How about the time we all bitched about cybersquatters, got a law created, and then watched as innocent people get taken to court by companies with deep pockets? In an age where hyperlinking is made a criminal offense I do not consider myself safe from any law's misuse.

Just wait, you'll see. Dance with the devil (a.k.a. lawyers) and you're going to get burned. Technology is the solution.

Are you sure you want to find the spammers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read this before you track down your neighborhood spammer!

You may not like what you find!

It's about time..

[brainboy17]

I'm only hoping that throughout all of this, the state I live in (Washington) will also enact laws to protect people from spam so that companies that promote this trash are punished for the continued harassment of PC users. I'm sick of opening up Outlook Express and seeing my inbox bombarded with useless junkmail that I have no use for. 20-30 messages, and sometimes even more, plague my email system and my block list and mail rules list is a mile long just to stifle the flow even a little. Only a few messages are relevant but wading through piles of junk just to get to those emails is frustrating enough. People out there might think this is frivolous. But it's not. Imagine a company you owned being flooded with spam? You would have to wade through all of that junk just to find emails that applied to you. It costs me time and money to sort through email and any law that can save said funds is a good law. Who cares if people that earn money from spam are hurt by such laws? They chose to do something that the majority of the population despises and it's their fault. Advertising can be made via more acceptable alternatives than churning out millions of emails to people in the hopes that a handfull might respond. People who wish to break FCC regulations and state laws just so Joe B. PCUser can read about some new mortgage broker or what have you DESERVE all the lawsuits they get. These spammers even go so far as to forge email headers to hide their information just to break the law. My only hope is that eventually all unsolicited advertising is brought to a screeching halt. Telemarketers, junk email, and even junk mail in your mailbox needs to stop. Otherwise we're all doomed to perpetual and costly spam. It's evil, it's illegal, and by God I hope that everyone takes part in it starts paying out their noses for it. Then maybe they'll get a clue....

forging headers will now be *forgery* in Ohio

[jonadab]

Great to see my home state finally doing _something_. It's too
little, of course. For a consumer to prosecute, he's got to
have followed the spammer's "remove me" instructions, which is
absurd. So that part of the bill is useless, or nearly.

The ISP part is more interesting. If I read it right, they
(the ISP) have to put their AUP on a public webpage (which they
all already do, pretty much) _and_ make sure the SMTP server
notifies the sending server of this during the SMTP transaction.
(The bill doesn't say SMTP, of course, and actually is general
enough to cover IM and such as well, I think.) Should be no
problem; just tweaking your 220 response should do, if I read
it right (though IANAL).

But, as my subject hints, the MOST interesting part of this
bill by FAR is the last little thing, tagged on almost like
an afterthought, point H. If I read _that_ right (IANAL),
forging any mail headers in any way, and _specifically_ the
From: header, is now _officially_ forgery, according to
Ohio's definition of forgery. Now, IANAL, but that sounds
more interesting to me than the whole rest of it together.
Forgery -- isn't that a _criminal_ charge? Couldn't we
potentially be talking _jailtime_ for that? _That_ might
be a deterrent. Plus, they deserve it. And almost all
spammers forge the From: header routinely, so they should
just about all qualify, if anyone takes the trouble to
prove who sent the $#@! stuff.

Of course, getting the spammers to come to Ohio so we
can sue or prosecute them, that could be the hangup.
Guess we'll just have to get other states and countries
to enact similar measures. But this adds to the amount
of extant precedent, which is surely a good thing.

Unfortunately, this and all other legal definitions
of spam that I've found only cover _commercial_ spam.
Still, commercial spam is far and away the majority
of all spam, so controlling that is the most important
thing. The noncom stuff, while annoying, doesn't have
quite the same ability to inundate until the real mail
gets lost in the shuffle.

Combine this with Vipuls Razor and...

[epeus]

Not much uptake on my anti-spam plan, so here's another:

Combine Vipul's Razor with lawsuits against spammers

When you get spam, you forward it to a special email address, which aggregates it and keeps your address. When there are enough copies to justify a case, the lawyers track down the spammer and file a class action, using whichever spam laws apply. They disperse the damages back via PayPal, keeping a percentage themselves.

republished from my weblog

Spam and Slashdot have brought me joy!

[palmech13]

Who'd have thought Spam and Slashdot would ever make me happy to live in Ohio?

Hot diggity. Now where'd I put that lawyer...

And has spam ever given you such joy?

[John Harrison]

I think not! Telemarketers are a unique class in that since they have violated common courtesy by calling you, you are free to treat them badly. Not that I would encourage such a thing...

But they do provide a release that isn't available unless you are a shameless AC.

Re:And has spam ever given you such joy?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think not! Telemarketers are a unique class in that since they have violated common courtesy by calling you, you are free to treat them badly. Not that I would encourage such a thing...

I particularly enjoyed the prick who called me back immediately to counsel me on my rudeness in reading him out on his first call. He now knows the full power of a seaman's vocabulary.

Re:And has spam ever given you such joy?

[gorbachev]

re: I think not!

Oh yes, they have. Next time you send a spam complaint, cc the spammer. You've got about 1:5 odds he'll reply with a very entertaining rant.

If you get lucky, it'll appear to have been written by a five year old with tourette's syndrome.

Re:And has spam ever given you such joy?

[John Harrison]

I would rather not let them know that they have a live address, but I appreciate your point.

Re:And has spam ever given you such joy?

[cryptor3]

Aw but everybody loves Bernard Schifman!

Don't you want to have your own personal Bernard?

Missing the Point

[Inexile2002]

Your examples fall apart on even a cursory examination.

"If channels are publicly open, then expect to have to consume resources filtering it, just like you filter TV commercials, door-to-door salesmen, and junk mail."

TV ads, door to door salesmen and junk mailers (paper, not email) are all themselves paying to distribute their messages. Spammers are letting others foot the bill. Email may seem trivially expensive, but when a spammer sends out 10 million emails a week, there are real costs involved and the spammer is not the one paying them.

A couple of people have commented here that there is no right to not receive spam, and they are correct in that there are no rights on paper whatsoever regarding the internet. What people do have a right to do is control the resources they pay for. It's called property. Email is useless if people cannot send you a message, so you can't close it down to the outside world. However, it is totally legitimate to take steps to prevent people from abusing the system - it is totally legitimate to take steps to keep the spammers from dumping their costs on to the recipients.

Going after spammers for money it not the least bit unreasonable, they are advertising - this is an activity that should cost money. I'm not actually saying that spammers have no right to exist, I'm just saying that they have no right to expect other people to bear the cost burden of what they do.

I want a no-spam law, but instead of fines...

[Anonymous Coward]

I want spammers to be stripped naked, tied to the back of trucks, and dragged through fields of broken glass. Televise it around the clock and force mandatory viewing of it for any company that tries to send spam. Mount a spammer's severed head in the lobby of the corporate offices with a tag that reads "This could be you."

Re: Off with their heads.

[Art Popp]

My best idea is public execution of spammers, preferably by hanging. After the first few die on live TV, the others might become discouraged.

I hate to interrupt the formation of the new Nazi Party, but if you're curious as to whether you're standing on moral highground, substitute the word hacker for the word spammer in your post and the other "...Drawn and quartered, and burned, and then we jump on their ashes till our feet have blisters..." posts.

Spammers are easily the Net's most annoying feature. And since they press our hot button few people seem to mind when the same draconian tactics are used against them that were used against Kevin Mitnick. When corporations that testified against Mitnick claimed that he cost them thousands in damages, but didn't report any losses to their stock holders, the Internet community was quick to call foul (for all the good it did). But when the ball is in our court "justifiable costs" don't seem to apply. It does not cost me $100 per e-mail to hit the delete button. The ten spams I get a day don't cost anybody $1000 in bandwidth, storage, maintenance or any of the other exaggerated costs the /. crowd cites.

The bill calls for fines up to $50,000 dollars for "accidental violations." I don't know about the rest of you, but my first experience with m4 macros in the sendmail.cf file was not pretty. Did anybody but the author get it all right the first time?

When hundreds of thousands of dollars are at stake it becomes clear (to lawyers and congressfolk) that better tracking measures are needed. How many innocent ISPs will have to go out of business for "aiding and abetting" before "unsigned" e-mail is disallowed altogether. After all, the Federally Approved key database will be free in the beginning. The only people who wouldn't want to use it will be spammers, terrorists and drug dealers. How long will it be before you have to have a Microsoft Passport (tm, r, etc.) to send to an MSN subscriber. Is this the direction you want the net to take? We decide.

"...the Ohio law is a positive action in the war on spam..."

or is that "War on Terrorism" or "War on Drugs," or the War on our Freedom.

too little too late?

[stratjakt]

A couple days ago, when having to have slashdot remind my tired mind what my password was, I had it emailed, to the hotmail account I signed up with.

It took a full half an hour to sort through the spam that had collected in there, until I realized there was nothing that wasnt spam. After deleting it all, and realizing my password would not have been sent because my account had grown too full, I had good old slashdot send it again. This was about 2 or 3 hours later.

When I went to retrieve the password the second time, I already had 75 or so brand new spams, in the timeframe of a couple hours.

I've never "opted in" to anything, I've never seen anything but a choice to "opt out", and have done so, only to continue recieving emails from the same domains, with a character or two different in the user portion. I suppose this counts as a different list. I guess every time they type 'cp spamlist newspamlist' that constitutes another list.

I've only used the address when signing up for various forums on the web, its served no other purpose.

So whats new? nothing. But its a problem that has grown past annoyance, past nuisance, and is clearly criminal. Its about time the law did something. The 'opt in' honor system shore the hell doesn't work. Who do I sue? I want in.

California's first case is still being litigated

[Animats]

Ferguson vs. Friendfinder, the key California spam case, still hasn't been decided. That went all the way to the California Supreme Court. It's now been established that the law is constitutional, and the case is down at the trial court level again. A final result is expected this year.

California anti-spam cases are mostly stuck waiting for this case to be finally decided. But I think that once there's a win in this case, the floodgates will open. Not many spammers are in Utah, but there are lots of them in California.

The next big issue that has to be litigated is whether you can sue the beneficiary of the spam, not just the spammer. It's probably not a valid defense that the beneficiary hired a third party to spam for them. It can probably be argued that the actual spammer was acting as their agent. It gets complicated, with discovery needed to force disclosure of the transaction between the spammer and the beneficiary of spam. But that's how to go after the deep pockets, big companies that use others to spam for them.

Well, this guy's heart is in the right place ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just received:

You do not need to spend hundreds on a DVD burner to copy DVDs! We will show you how to use your CD-R Writer to create backups of your DVDs that will play in your home DVD player.

All you need in your computer is a DVD drive that plays DVDs and a CD-R Writer. You can burn movies on CD-R or CD-RW discs..

... BUT HE'S STILL A FUCKING SPAMMER!!!!!!!!!

There's a problem I see with this.

[mark-t]

The problem I can see with all these anti-spam measures is that the spammer usually conceals his identity. No biggie, you say... you just sue the ISP... well, which one? As I said, they conceal their identities -- usually pretty damn well. Or at least they conceal themselves well enough that you can't trace them any further than to some country that doesn't give two sh**s what the people in North America want.

So, we are left back at square one... The opt-in mails are bullshit, if you try to unsubscribe, you only end up on yet more lists, having confirmed that the email address is valid. Further, I've seen exploits even without even requiring javascript to be enabled by the emails using cgi http requests for the embedded pictures, which can do all sorts of things, like send a confirmation to a server that your email was valid - and that you read the email. I only stumbled across this by accident about a year ago when I was using a straight text email program to read some incoming mail and saw the content of the SRC= parameter on an IMG tag. I do not know for sure that it is used for this purpose, but I can see how it certainly _could_ be.

Without it ever being possible to hunt these spammers down no matter what mechanisms they might try to use to ensure their anonymity (which would, even if such mechanisms _did_ exist, cause serious problems for honest people who may simply want some privacy), we are, I am afraid, stuck with spam.

Re: Off with their heads.

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to interrupt the formation of the new Nazi Party, ....

BAAAPPPP!!! Godwin's Law exception!!! Return to your respective corners and play with yourselves until the next bell sounds.

Re: probably not..

[Spad]

That's as maybe, but the penalties are high enough in this case that they might actually have an effect.

The best way to hurt a company is financially.

Have your lawyer pay Bounty Hunters

[Anonymous Coward]

"You can sue for $100 per message + lawyer costs. What is unclear is whether you can sue for the cost to track down the spammer."

The first step would be to have your lawyer be the one to hire the bounty hunter. When your lawyer bills you for the bounty hunter costs, just as your lawyer bills you for the Fedex costs, that payment is now recorded for consideration by the court. There are two types of costs - lawyer fees and other things like this, and various courts will make various interpretations. Absent a specific provision of the spam law to the contrary, you may find that judges award costs anyway.

Having just some of the cases involve making the spammer pay the bounty hunter fee should do the trick. (I presume those here assembled see the goal to be stopping spam rather than starting a new career in the court system.)

Re: probably not..

[LX.onesizebigger]

It's very doubtful these new laws will have anything but a minimal effect if that. Just because a law exists doesn't mean the law won't be broken. Laws do not prohibit crime or wrong doing. If they did no one would ever purchase illegal drugs or drive drunk.

The fact remains that most of the spam today is generated by a very small number of people. Shutting down even three or four of the most prolific deviants would bring about a large decrease in spam, and I cannot see how these companies and individuals would stay in business after losing a legal battle with by-the-message fines. Spamming is not that good of a business, despite what they try to make you think.

This is gorgeous

[j0eybaggab0nez]

Hopefully it will work out and set a tone for other states to follow. Spam is very expensive - to the recipient and the internet backbone. They wanna advertise? Charge 'em!

Just happened again

[Styx]

Well, speak of the devil... I just got a shedload of bounces again. This time from "Easley Legal Marketing Group (ELM) Group, LLC" asking people to call (716) 812-2144
I wouldn't mind, if any of you were to call them, and give them a piece of your mind :-) I'm not going to make a call overseas for that...

Not a "save the children" hot-button.

[fmaxwell]

It still doesn't make sense to go after the ISP, no more so than it does to sue telcos for the actions of telemarketters. Making the ISP responsible will have a chilling effect on Ohio's internet services, and that could only hurt the state's technology sector.

Not knowing the specifics of the law, I can only comment on the concept generally. If an ISP is complicit, they should be held responsible. If they write "pink contracts" and don't shut off spammers when they receive complaints, they should be legally liable. Suppose you complained to the telephone company about harassing phone calls and they refused to do anything about it. Wouldn't you feel that they should have some legal liability?

Nice "save the children" hot-button press though.

I chose that example because keeping cigarettes and alcohol away from minors is something that society, as a whole, is behind -- even if it means that Kwik-E-Mart loses potential customers. I personally couldn't give a rat's ass about children. I don't have them, find them annoying, and wish that the parents would keep them at home. I frequently choose expensive restaurants so that I can enjoy my meal without being surrounded by the hordes of unleashed children that run screaming through the aisles of lesser establishments. Besides, stopping spam has little to do with protecting children.

SPAM

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not have any problem with commercial e-mail. I'd rather have a e-mail message that I can delete than a mailbox full of junk that has to be humped to the trash can.
What I do have a problem is with spammers who falisfy header information and use deceptive subject lines to weasel past your filters.
I beleive it should be a crime to use anything but legitimate information in commercial e-mail. Also, companies who pratice the current methods should be finacially liable for their mailings. Unlike the bulk fliers that show up in your mailbox at no cost to you, spam cost you money by driving up the cost of buisness for your ISP.

nosp4mm3rcouldeverguessthis[rand_int]@hotmail.com

[The_Guv'na]

Yup, thats what I made a few days ago just to see, inspired by the recent /. spam poll. Let's go take a look!...

Nothing to report. I'd say that hotmail gets spam simply because it's so popular, and a great many addresses are registered, used once for an xxx password or whatever, and left to self-delete. By the time an address is re-registered, the spam is flowing good and strong. Here's a sample from the header of a pr0n spam to a trash hotmail address:

nightmarebeta@hotmail.com, nightmareboy@hotmail.com, nightmarec@hotmail.com, nightmarecat@hotmail.com, nightmarecreatures@hotmail.com, nightmared@hotmail.com, nightmaregray@hotmail.com, nightmarehippie@hotmail.com, nightmarei@hotmail.com, nightmarej@hotmail.com, nightmarek@hotmail.com, nightmarelemon@hotmail.com

Enough said, really.

Ali

Nonhomogenous opinion

[gonz]

Please, think carefully before invoking Big Brother to solve your problems! As convenient as it sounds, federal regulation of e-mail provides yet another disturbing precendent for government control of private communication. It's amazing how quickly the supposedly "lesse fair" Slashdot reader forgets his principles when the heavy hand of Uncle Sam is swinging in his favor.

Think about it. Defining "spam" is about as easy as defining "offensive" content. Subjective decisions about which e-mail messages are deemed worthy to be delivered should NOT be made by politicians in Washington, D.C., USA. If your people group doesn't like receiving certain types of e-mail, then YOU should be taking responsibility for those decisions.

Spammers exploit obvious technical problems with the SMTP protocol, the same problems that make it easy to forge return addresses and read other people's mail. There are very obvious non-political solutions to the spam problem. Think for a minute about the icon at the bottom of your browser, which informs you that an online merchant is "trustworthy" (i.e. their identity has been independently verified). It's not hard to see how the modern concept of "transitive trust" could be extended to e-mail, while preserving relative anonymity and individual liberty.

Basically, various groups could establish public-key databases of validated e-mail signatures, and databases could transitively incorporate other databases, similar to DNS. (Most likely, keys would be issued to servers rather than to individuals.) Mail servers could then be configured to reject any e-mail which is not signed with a recognized key. A user could report spam to the approriate *local* group, and they could respond by reprimanding the sender or rejecting the key. The definition of "spam" would be relative to a particular group. A similar scheme could be used for filtering access to "offensive" web sites.

E-mail has been LONG overdue for incorporation of modern technologies like PGP. This is partly because of the perceived cost of implementation, but mainly because of apathy on the part of sysadmins. So, if you sysadmins are finally ready to take action, please do something more proactive than simply deferring to Uncle Sam or some other crusty bureaucracy.

-Gonz

When the SPAM hits the fan.

[Tony-A]

Sorry, but Hormel does not control my vocabulary. Hormel controls the use of "SPAM" as a trademark. If AOL decides to say "You've got SPAM", Hormel maybe has a complaint. Usage in the vernacular, in any capitalization, is outside of Hormel's jurisdiction. Hormel has cast themselves in as good a light as possible, considering the circumstances, but outside of official company correspondence, they just don't have any real say in the matter.

Re:When the SPAM hits the fan.

[foobar104]

Um... actually, yeah they do. If you say, "I received a piece of SPAM today" (note the caps) and you're not talking about food, then you're violating their trademark. In private correspondence it'd be a non-issue, because Hormel would never find out about it. But if you put it on a web site, Hormel would have every right to take action. They could, for example, threaten to sue the shit out of Slashdot's parent company (whoever they are these days) because Slashdot uses a picture of a can of SPAM without permission. I'm sure the only reason they haven't yet is because Hormel's lawyers haven't the foggiest idea that Slashdot exists.

Re: what about extradition

[monkeydo]

According to the Department of State we have extradited at least 12 US citizens to Mexico between 1995 and 2000.