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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."
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.
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.
$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
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.
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.
http://www.spamlaws.com/state/
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.
Gentoo Sucks
But you'd have to file suit with each of them, and filing 20/day seems a bit excessive.
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.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
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?
Subject: GET RICH QUICK! READ THIS NOW!
Make money in your spare time suing spammers! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!
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I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
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.
qslack.com
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.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
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?
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?
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
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!
Lasers Controlled Games!
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.
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.
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...
Corporatism != Free Market
only problem with this is that finding the source of the spam and actually holding them accountable will likely be a big problem.
/. 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?
also - who is truely responsible for the *sending* of the email e.g: the guy who was on
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....
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.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
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
How to rationalize theft.
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.
atrowe says: Um
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.
What, there's no Perl script on CPAN for this yet? Should just be a one-liner.
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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
Don't Tread on Me
"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?
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!"...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
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).
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?
Will I retire or break 10K?
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.
/. stories have described, getting the sysadmins in Asia to do something about it is easier said than done.
As previous
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
...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.
Gee, and I bet when you were a kiddie you always wished you could be tough enough to be a bully.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
CD containing genuine postal addressed of over 10,000 spammers. High quality addresses only, good for law suit.
Send $20 to...
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.
Neopets - the best free game on the Int
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"?
cpeterso
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
These guys are worse than insurance salesmen...
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.
sig.
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
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
If the Spam-needed-for-competition argument is true, then China and Korea would have the best hosting companies around.
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.
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.
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
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.
Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
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.
.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?
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
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.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
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:
a ve
e
m _e mps.shtml
http://www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailinglistd
There is a similar telephone list:
http://www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offtelephonedav
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/optoutfor
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
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.
Lasers Controlled Games!
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.
/. 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.
.001 cents to send a message TO the account? Would this discourage spam? I think so.
Point is that I've been reading and posting to
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
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?
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
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
How to rationalize theft.
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
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.
But they do provide a release that isn't available unless you are a shameless AC.
Lasers Controlled Games!
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.
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
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.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
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.
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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'm not going to make a call overseas for that...
I wouldn't mind, if any of you were to call them, and give them a piece of your mind
/Styx
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.
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.
Lasers Controlled Games!
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.