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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."
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.
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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?
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.
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