[Junk]Fax.com Fined $5.4 Million

Satanboy writes "This article states that a record $5.4m fine was levied on Fax.com after blatantly ignoring requests by the FCC to discontinue the activity of sending unsolicited faxes. This is similar to actions CmdrTaco posted about earlier." The people at junkfax.org are apparently planning a large class-action suit against fax.com as well.

Comments

If the Spammers were fined this much...

[alchemist68]

for every offense, I could probably download MP3's from LimeWire and XNap faster with the decreased internet traffic.

Re:If the Spammers were fined this much...

[BigBlockMopar]

for every offense, I could probably download MP3's from LimeWire and XNap faster with the decreased internet traffic.

Why doesn't it surprise me that fax.com runs on IIS?

The slimier the organization, the slimier their webserver.

Oh well, at least it will make it easier for someone to shut them down.

Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

I am SURE someone has pointed this out already but why can't the junk fax law apply to SPAM as well? That is, why can't there be a smiliar law drafted that applies to SPAM like junk faxes? SPAM affects EVERYBODY.

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[CheechBG]

Simple. The damages in fax blasting as they apply to the consumer are quantitative, a somewhat measurable decrease in toner, paper expense, stuff like that. Bandwidth, especially how much quantitative bandwitdh the inet spammers consume, is not that easily determined. Congress decided to tackle the easier problem, which still got a major nuisance off our backs. I recall at a old job that I was at as a tech how many junk faxes we received for all sorts of stuff.

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[MsWillow]

The theory was, years ago, that fax paper was expensive; by sending a junk fax, you wasted somebody's tangible property, hence it is illegal. Spam doesn't waste paper, it wastes bandwidth, disk space and time. Apparently, though, those don't matter enough to warrant making junk email illegal.

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[RallyNick]

When the fax law was written people were being charged for receiving faxes as well as sending (by the telephone companies). So spam targets were able to argue they were actually loosing money when receiving unwanted faxes. It's a bit harder to argue you're loosing money from receiving spam.

Although if you ask me, I'll tell you why: the govt is representing the bussinesses, not the consumer. The receiving end of fax spam were bussinesses (few people have fax at home) thus it's illegal. The receiving end of email spam is all consumers, thus it's ok.

/me zipping his flame suit

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[nelsonal]

In adddition to the tangable costs, enforcement costs are lower for junk faxes. Its alot easier to spoof email headers than it is to spoof phone traces. And there are alot fewer companies that engage in faxing than spamming. Finally, there is the benefits free riding problem. Organizing the limited fax owners to petition congress to make the practice illegal is easier than organizing the large mass of people that the costs of spamming are distributed over. If someone only gets a few spams a day, the costs of deleting them are quite low, vs the time spent learning about bills to make spam illegal and sending evidence of my support of them to congress.

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad "alot" is NOT a fucking word, you stupid cocksucking motherfucking Jesus Christ'n asshole!

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[EvilBudMan]

Because it doesn't work. It's unenforcable. We still get plenty of junk faxes. By the time someone get's on their trail, they move to a different location.

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't?

http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=alot

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your point, fuckwad? Did you even TRY the link you just posted? "ALOT" only shows up in the acronym-finder, not as a word. I suppose if you want to sound like the illiterate buffoon you are, you should continue to use "alot" as a misspelling of "a lot".

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[fitsnips]

Hmmm, because there is a double standard? If a person floods your email server with the intent of DOSing it, they go to jail! Corp. America on the other hand can flood your box with junk, bringing your server to stand still and it just business! Not that I favor regulation just thinking out loud.

Joshua SS Miller

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[jmooney]

Heads up: It is not just faxes and spam to your PC. In Japan there was a major problem with spam email to mobile phones (that costs a lot more than spam email to your PC), and the latest problem is millions of spam hang-up calls to mobile phones - enough to severely overload the network. See this Infoworld article today.

The scam: the spammer pays nothing for the cell calls since no-one answered. The target sees a "missed call" with an unfamiliar caller ID number, they call back and get a phone sex line. In doing so they incur at least cell phone charges plus the operators use anything else they can to persuade/intimidate people to pay more to the operator for the "service".

This is really large scale, and unlike the US Japan already had rules preventing phone email spam:

... the volume of calls started rising at around 10 a.m. in the morning and within 15 minutes the carrier had been forced to place a 50 percent curb on the number of calls that could be made, to keep the network operating. The disruption, which lasted for several hours and affected more than 5 million telephone lines, was traced to a one-giri operator that began making more than 4,000 calls every three minutes over roughly 200 telephone lines.

For Japan's cell-phone users, the rise in one-giri calls came just as they were getting relief from another annoyance: unwanted e-mail. A new law prohibiting mass e-mailing to random cell phone users went into effect on July 1.

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[neuroticia]

Er. My business email address recieves far more email than does my personal address.

You're misguided if you think that ONLY consumers are recieving spam.

Hmm.. Just made me think of an interesting angle--spam costs businesses FAR more than junk-faxes. The IT department must impliment spam filters, and spend extraordinary amounts of time tweaking and modifying them to ensure that the signal:noise ratio is acceptable and that few if any legitimate emails are turned away.

Sure, IT people aren't getting paid quite the insane salaries that they used to, but there are MUCH better uses for their time.

We need to approach this as "Here is quantifiable damage: The IT department spent x number of hours/days/weeks this year fighting spam. As a result, Projects X, Y, and Z were delayed. Projects X, Y, and Z, after they were launched gave us such and such amount of income per month, and if they had been launched earlier, then we would have been making that profit earlier."

Somehow I think all the lost man-hours and postponed projects hurt a bit more than several hundred junk-faxes a year.

-Sara

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[skookum]

is, why can't there be a smiliar law drafted that applies to SPAM like junk faxes?

What you've got to remember is that government doesn't move as fast as you think it does. The fax machine has been around forever -- Xerox had one in 1966 that operated over normal telephone lines. However, they didn't really take off until the early to mid 1980's, and had become common by the end of the decade. I'll use 1987 for the sake of argument. 47 USC 227, the "junk fax" law, took effect in 1994, about 7 years after the fax machine hit its peak.

Sure, you might say that spam is getting close to being about 7 years old, but I would argue that the spam issue is much less clear-cut than the junk fax issue. It's harder to define actual monetary damages, and there's many more people involved other than the sender and receiver. On top of that, a lot of people -- some with actual influeunce (CEOs, etc) -- don't want any government regulations.

So I would not be terribly surprised that spam laws are nonexistant at this point.

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[jcr]

Congress decided to tackle the easier problem, which still got a major nuisance off our backs.

Not quite. The congress didn't shirk the job here, the junk-fax law predates the spam plague.

BTW, that scumbag Sanford Wallace was a major junk-fax perp before he became an e-mail spammer.

-jcr

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[SecGreen]

Let's all set up systems that automatically print all received email onto gold foil using molten platinum for ink. Then can we go after them for quantifiable damages?

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not when my ISP imposes a CAP on my upload/download.

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[GlassHeart]

The fact, however, is that offices (where the cumulative effects of spam over many employees is far more costly than at home) tend to buy bandwidth in bulk. Thus, spam doesn't really cost you more money.

As for disk space, don't you delete your spam?

Which brings us to time. The problem is, even though you could argue that deleting spam costs productivity, chances are you aren't really working all of eight hours each day. In fact, deleting spam probably takes time away from surfing the net. Put simply, people who question MPAA/RIAA estimates on piracy should similarly question estimates on the cost of spam. Especially if they're reading Slashdot.

This is not to say that junk email is any less annoying than any other kind of unsolicited mailing, just that it's easier to defend than a pile of paper literally wasted.

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[MattCohn.com]

Well then just get even. Use caller ID, and fax them back 200 pages of black construction paper.

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dance monkey Dance!

Spelling has improved.

Are doo bya ess?

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[MattCohn.com]

Well, I'd much rather be bad at spelling then feel so lonely that I need to follow someones posts and correct them. Also... the 'Dance monkey Dance'... just doesn't realy work. Try posting with your head, and use your ass for sitting.

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[MsWillow]

As for disk space, don't you delete your spam?

Yes, I do, but it still takes up disk space on my ISP. Given that the ISP's userlist was recently discovered, and spam-nuked, this is not a trivial thing. Imagine every single user on the system getting50 different spam emails all at once. Yikes! It took three days for mail to return to normal after that.

So, for three days, my email was running over 24 hours behind. For three days, the ISP had to add manpower to track it down and eliminate it. For three days, email was virtually unuseable, thanks to spam. Did this cost money? You bet it did. It cost my ISP a good hunk of change, and that, in turn, means that the rates to me are likely to go up if this continues.

So yes, spam does cost money, as surely as do junk faxes. However, I doubt that it will be stopped soon - all the laws we can create won't stop a spammer from another country.

Re:Why can't this apply to SPAM?

[Anonymous Coward]

Biter


I respect your flame.

Ahr Dub Eya Ess?

Finaly!

[Xtraneous]

I have a fax machine at my house, and every other week we get another junk fax. Hopefully the FCC's actions will stop some of these faxes. If only the same "remedies" worked against spammers...

Spammers

[delta407]

So, wait, if there's only a handful of spammers that account for 90% of the spam in my inbox, when do they get a 5.4 million dollar fine?

Surely there are damages. Bandwidth may not be as expensive as paper, but possible productivity used to delete spam is costly. Besides which, the porno spammers could get sued for lots of money by the parents of minors...

Re:Spammers

[cmowire]

The 5.4 million dollar fine is based on the TCPA, not actual damages.

The problem is that the TCPA hasn't been shown to cover spamming. Which is unfortunate. They really need to superscede it with a law that bans advertisement in all cases where the caller does not foot the bill of the communication -- i.e. making only telemarketing and junk mail legal.

Re:Spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

The 5.4 million dollar fine is based on the TCPA, not actual damages.

That's even better, then. The story cites an FCC figure of $11,000 per violation...

GET RICH QUICK IN 30 DAYS!

Heck, at $11,000 a pop, I'd be rich in ten minutes.

Re:Spammers

[iamwhatiseem]

Absolutely. As a sys admin, we have had to spend money, and waste our time tooling with postfix to filter spam out.
Not to mention, them harvesting our e-mail accounts.

Re:Spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

your sig is dumb. if you can't handle restaraunts with smoking sections only go to ones w/o them or eat at home

child

Re:Spammers

[windex]

your retort is dumb. if you can't stop smoking you should go slowly kill yourself, er, smoke, outside of public view.

child.

Re:Spammers

[capologist]

They really need to superscede it with a law that bans advertisement in all cases where the caller does not foot the bill of the communication -- i.e. making only telemarketing and junk mail legal.

In some cases, the caller doesn't really foot the bill for telemarketing, either. In particular, I'm talking about telemarketing via recorded messages.

This practice is very much like spam. When I receive such a call, it consumes my time--if only a few seconds--to interrupt what I'm doing, answer the phone, recognize it for what it is, and hang up. (If I'm not home when the call arrives, I end up going through the same process with my answering machine.) The caller doesn't expend human time making each individual call, but is consuming human time on the callee's end. Overall, the cost to the callee is probably higher than the cost to the caller.

It's worth noting that in my state (Arizona), this practice is illegal. Nevertheless, I receive such calls frequently.

Re:Spammers

[Anonymous Coward]

Restaurants are private establishments, not public property. If the owner wants to permit smoking then that's his business. Don't go there if you don't like it, he'll get the message.

OTOH, I agree with you that smoking indoors is nasty. I always go outside for a puff, and away from the entrance to the building.

Re:Spammers

[Fussy Part]

The junkfax.org news page says:

$500B class action against fax.com
Will be posted here when we serve the lawsuit

$500 Billion????

Re:Spammers

[Moonshadow]

Can you explain what laws you're referring to? I too live in the State of the 3rd degree sunburn, and I'd be interested in learning what's out there legally.

Time to take some people^H^H^H^H^H^Hscum to court :)

Re:Spammers

[capologist]

Can you explain what laws you're referring to?

Arizona Revised Statues 44-1278:

...

B. It is an unlawful practice pursuant to section 44-1522 for any seller or solicitor or anyone acting on their behalf who conducts a telephone solicitation in this state to do any of the following:

...

4. Make a telephone call to any residential telephone using an artificial or prerecorded voice to deliver a message unless the call is initiated for emergency purposes or the call is made with the prior express consent of the called party.

Re:Spammers

[cmowire]

See, the sad thing is that marketing with a strong regulating element is the only way that it doesn't get annoying.

Like, catalog merchants are good about this. Because it costs them money to print up a nice catalog, they make sure that they have a potentially willing recepient. People watch TV for the programs, so you *can't* have just commercials, you have to have a program. I attribute the growth of Tivo commercial skipping mostly to the TV programmers losing touch with their audience and putting in enough commercials to reach most peoples annoyance factor.

The problem is, there's too big of a growth of weird corporate shell structures that makes it possible for a boiler room operation to start up and shut down quickly. So it becomes moderately profitable to run a boiler room operation, get fined by the attorney general/fcc, shut down, start up a new corporation, buy up old corporations assets, do it all over again, etc.

Re:But to be completely fair

[BlackCobra43]

just imagine a thread without a beowulf cluster joke.

some people are just dumb

[Auckerman]

Let's see their business model is illegal. The FCC tells them that it knows what they are doing, it's illegal, and they should stop it. They don't listen. At what point do you NOT beleive the FCC and keep doing it?

Idiot 1: Hey man, let's send some more junk faxes.

Idiot 2: Didn't the FCC say we would get hell if we kept doing that?

Idiot 1: What's the worse they can do? Fine our "company"?!?

Laughter

Idiot 2: I hear the Bamahas are nice this time of year.

Re:some people are just dumb

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I were a moderator. This would get a five. I have a corp. and what he says is so true. And if I were drunker, I would tell you exactly how ....

Re:some people are just dumb

[ajm]

They were just waiting till their political contributions came through and they were let off the hook through some special legislation attached to an anti-terrorism bill. But seriously, isn't this the current American business model when you get in trouble, buy off the politicians. What odds would you offer that "Kenny Boy" is going to do any time?

Re:some people are just dumb

[Snowbeam]

At what point do you NOT beleive the FCC and keep doing it?

They probably filed messages from the FCC into the trash can as the probably believe the FCC to be a hoax spam company.

Re:some people are just dumb

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

But seriously, isn't this the current American business model when you get in trouble, buy off the politicians

No, no, the really successful model is to buy the politicians before you get into trouble:

• Disney and the Pillage the Public Domain Act, er, the Copyright Term Extension Act;
• software companies and UCITA;
• Hollywood and the DMCA

The only trouble is, the shelf life of a politician is pretty short: six years for a senator and only two for a representative. You have to make sure you renew or you might not get your money's worth...

Serves them right!

[wirelessbuzzers]

Spamming on the internet or via snail-mail is bad enough. You waste bandwidth/carrying capacity and a lot of time. But with fax spams, you completely tie up someone's fax lines and waste their ink and their paper. That's even worse than regular spam: it's regular spam plus DOS plus vandalism (those bastards are writing what might as well be graffiti on your quality paper).

Re:Serves them right!

[hkmwbz]

Actually, e-mail spammers can often be considered to be as much of a pain in the butt as fax spammers. I registered a Bigfoot.com forwarding address long ago, and I naturally started receiving spam. Well, a while ago, Bigfoot decided to limit the number of e-mails forwarded per day to only 25 (or so). I had noticed that I received a lot of spam through my Bigfoot address, but one day I got a note saying "you have exceeded your daily quota of forwarded mail. Please click here blah blah to pay us to forward more mails per day".

In essence, the spammers who used up my forwarding quota every day was preventing me from receiving legitimate e-mail through my Bigfoot address. They were denying me service - a Denial of Service attack if you will.

So fax spam costs you money. Well, e-mail spam costs me money! I pay for every minute I am connected, and some of these spams are huge and take a long time to download over a dialup connection.

That's right. E-mail spammers are both DoSing me, while they are forcing me to pay to download their crap.

I just cannot understand why they don't go after e-mail spammers. They are as much of a nuisance to me as a fax spammer would be!

They won't care

[yakfacts]

The company will declare bankruptcy and walk away. They'll just start again and do it until they get caught.

Some of our junk faxes here try very hard to look like they came from the benefits department at our "home office". But since our "benefits department" is in the next cubicle, I don't believe them.

Re:They won't care

[ceejayoz]

I got a fax the other day that looked like a newspaper clipping, and had a handwritten "thought you might find this intereseting" not on it. Very irritating.

Re:They won't care

[ceejayoz]

whoops... "not" should be "note"

Re:They won't care

[Gojira Shipi-Taro]

Then I sincerely hope that their principles and management are beaten to death and their property destroyed. I lost thousands to a furniture store that pulled that crap. If I see the sales weasel that sold me the stuff I never got jaywalking, I'll run his ass over without a second thought.

Re:They won't care

[EvilBudMan]

Damn, I've won a lot of vacations.

Re:They won't care

[Anonymous Coward]

i say we look up the FCC ruling after the courts releases the judgement information, then get the names and address of the people who run the company, then pay them a visit with a few tire irons and baseball bats in hand.

Re:They won't care

[Anonymous Coward]

i say we get names and address of the spammers from the FCC ruling after the courts release the judgement papers and pay the spammers a visit with some tire irons and baseball bats in hand.

Re:They won't care

[Kredal]

"I send this fax to you for your consideration"

Ahh! Viruses by fax!

Re:They won't care

[ceejayoz]

"This is a fax virus. Please light this fax on fire and place it on the floor."

Re:But to be completely fair

[Anonymous Coward]

but it wouldnt be slashdot without at least 1.

come on, be realistic!

May not hold out long!

[BWS]

A federal court in the US has ruled that the ban on solicited fax advertising is in violation of the first amendment(source: Politech-Bot).

The full text of the ruling is here.

The ruling is currently being appealed of couse, but as it stands right now what the spammers have done is prefectly legal. The FCC fine is a joke.

You can also read the relevant K5 story.

Re:May not hold out long!

[RallyNick]

>A federal court in the US has ruled that the ban
>on solicited fax advertising is in violation of
>the first amendment[...] The FCC fine is a joke.

From the initial post:
>after blatantly ignoring requests by the FCC to
>discontinue the activity of sending unsolicited faxes.

See where the problem is?

Re:May not hold out long!

[BWS]

I used the world solicited instead of unsolicited. Its suppose to say that the ban on unsolicited faxes has been ruled a violation of the 1st amendment.

Re:May not hold out long!

[greenrd]

That was a typo in BWS's post. The ruling applies to unsolicited faxes.

Re:May not hold out long!

[Anonymous Coward]

A person's right to free speech does not entitle him to use MY printing press (or fax machine) to do the speaking. I expect this to be overturned. If not, I expect to read about perpetrators being hunted down and beaten like piniatas.

Re:May not hold out long!

[Lumpy]

Ahhh but I love it anyways...

The best recourse is to do what I do... many of the faxes have a fax me to remove from the list or Fax this number to order this great package now number.. Call that fax number with an old machine that will allow you to insert a legal length sheet that can then be wrapped back on it's self print "STOP FAXING ME in big letters on the center of the page and start the fax... when it start transmitting wrap the end bac kto the other end and lightly tape it.. let it keep rolling for about 20-30 minutes that will send about 20-30 pages to the other end...

works great.. I never recieve another fax from each of the companies that I do this to... espically if I use their order fax line number..

Why can't this apply to...

[httpamphibio.us]

Junk mail? I do have to pay for the recycling bin it gets dumped in, and indirectly for increased cost of postage. We all pay for the amount of pollution it takes to make paper and deliver the mail.

Re:Why can't this apply to...

[Guppy06]

"and indirectly for increased cost of postage."

Junk mailers tend to do all their own sorting, research the validity of their addresses in the USPS database and print POSTNET barcodes on them so that any USPS sorting equipment just has to scan the barcode.

First class postage went up because your chicken-scratch handwriting is just too damned hard for the OCR equipment to read and you're too damned lazy to go to usps.com to check to see if you have the right ZIP+4 code.

"We all pay for the amount of pollution it takes to make paper and deliver the mail."

Trees grow back and paper biodegrades (and as you noted in your post, recyclable). The coal used in the power plants to generate the electricity your e-mail rides on doesn't grow back (at least not in our lifetimes) and dumps carbon monoxide into the atmosphere. Your call.

Re:Why can't this apply to...

[Anonymous Coward]

And if we had any trees left, they'd be able to eliminate all that CO2.

Re:Why can't this apply to...

[Guppy06]

Ahem.

> > "dumps carbon monoxide into the atmosphere."

> "they'd be able to eliminate all that CO2"

I can't explain this any further without getting extremely sarcastic.

Re:Why can't this apply to...

[Anonymous Coward]

They have this device in which you can make paper logs from newspaper and/or junk mail. Do you have a fireplace?

Re:Why can't this apply to...

[The Wing Lover]

indirectly for increased cost of postage

Actually, junk mail subsidizes your mail. Mail would be more expensive if it weren't for the junk mailers.

I wonder how the FCC knows the # of Faxes...?

[The Outbreak Monkey]

According to the FCC, Fax.com sent advertisements and other messages on behalf of more than 100 businesses for a fee, sparking 489 violations.

I wonder how the FCC knows that 489 faxes were sent out? Phone records? Customer Complaints? How does that work?

Would it be possible to count all the spam a spammer sends out?

Re:I wonder how the FCC knows the # of Faxes...?

[Anonymous Coward]

The FCC was probably unconstitutional wire tapping the phones

Re:I wonder how the FCC knows the # of Faxes...?

[eggboard]

This is why it's useful to save junk faxes you receive: if you report them, they migth get added to a large case, and then help shut down a junk faxer.

We get waves of junk fax, all crap -- nothing even marginally businesslike (get free vacations, buy toner cheap, etc.). They all look crappy, all have stupid calls to action, typically no easy way to reply even!

I started faxing the faxers back saying, hi, thanks for giving us all your contact information; here's the relevant US statute that proves what you just did is illegal and we know how to find you. Never send us anything again, or we'll pursue all civil options available to us.

Oddly, the faxes have stopped. Who knew that would work. Now if it only worked with spammers!

Re:I wonder how the FCC knows the # of Faxes...?

[jx100]

They could've gotten a court order or something to inspect Fax.com's records. If they pay per fax, they'd probably have to keep a record of each fax they send out.

Re:I wonder how the FCC knows the # of Faxes...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it be possible to count all the spam a spammer sends out?

Stack overflow.

Re:I wonder how the FCC knows the # of Faxes...?

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is... Citizens who care about enforcing the law and who have taken the time to send the FCC copies of their illegal fax ads are responsible. The FCC can only levy fines based on complaints from recipients. It's nice having the government enforcing the law on behalf of consumers and fax machine owners.

For instance, 95 of the 489 faxes were sent the the FCC by... me, resulting in just over $1 million of the $5.4 million fine. Highly gratifying, if they ever collect, of course.

For all the gory details, see

Press Release
FCC Notice of Apparent Liability
Gory details
More gory details
YMGD

The second of these URLs is quite a read: Allegations of Perjury, Intimidation, and Deception.

Gotta go. While typing this, I've just received another godamned junk fax at 1:30 in the morning in my home office.

Re:I wonder how the FCC knows the # of Faxes...?

[evilempireinc]

I'm assuming they would have a dedicated phone line for each fax machine if they were doing this in volume. In that case couldn't you just check how many outgoing calls they made on that line?

Re:I wonder how the FCC knows the # of Faxes...?

[Anonymous Coward]

If fax.com only sent out 489 faxes for 100 clients (ie, just fewer than 5 faxes per customer), then those client must _really_ be getting robbed. My guess is the FCC got complaints about that number out of a much larger number of actual violations

Meanwhile, that law is found unconstitutional...

[bons]

Article
ruling Kuro5hin thread on the subject

The difference between faxing and emailing ...

[SuperDuG]

See I've seen companies like this hold up medical faxes and important contract faxes before. Because usually these things are a few pages. I also know people who have resorted to turning their fax machines off when they aren't using them because of the huge waste. The other thing that is really annoying is that these machines sometimes get the wrong number and will give those wonderful fax tones in your ear when you pick up the phone.

The damages from faxing are aparent in costs of paper and toner, along with tying up the machine itself. Email while annoying doesn't neccessarily impede you from downloading the rest of your email in a timely manner. The only way I can see a comparison would be if there were more email spams that were attachments that were in the megabytes. Those are always a real treat to download when your on dialup, and I can see where it would be comparable.

Basically this sets a precidence that will be followed in the future. Spammers beware... we can only take so much. Right now I average about 80 spam messages a day. While I just sort them into the trash, it is becoming a trend which is getting rather annoying. And I can attest that quite a few of them all come from the same PLACE, not the same email server. If it's an advertisement for the same sex site then they should be held accountable, last I checked there wasn't any free advertising packages available.

Re:The difference between faxing and emailing ...

[Steve B]

Email while annoying doesn't necessarily impede you from downloading the rest of your email in a timely manner.

Spam e-mail can fill an in-box memory allotment and cause the loss of legitimate e-mail, just as spam faxes can exhaust a paper roll and buffer and cause the loss of legitimate faxes. The two are exactly analogous.

Re:The difference between faxing and emailing ...

[SuperDuG]

I guess that would be a way to compare them, but what I've seen is fax machines that run out of paper and just turn themselves off and important faxes are missed. I think if someone just goes delete happy then they really need to have a few more patience and set up some type of email filter rules...

Re:The difference between faxing and emailing ...

[EvilBudMan]

--Email while annoying doesn't neccessarily impede you from downloading the rest of your email in a timely manner--

Wrong! Oh, yes it can when you get enough of it.

Re:The difference between faxing and emailing ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll agree with you that fax spam is more serious because it uses up the victim's consumables in a very real manner, but as for tying up the machine, I'm on dialup but have a domain name.

Before I got MailWasher, there was nothing timely about coming home to find something like 40 new spam. Most of the time letting them download was simply annoying but there were a few times when it was a serious inconvenience when I didn't have much time and had to do something important.

Re:The difference between faxing and emailing ...

[GryMor]

You're missing the point, it isn't people going delete happy with spam, it's when I get a meg of spam overnight and that fills up my quota on the mail partition that it's EXACTLY like a junk fax impeding important faxs. I litterally never receive email due to spam filling up my meager quota. (Well, on one acount anyways, my primary is still spam free)

Re:The difference between faxing and emailing ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, you get 80 spams a day say. Now multiply that up for an office with a 1000 users or so. Some will get less, others maybe more. Each recipient has to delete/read/reply/whatever to these messages. How much time have the spammers taken away from that company over the course of a year?

Re:The difference between faxing and emailing ...

[hkmwbz]

"Email while annoying doesn't neccessarily impede you from downloading the rest of your email in a timely manner."

Actually, it does. For one, I am on a dialup, and some of these spam messages are huge. They cost me money. I pay for the time I am connected.

But the fact is that spam prevents me from receiving e-mail as well - through my Bigfoot.com account. I have the free service, which only allows 25 messages per day. Guess what? One day I was informed that "you have exceeded your quota". The rest of the mail was not delivered! And guess what else? The 25 messages I received that day was pure spam!

No legitimate mail seems to get through my Bigfoot forwarding address anymore. Spammers are preventing me from downloading legitimate mail!

Re:The difference between faxing and emailing ...

[bobbyt]

I think the solution to fax spam would be to come out with a fax machine with a preview lcd that lets you select which faxes to print and which ones to delete. The lawns in place sure don't do much. It would save paper, ink and printing time. I'm just not sure if the cost of time, ink and paper vs the technology to preview faxes would be worth it.

Lets create a law where we can hang anyone who spams

Re:The difference between faxing and emailing ...

[SuperDuG]

Well I know lots of companies that because of this reason they use a computer as a fax machine and then the fax's are forwarded via email as an attachment pdf or ps file.

I still think it's obligatory that if you do know the reply to number of the spammers. Take 5 pieces of black construction paper, tape them all together, making one long sheet, feed it into the fax machine when the top comes out tape it to the bottom and make a continuous black loop ... hehehehehe that's "poetic justice" ...

My Moment of Glory

[TheFuzzy]

To toot my own horn:

I was one of the first 10 complaints to get the FCC investigating Fax.com in 1998. In fact, I got them in trouble with the Orange County District Attorney's office, and the S.F.D.A. as well.

Go me! Huzzah!

Re:My Moment of Glory

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for letting us know. Expect some pipe hittin' niggas to show up on your doorstep any minute now. YOU COST ME MILLIONS, YOU LITTLE PENCIL NECKED GEEK!

Spam the Fax Spammers Back

[peterdaly]

I have posted this on slashdot before, but the comment fits the article.

They will hate me for putting this idea into people's minds...but everyone I explain this to gets a kick out of it, so here goes.

1. Take 5 sheets of black construction paper.
2. Scotch tape them into a single 5 sheet long sheet.
3. Place start of "page" into fax machine.
4. Dial the "recipient".
5. Watch sheet start going into the fax machine with glee.
6. Once out the other side, Scotch Tape beginning of "sheet" to end of sheet forming a giant black loop.
7. Giggle like a teenage girl and show your co-workers. Trust me, the showing co-workers step is needed for the full satisfaction. Choose co-workers carefully.
8. You Are Done! Not only that, but the recipient is now out of ink or toner.

Not that I have ever done this...but I know someone who has done this to someone who kept sending them spam faxes.

I hold no responsibility for your actions yada yada...

-Pete

Re:Spam the Fax Spammers Back

[Anonymous Coward]

use a printer cleaning page coppied a few times. most fax machines would probably choke on some construction paper :)

Re:Spam the Fax Spammers Back

[Anonymous Coward]

or

# yes | faxprog -d 555-5555

ie there's got to be a better way then that

Re:Spam the Fax Spammers Back

[Bios_Hakr]

Most FaxSpammers do not originate from a fax machine. They would use a PC or a bank of PCs to send hundreds of faxes simultaneously.

On a related note, wouldn't it seem to you that the fax machine software gurus know about your "Mobeus Fax"? Now, as a programmer, if you know about a specific attack, don't you close the hole? On most machines, the local buffer holds a scan of all the pages BEFORE the machine even dials. Your machine may differ.

Re:Spam the Fax Spammers Back

[Anonymous Coward]

But not nearly as funny.

Re:Spam the Fax Spammers Back

[kelv]

This works unless they are smart enough to use any old standard modem and asscoiated software to send and receieve faxes. If this is the case you have not wasted any of their paper or toner and have simply cost yourself a phone call.

Sorry to spoil the fun.........

Re:Spam the Fax Spammers Back

[piranha(jpl)]

On a related note, wouldn't it seem to you that the fax machine software gurus know about your "Mobeus Fax"? [emphesis added]

A Moebius strip/loop is one which can be constructed with a strip of paper, arranging it in a loop, and twisting one of the ends before attaching it to the other end. In this formation, tracing your finger around one side of the loop, you will eventually find your finger on the other side of the loop.

The described (and classic) black paper loop trick is not a Moebius loop (you could make it be one, but that would be unnecessary effort).

Your point about the use of PCs with faxmodems is a good one, though. This (admittedly offtopic) post was just meant to point out your misconception.

Re:Spam the Fax Spammers Back

[Bios_Hakr]

I wasn't refering to the one-sided paradox, meerly to the "never-ending" aspect of the loop.

Re:Spam the Fax Spammers Back

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggested something similar to this to someone at my office. They pointed out that the only reply number we had was a £1.50 per minute premium line.

Re:Spam the Fax Spammers Back

[riflemann]

Actually, black paper's bad - it runs really slowly as it has to send every black area = ie the entire page.

Far better, is to scrawl a few thick black lines on white paper, loop that around, then send it. It'll go through their paper much faster, and the scrawls will make it effectively useless anyway.

Re:Spam the Fax Spammers Back

[Rude Turnip]

The problem with your solution is that, as others have noted, the fax spam is typically sent from fax modems, *and* you're going to be filling up your fax machine's RAM buffer; thus preventing your coworkers from sending real business-like faxes. So, you still lose if you retaliate in such a manner.

READ ME!

[Guppy06]

We have a few major AP articles on the state of spam today and where it's going, plus we have this tidbit hitting the national news.

This is an election year in the US!

Print out these articles and mail them off to your congresscritter and your class II senator if you have one. Include a letter talking about how spam is an issue to you and how you'd like to see things like this happen to junk e-mailers as well. Maybe talk about how similar the two are (using the recipients expensive communications equipment without permission or reimbursemet). Mail some letters off to anybody else running for those seats that you know of.

Write them! Now! You don't even have to get up off your asses for this one! Just open the damned StarWrite window and write!

Re:READ ME!

[DemiKnute]

Print out these articles and mail them off to your congresscritter [house.gov] and your class II senator [senate.gov] if you have one.

Mail 'em, hell! Fax it too 'em.

Maybe three times, just to make sure.

Re:READ ME!

[fitsnips]

I have enought government in my life, for now I will just live with the spam. I people dont like the junk mail they get maybe they should refuse to give it to every website they visit. I dont visit a lot of sites because I just dont need any more junk mail, and they think they need my email. My wife has had a email address for 2yrs now and has never recieved e-mail she did not ask for. The reason she does not sign up for ever thing on the internet.

I dont like spam, but if it is the government telling what can and can not be sent or spam.....

Joshua SS Miller

Re:READ ME!

[Bingo Foo]

Mod this up. Seriously.

Re:READ ME!

[Anonymous Coward]

I people dont like the junk mail they get maybe they should refuse to give it to every website they visit. I dont visit a lot of sites because I just dont need any more junk mail, and they think they need my email. My wife has had a email address for 2yrs now and has never recieved e-mail she did not ask for. The reason she does not sign up for ever thing on the internet.

I've got an email address that was never used, never given out. It gets more spam than all my other email addresses put together. My crime? It was a short username on a regional ISP. The spammers used trial and error to figure out that it existed. There are other ways your address can get on the lists without you doing anything to encourage it.

An email address isn't very useful if you have to keep it secret, and even then it may be discovered and abused!

Freedom to ignore

[nuggz]

You should be free to say pretty much whatever you want.
I should not have to pay for your speech.

When you fax me, I have to pay for your speech, unless I agree to do so, this is theft.

Free speech is not absolute, Trade secrets, NDA's, treason, libel, slander, fraud and any number of other things are "speech" but that doesn't permit you to do them either.

Re:Freedom to ignore

[MisanthropicProggram]

Only a "4". Mod him up to a five! My God!, he speak'th the truth!

Re:Freedom to ignore

[hkmwbz]

Does "free speech" apply to marketing pitches forced upon us? I thought free speech was the right to express one's opinions, not to force others to listen, or even hide behind "free speech" to try to push products on people.

You have excellent points there, if only someone with the power to do something had the same insight. And if only the trolls who constantly go on about how preventing spam is preventing "free speech" would go and get a darn clue.

The best junk faxes

[Liquidity]

My favorite is the one where there is some product information printed out, as if from internal company report or something Then, there are some lines underlined or circled and a note written in the margin somewhere which says something like: "Jim, this is the one I told you about!"

I guess you are supposed to grab this off the incoming queue and think, "AHa! I've intercepted a confidential memo! Now I, too, will reap the benefits of this secret deal!"

That's Harsh (a good thing)

[peterdaly]

The fine calls for the company to pay the maximum penalty of $11,000 per violation.

The FCC is also issuing citations to more than 100 businesses which used Fax.com, warning that they too could be liable to pay the maximum fine if they continue to send unsolicited faxes.

$11,000 per violation? That's a lot. This will make people think twice before doing it. I especially like how the advertisers may be held liable if they continue as well, although I don't think they should only be punished if they continue the practice. They knew what they we buying for their advertising dollar, or at least they should have.

-Pete

Re:But to be completely fair

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imagine if Fax.com had used a beowulf....... now that I think about it, let's keep the beowulf jokes at least to computer related threads!

Let Evil Fight Evil.

[pb]

Here's a sure-fire way to confound junk faxers and spammers alike:

1) Harvest phone numbers from spam e-mails and e-mails from junk faxes. (you can find these online)

2) Figure out where spammers and faxers get their information from and flood these locations with the e-mails and phone numbers you find; USENET and message boards (like slashdot!) are good for this.

3) Wait for the faxers to start faxing the spammers, and for the spammers to start e-mailing the faxers.

Problem solved.

Jurisdiction (Mod me up!)

[sam_handelman]

Phone calls take place, in legal terms, at the location of the person who gets the phone call. For now, let's assume faxes work the same way.

So, the ruling (pointed to by the person to whome I respond) might apply to all of the faxes that Fax.com sent to Eastern Missouri, which may have contributed to the fine, but not to the others. Other courts may (or may not) be advised by this ruling - it is only binding precedent in Eastern Missouri, and coming from a district court, it isn't very strong.

The company itself is in Alisa Viejo; so, unless someone in the District for Southern California, on the 9th circuit has ruled the TCPA unconstitutional, they definitely have no blanket protection. If Faxes take place at the point of transmission, this ruling provides them no protection at all.

Re:Jurisdiction (Mod me up!)

[capologist]

If an advertisement is transmitted from one state to a recipient in another state, wouldn't that qualify as interstate commerce, and therefore outside the reach of state law?

Re:Jurisdiction (Mod me up!)

[sam_handelman]

Yes, but the rulings of federal courts only apply within their own jurisdiction, which is geographical.

This is a FEDERAL law, there is a FEDERAL court is eastern missouri that ruled that the law is unconstitutional - which means it is unconstitutional, but only in eastern missouri. In southern California, a different FEDERAL court, which might or might not agree with the judge in eastern missouri, would have to strike the law down.

Re:Jurisdiction (Mod me up!)

[Mammothrept]

} I'm sorry that makes no sense at all. How can a
} federal court decide something is against the
} constitution but only on one area of a
} particular state? More importantly, why would
} they? That would mean the same trial would
} either effectively have to be tried a few
} hundred times or the Supreme Court can give up
} any hope of sleeping.

There are more than 100 Federal District Courts around the US that feed into to about a dozen Circuit Courts of Appeals (each Appeals Court supervises about ten District Courts). The Circuit Courts in turn feed into the Supreme Court. On novel or closely disputed issues of law, District Courts come to different conclusions all the time. Those opinions regularly get appealed to the local Circuit Court of Appeals. When the Appeals Court decides a legal issue, all the District Courts in the area have to abide by that decision.

Things get most interesting when the Circuit Courts disagree on the same issue (the so-called 'split in the circuits'). The Supreme Court hears well under 200 cases a year and about 90% of these are 'splits in the Circuits.' Once the Supreme Court decides an issue, all the lower Federal Courts have to abide by it.

In practice, lower courts often disagree for years or decades before the Supreme Court gets around to settling an issue.

The system is not optimized for logic or speed so your reaction that it doesn't make sense is not uncommon. It is part of the down side of having a large democracy filled with people who don't mind disagreeing with each other. You would prefer an alternative?...

Re:Jurisdiction (Mod me up!)

[DDX_2002]

What IS the plural of nemesis, anyway? Nemesissies doesn't seem right.

Re:Jurisdiction (Mod me up!)

[Q Who]

Nemeses.

junkfax.org

[SkipToMyLou]

See Junkfax.org if you want in-depth info on how to get junk faxers to pay you as well. :)

Yeah!

[1010011010]

There's an apropos quote from Carlin, or somebody. What was it? hmmm... oh, yes:

"Fuck the fucking fuckers!"

Maybe congress should pass a law requiring all marketing/advertising/solicitation to be traceable to the advertiser/marketer/solicitor.

In the case of phone calls: valid caller-ID information, and, on request, phone number and address.

In the case of faxes and postal mail: a valid phone number and address.

In the case of email: valid headers, address and phone number.

Re:Yeah!

[Waffle Iron]

In the case of phone calls: valid caller-ID information, and, on request, phone number and address.

Actually, if you buy Privacy Manager (TM) from the phone company, you appreciate the fact that almost no telemarketers send valid caller ID info. Without caller ID, the system makes you identify yourself by voice before ringing through.

These people almost never bother to attempt to manually bypass the filter, so I don't even get a ring. If they were forced to send Caller ID info, I'd have to get up off of my ass to see who's calling.

Re:Yeah!

[Accelerated Joe]

Why do I hate telephone company extortion? If you start with the B.S. of having to pay extra *not* to be listed in the phone book, and you end here, where you have to pay (probably a lot) extra for a service that only blocks telemarketers for as long as very few people use the system. We need to really fight back instead of using the passive system.

Otherwise, imagine the distant future... Picard standing on the bridge of the Enterprise, which is engaged with several Romulan warships. Suddenly, his communicator chimes in, "Smith to Picard" (notice how he has to use his name).

Picard: What is it? Make it fast!

Smith: I'd like to tell you about something very exciting! Is your love life becoming stale? Do you no longer satisfy all of your partner's needs? You can save big on our new "Transporter Assisted" penis enlargement procedure!

Picard: (thinking) If only we'd gotten rid of Communi-marketers in the 21st century!

Enterprise: *BOOM*

Suing fax.com?

[DarkHelmet]

The people at junkfax.org are apparently planning a large class-action suit against fax.com as well

And why? Did fax.com send them 5.4 million dollars of spam-infringing material? :)

Maybe it's me, but perhaps the Shareholders of companies running spam should get all the email from uce@ftc.gov forwarded to their private AOL accounts.

That'll show'em.

cell phones

[slugo3]

if youre going to do this for faxes because of the fact that it actually cost something for the recipient then it seems only logical to extend the same rules to tellemarketing on cell phones. I think my time is worth something though so I think any advertising not fed to me by my own choice (tv, internet browsing, reading publications with advertising, etc...) is wrong.

Re:cell phones

[Gaijin42]

It is already illegal to make an unsolicited call to a cell phone. For exactly that reason. All the major telemarketing firms cull cell numbers from their databases.

Re:cell phones

[trentfoley]

Since it is illegal to make unsolicited calls to a cell phone, how does this impact those with land-line phones forwarded to their cell phones? If I receive a telemarketing call on my cell phone that was forwarded when the telemarketer dialed my home phone, is the telemarketer violating a law?

Not that it affects me, I live in Missouri and our no-call list works beautifully. I have had one telemarketing call since the list was started. A few clicks on the mouse and a lookup of the phone number on caller id and I had it reported to the Missouri Attorney General's No-Call site.

Re:cell phones

[Gaijin42]

If you have it auto forwarding, then its you that is calling a cell phone, not the telemarketer. Your fault, not theirs.

BTW, a simmilar argument was made for email a few years back, there were some products out there that would auto-forward emails to a fax machine (I even wrote one of em!). This was when email wasn't a primary means of communication, and fax was. They could have business people go grab the pile of faxes, and not have to have a seperate process for emails.

When spam started taking off, people said "well, If I forward to my fax machine, does that count with the anti-spam-fax law?"

Nope, because they were sending to the fax, not the spammer.

To clear things up with some fax...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

The fax of the case are black and white. Fax.com faxed unsolicited faxes, and as a matter of fax, that is bad and they are liable. Those are the fax.

Re:To clear things up with some fax...

[FueledByRamen]

But what if they sent color faxes? I hear you can do that now. Then, I suppose the 'fax' of the case wouldn't be so black and white...

Re:To clear things up with some fax...

[Dannon]

This is, by far, more than a mere fax pas....

Other thoughts

[nuggz]

They could be considered to be "stealing" your fax paper, or by circumventing your SPAM filter, hacking. Maybe someone can dream up a DMCA defense against spammers.

If all speech is free from liability, it would make the DMCA violation stuff interesting to say the least.

Yeah this is just an infantile link 2 bad things together to cancel them out, and it will probaly never work.

Re:Other thoughts

[rjch]

They could be considered to be "stealing" your fax paper, or by circumventing your SPAM filter, hacking. Maybe someone can dream up a DMCA defense against spammers.

Now if this isn't the best idea I've heard in a long time, I don't know what is... problem being the expense in bringing such a suit...

FAX,, not EMAIL

[standards]

The law that was invoked only applies to messages sent to a Telephone Fax machine... and therefore doesn't apply to email. Bummer. Clearly, the law could be extended to include email.

And although it won't stop all spam, those who spam (and those who try to advertise via spam) will be at risk of significant fines. Plus, recipients will know that the messaging is illegal, and will be more likely to take action to protect their resources versus merely tolerating the crap and clicking "delete".

Re:FAX,, not EMAIL

[1010011010]

Let's say that I've got a fax-modem in my mail server. Does that count? Is it now a "Telephone Fax Machine?"

Re:FAX,, not EMAIL

[Anonymous Coward]

Under UK law, a PC with a printer attached to it can be considered a fax macxhine under either the Misuse of a telephone act or misuse of a computer system act. junk faxes here could then be a criminal act but I dont think anyone has pushed it to a court here. Pity.

Re:FAX,, not EMAIL

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not an attorney, but I'd assume that a fax is defined as fax protocol message that is delivered by the sender over the public telephone network.

So you'd be doing the faxing if you forward all your email to your fax modem, not the sender.

Seems to be reasonable, given the definition of the law.

Re:FAX,, not EMAIL

[FreeUser]

Let's say that I've got a fax-modem in my mail server. Does that count? Is it now a "Telephone Fax Machine?"

If you've got a printer connected to it to print out your faxes it probably qualifies. Almost certainly if it prints those faxes out automatically.

What gets interesting is if it treats a particular email as a fax account and prints said email automatically, especially if the account in question is named 'fax@mycompany.com'. :-)

you forgot 4 and 5

[schroet]

4. ???

5. PROFIT!!!!

bandwidth doesn't cost as much ... crap

[Anonymous Coward]

how many unsolicited, commercial faxes do you get in a day?

how many unsolicited, commercial emails do you get in a day?

i'd guess you get a shitload more in spam than faxes. is the fax law responsible for that? most likely.

business people and politicians are, generally speaking, stupid when it comes to technology. you have to put things in a $$ perspective for them to notice.

i've been itching to run for a gov't position here in az because i'm not happy with what my lawmakers are doing for me (re thomas jefferson ~"it's not your right to rebel against an unjust gov't, but your obligation") one law i'd like to pass in spam-friendly (read: no laws against spam) az is to make 1. the spammers responsible *and* 2. the spammer's client. that will send the message right damn quick.

like the article earlier today ... only a handful of people are responsible for 90% of the spam we get. i'd much rather pay an extra $.00002 a year in taxes for those dickwads to be on welfare, if, after passing a harsh law on spam, it caused them to lose their jobs.

there are about 9k employees where i work. between all the employees, i'd say it's safe to say we receive at least 50k spam messages per day. assuming it takes 1 second to designate a message as spam, and another second to delete it, that's about 28 hours/day of wasted productivity. not to mention the bandwidth costs (oc-3).

The right to privacy

[cdf12345]

What happened to the right to reasonable privacy within ones home? I know some *cough cough* public figures have said that we cannot expect privacy in public, what about within our homes?

Isn't faxing materials into the home a violation of our privacy?

Maybe we should hold the fax senders under the same standards as telemarketers, after all they are using the same technology.

CmdrTaco the hypocrite

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe CmdrTaco will stop sending me emails like this soon!!

**note: do not follow these directions!!**

From: malda@slashdot.org
To: *.*.*

Lagos, Nigeria.

Attention: The President/CEO

Dear Sir,

Confidential Business Proposal

Having consulted with my colleagues and based on the information gathered from the Nigerian Chambers Of Commerce And Industry, I have the privilege to request for your assistance to transfer the sum of $47,500,000.00 (forty seven million, five hundred thousand United States dollars) into your accounts. The above sum resulted from an over-invoiced contract, executed commissioned and paid for about five years (5) ago by a foreign contractor. This action was however intentional and since then the fund has been in a suspense account at The Central Bank Of Nigeria Apex Bank.

We are now ready to transfer the fund overseas and that is where you come in. It is important to inform you that as civil servants, we are forbidden to operate a foreign account; that is why we require your assistance. The total sum will be shared as follows: 70% for us, 25% for you and 5% for local and international expenses incident to the transfer.

The transfer is risk free on both sides. I am an accountant with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). If you find this proposal acceptable, we shall require the following documents:

(a) your banker's name, telephone, account and fax numbers.

(b) your private telephone and fax numbers -- for confidentiality and easy communication.

(c) your letter-headed paper stamped and signed.

Alternatively we will furnish you with the text of what to type into your letter-headed paper, along with a breakdown explaining, comprehensively what we require of you. The business will take us thirty (30) working days to accomplish.

Please reply urgently.

Best regards,
CmdrTaco

Mod Parent DOWN!

[Guppy06]

We have a /. article talking about an unsolicited junk faxer, and this yahoo posts an article talking about solicited ads.

Where's the "-1 Disinformation" option when you need it? Probably right next to the "-1 Has No Clue" one...

Why the FAX law was important

[standards]

Clearly, a $500 fine per unsolicited fax is a lot of money now... and in 1991, when the law was passed.

But imagine a world where this law didn't exist. There would be many many more organizations that spam fax materials to every number they can find. IN the end, the FAX would become a useless device, where there would be 99% noise and only 1% light.

Therefore, congress passed this law to protect such forseen abuse. At the time, FAX machines were the next great electronic technology, and they had to be protected to be a success.

Now email is on the verge of failure. Many people get 10, 20 or more unsolicited email advertisements per legitamate business correspondence. Clearly, such misuse of email infrustrutre is damaging this new technology. Children can no longer use email due to the pornography advertisements; business people must wade through dozens of junk messages to find the important ones.

Therefore, congress should act now to protect this new and cost-saving technology. Otherwise, it'll be too late, and email will fall out of favor with the business world.

Re:Why the FAX law was important

[Anonymous Coward]

But clearly the law violates the first amendment of the constitution. Freedom of speech is more important than wasting someone's time.

Re:Why the FAX law was important

[roybentley]

i also have an account that does not get spammed. i also have an account that gets 20 - 30 spams a day. i think the strongest form of beating spam is to beat the spammers. i'm sure this would work.

Re:Why the FAX law was important

[Per Abrahamsen]

> What a load of BS.

Thank you for labeling the content of your message clearly.

> Differences:

You mean similarities.

> Faxes are entirely passive: to receive on you
> must be ready and prone, and there is no
> effective way to screen faxes.

Same is true for email.

> Faxes cost quite a bit more than nothing to
> receieve.

Same is true for email, especially at the border of the net. Not everybody is a mp3 downloading teenager in the US with boradband like you.

> E-mail is totally different. It can be actively
> and usefully filtered. It costs little to
> accept a pre-lim connection, and then block a
> message.

The bst blacklist filters get 50% of the spam, and have a positive number of false positives (i.e. real mail accidentially junked) as well.

So using them is a question of whether the time saved in manual filtering is worth the cost of a lost order non and then. Sadly, spam is so numerious and expensive that the trade off of using blacklist usually pay of.

Whitelists like TMDA get close to 100% of the spam, with the risk of loosing valuable messages for people who can't or won't confirm. They aren't easily installed though, and it is unclear whether they will keep working when they become popular.

> I have an account which I never get spam in.

And I have a phone number that never get junk faxes. So what. If you keep your contact info (be it email or fax) a secret, you greatly reduce the risk of getting spammed (some spammers try random numbers or email adresses). You also greatly reduce the chance of getting contacted, which kind of remove the reason for having an email or fax at the first place.

Re:Why the FAX law was important

[Anonymous Coward]

The cost of SPAM on faxes is negligable when you consider toner and paper. We're talking pennies per page. Not very interesting. However, the damage due to lost messages and "business time" can be very very expensive.

And with caller ID and FAX headers, you can in fact filter out "spam", just not all of it. Just like email.

Of course, being an idiot, you wouldn't recognize these things. But that's WHY you're an idiot, and how someone could moderate your dribble up is beyond me. Well, there are lots of idiots here, so I geuss your in good company.

Re:Why the FAX law was important

[standards]

Oh, sorry, I'm refering to the United States.

Commercial speech has a much lower standard and much lower protection than private speech. That's why it's illegal to lie and distort the truth in commercial speech. This is just according to the supreme court of the US - maybe your country is different.

For more information about the US, see http://www.abuse.net/commercial.html

Re:Why the FAX law was important

[shren]

Now email is on the verge of failure.

Welcome to the world of wild exaggeration! I'll be your host...

Re:Why the FAX law was important

[bluGill]

If you are stupid, you will get spam.

No, if you are smart you will get spam. Stupid people obficate their email address before posting to USENET, and interesting people who they would want to contact them get frusterated and give up, and valuable communication is lost. Stupid people obficate their mailto: link on their webpage, and many people who want to contact them can't because their browser works slightly different, and valuable communication is lost.

Sure, you can be spam free. You can't use the internet correctly in these days though and be spam free. The internet is about communications.

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Re:Meanwhile, that law is found unconstitutional..

[Anonymous Coward]

If a person is entitled to use MY printing press to excercise his "free speech" then I should be able to walk into any newspaper printing facility and have my views printed without editorial intervention.

Wait you don't think that will happen?

Just wait. The law is constitutional, and the finding that it "is not" will be overturned. (I could only wish that the incompetant judge that found it unconstitutional would be removed from the bench and disbarred)

If only

[ONOIML8]

Wonderful. Now if only the FCC would actually enforce their radio regulations and clean up the land mobile mess.

If....

If my aunt had balls she would be my uncle.

Re:Meanwhile, that law is found unconstitutional..

[Anonymous Coward]

You teased me. I saw Zen and thoooght iiit woiuld be sojething worthwile` --The drunken poster

Your forgot one critical step!

[DavidJA]

Before you do this be sure to set your CSID to some BS number so that the recipient does not know who it came from!

You do NOT want the recipient to see your company letterhead on the top of your 500 page junk fax!

Re:Your forgot one critical step!

[Anonymous Coward]

not that it would show up as the whole page is black

Re:Your forgot one critical step!

[Anonymous Coward]

>not that it would show up as the whole page is black

Except for where the number goes.

China,India,Taiwan,Russia,Mexico,Argentina,South A

[Anonymous Coward]

But imagine a world where this law didn't exist

sure, like China,India,Taiwan,Russia,Mexico,Argentina,South Africa,Nigeria,Suadia Arabia, Iran,Iraq etc etc etc

there IS a whole world out there where this is perfectly legal, not just your little bubble they call USA

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Re:Jurisdiction (someone above is a karma whore)

[bons]

I'm sorry that makes no sense at all. How can a federal court decide something is against the constitution but only on one area of a particular state? More importantly, why would they? That would mean the same trial would either effectively have to be tried a few hundred times or the Supreme Court can give up any hope of sleeping.

Can you find a reference to back up that claim of yours?

Re:Meanwhile, that law is found unconstitutional..

[gmhowell]

_A_ court found it unconstitutional. Not _the_ Supreme Court of the US. It's a step forward for spammers and junk faxers, but it is far from the death knell for the law.

What worries me is that now that candidates for public office are spamming, it makes the 'free speech' argument a bit stronger. But it also ignores a few things.

First, fax machines are definately not a 'commons' in any sense of the word. By printing stuff on my fax machine, or sending spam to my server, they have committed a trespass.

Second, there is no possible way to rationally interpret the first amendment as granting the right of trespass. They can send junk email; my mailbox belongs to the federal gov't. But my fax machine is mine. Even if the line belongs to Verizon, the machine is mine. Similarly, even if the IP is only mine temporarily, the server is mine. Mine, mine, mine.

More stupid judges...

bring on the tiered pricing

[newt_sd]

Bring on the tiered pricing so I can put a cost of bandwidth next to the amount of spam and finally convince someone its costing me time and money and bandwidth. Then make it illegal

My workplace gets fax spam

[vandelais]

that requests that you fax your interest back to them.

Step 1) find black construction paper at your workplace.
Step 2) write "Stop Spamming" in stencil on white paper
Step 3) Cut out message and tape to black construction paper
Step 4) fax back message that uses a shitload of recipient's fax toner

Step 5) Smile and enjoy the rest of day.

Re:My workplace gets fax spam

[WickedClean]

And then they sue you and you lose because you are small. I would NOT recommend getting into a fax war with a bunch of people like that.

But it is a good idea....

Re:My workplace gets fax spam

[buss_error]

Lousy idea. Most of the junk faxers use computers, not real fax machines. Nice try though.

Re:My workplace gets fax spam

[spacefrog]

Make sure to tape the two ends of your black construction paper together once it's rolling through the machine...

Two or three hours of that ought to do the trick.

Imagine...

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw that. Imagine faxing Beowulf!

Re:Jurisdiction (someone above is a karma whore)

[sam_handelman]

I'm capped, so I can't whore.

A quick google search turns up this:
Decisions of a federal court of appeals must be followed by all of the district courts located within that circuit. District courts outside that circuit, however, are not bound by such decisions. Further, one district court does not have to follow the rulings of any other district court. A court is bound only by the decisions of higher courts that have direct jurisdiction over it. This is the concept of precedent. Because it is the highest court in the country, all courts must follow precedent established by the United States Supreme Court.

Yes, the site that is from is directed at HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS. In the future, you might do a little research to see if the thing you dispute is common knowledge, before asking for a source.

Is it possible to slow down a fax transmission?

[Dahan]

I got tired of junk faxes wasting my paper, so I switched to using a fax modem and Hylafax. I still get a lot of junk faxes, but at least I can rm them.

Anyways, it'd be kinda fun if it was possible to somehow detect a junk fax (maybe an empty TSID is good enough? All the legit faxes I get have a TSID) and then deliberately try to keep the faxer on the line as long as possible, running up their phone bill. Force the modem to 300 baud or something like that :) Maybe request retransmissions too (I don't know if faxes even support that). So is this possible?

Re:Is it possible to slow down a fax transmission?

[larien]

Hrm, I'm suddenly reminded of the scene in "Almost Famous" when the Rolling Stone editor is discussing the "Mojo machine" which can send "a whole page in 30 minutes!". Dunno if current modems will time out at that duration, but it's worth a thought!

Re:Is it possible to slow down a fax transmission?

[DarkGhost]

I dont think its possbile to slow down the baud rate in the middle of a fax. The baud rate is determined by the handshake in the beginning as far as I know. Then again, I could be wrong.

Re:Is it possible to slow down a fax transmission?

[__dtrance]

The only way that I know of would be to decrease the quality of the phone line so that the machine would have to correct more errors.

Maybe someone could code something that would return 2-3 invalid CRC's per valid CRC to the sender...

they could face more than that, possibly

[Artifex]

Besides which, the porno spammers could get sued for lots of money by the parents of minors...

I'm still waiting for an aggressive district attorney to file criminal charges against porno spammers who send mail to minors - there are a number of different charges that could be brought up. I wonder why it's not been done, yet.

It's going to take the threat of criminal charges to stop most spammers, I think.

Re:they could face more than that, possibly

[Matthaeus]

Slight problem, and if I were the counsel for the defense, this is what I'd use:

Since e-mail spam can be made virtually untraceable (bounce it through a Chinese relay or some other such nastiness), it can't be proven that the porn site sent or arranged to have sent the e-mail.

It would also be fairly risky to actually bring about such a suit...you'd be saying in court that you're not exercising due diligence in monitoring your child's online activities. Which person do you think the Health Department would go after? The nebulous entity with enough lawyers to ensure they don't get shut down and who might not be at blame at all? Or the parents who admitted under oath that they allowed their kids to see pornographic spam and don't have nearly the resources to combat the Department?

Also, the evidence criteria for taking a kid away from his parents is the lowest in the nation--the prosecution just must prove that the danger exists. In order to get the porn people in trouble, they must prove beyond a shadow of a doubt.

IANAL, but I have had experience with these issues.

Re:they could face more than that, possibly

[flonker]

I too have seen the Department of Social Services go after a suspected child abuser. And I know for a fact that the accusations weren't true.

Anyway, they (DSS) said, "We'd rather wrongly take a thousand children away from their parents than let one child abuser go free."

Re:they could face more than that, possibly

[GlassUser]

That's funny, because I've had the damndest time trying to get someone to look at my step father's abusive habits. They say there's not enough information to go on, despite my willingless to testify, under oath, that I've seen him beat up children.

Re:they could face more than that, possibly

[flonker]

I've created a user discussion at http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=37691, and posted some of my experiences with the issue there. Please join me there.

Re:This is rediculous!

[quantum bit]

Junk mailers tend to do all their own sorting, research the validity of their addresses in the USPS database and print POSTNET barcodes on them so that any USPS sorting equipment just has to scan the barcode.

First class postage went up because your chicken-scratch handwriting is just too damned hard for the OCR equipment to read and you're too damned lazy to go to usps.com to check to see if you have the right ZIP+4 code.

I always print my envelopes, use ZIP+4 and barcodes. Where do I get my rebate for not having to have my chicken scratch handwriting decoded?

This is what I love about America

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what I love about America!

This is what I love about America: the ridiculous amount of money that no one expects you to pay back!!!

++ Ah u tawkin' to mee?! Ah u tawkin' to mee?!

** Heeeeh dude, I'm fine, just got fined!

++ H'much?

** Huh?! That stupid frettin' motha' told mee... Ya know mee. If I ain't no good trash I gonna pay that two grand her brotha? Her brotha? ,Tomorrow, too! come on. Elsewith she gonna kill mee.Shere can't mean th|||
grand!

Re:This is what I love about America

[Anonymous Coward]

and I love america with the fine example you show us...

American kids that are illiterate morons...

Yay! welcome to america where out teens and college students cant speak english, sound like illeterate idiots and cant spel wurth a b33n.

thanks, you're making me happy that when my kids graduate they will be able to easly get jobs as they speak english clearly, can spell, and act like humans instead of a tattooed turd.

Please keep doing what you are doing trailer park boy.

The best junk mail, period

[freeweed]

We actually caught a company doing this to us a couple of years back, except instead of the fax, they were actually mailing us those magazine ads dressed up to look like articles. Attached to said ad (carefully looking like it was ripped from a real magazine) was a Post-it-note, with our company's owner's name on it, to this effect:

"David, here is the article I was talking about". Seems pretty personal, until I found the very same thing at several companies we dealt with - all with THEIR company's owner/president/manager's name on it. I guess those business directories for mass marketing really DO have a purpose.

Of course, nothing beats the latest from Publishers Scamming House: envelopes and contents dressed up with realistic "highlighting" and "handwriting", all carefully printed out from a high-speed color printer. The crossed out "spelling mistakes" and detail of the highlighted lines, all made to look like a real person did it, astounds me every time I see it.

Maybe it's just me, but such blatant attempts at deception sure come close to fraud in my books. The Better Business Bureau disagreed, however :(

It's funny that STEVE KIRSCH...

[Anonymous Coward]

...who runs the Junkfax site is on his moral high-horse.

When I worked for him at INFOSEEK, the company was immoral THROUGH and THROUGH.

I was asked to LIE about logs by the CFO, and their CTO, Patrick Naughton is an ADMITTED PEDOPHILE (he plead guilty when he was caught).

Contacts at Fax.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Well now, if anybody can figure out the fax number for Fax.com's attorney Mary Ann Wymore, why not post it so that we can all exercise our right to free speech by faxing them our thoughts?

In the meantime, we can also exercise our rights by faxing and emailing Fax.com at:

Fax 949-916-8629

sales@Fax.com

techsupport@Fax.com

faxcaster@Fax.com

consulting@Fax.com

billing@Fax.com

graphics@Fax.com

info@Fax.com

businessopp@Fax.com

Re:Contacts at Fax.com

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.greensfelder.com/wymore.htm

mlw@greensfelder.com

This would be funny

[Stonent1]

Send them a FAX for Pre-Paid legal services. :)

How to deal with junk faxers who use fax modems

[Anonymous Coward]

Beige Box, 'nuff said.

Only in America

[CaptainZapp]

SMS reception and incoming calls are free in Europe and Japan.

The only exception is when you're roaming in a different country.

Doesn't mean that those fuckers should have the right to hawk their penis extension wares and their free trips to Hawaii on my cell phone. Neither by text, nor by calling.

This is exactly

[CaptainZapp]

If you are stupid, you will get spam.

the fucking ignorant idiot attitude that really gets my blood boiling. I run a database consultancy business. What contact information do you suggest should I have on my web page. None? Or some of those "clever" java script email obfucation systems, that won't work on every second browser?

If you're a pimply faced MP3 downloading 7377 4aX0r you may be able not to give out your email address. If you run a business, this is simply not an option.

No need to thank me.

a lot of alot...

[CProgrammer98]

It's "a lot" - TWO words.

9th Circuit US Court of Appeals upheld it

[alizard]

You should have waited a few minutes before posting, there were cites in Politech in the very next post pointing to other Federal courts where the anti-junkfax law was upheld. Unless the 8th Circuit upholds the District Court's pro-junk fax ruling, the FCC enforcement continues.

Filters are better than 50% sensitive

[djmurdoch]

The bst blacklist filters get 50% of the spam, and have a positive number of false positives (i.e. real mail accidentially junked) as well.

Your point that filters aren't perfect (with both false positives and false negatives) is correct, but your 50% estimate is way too low. The IP-based filtering at spamcop.net catches 90-95% of my incoming spam, with around a 1% false positive rate. It's much better than Brightmail, which my ISP uses.

What you do is sign up for $30/yr, and they give you an email address at spamcop.net. You forward all incoming mail to that address; their system looks through the headers for signs that it originated (or passed through) a blacklisted system. Stuff that passes the check goes into a POP3/IMAP mailbox, or can be forwarded offsite (your choice). Stuff that fails is either tagged as spam or diverted to a separate folder, again by your choice.

Some people have much higher false positive rates than me: if you are unlucky (or stupid) enough to use an ISP whose servers are blacklisted, then all of your incoming mail will be filtered. But if you use it as recommended, this just tags or diverts the message, it won't be deleted.

They also make it pretty easy to report incoming spam, and their filter is based on blocking any IP address that has been reported sufficiently recently.

It's a good service.

About spam email...

[slykens]

Fortunately my office doesn't receive too many of these types of faxes, and if we do I don't see them.

Quite a few people are asking how to apply something like this to email spam. My suggestion is to use whatever anti-spam law may exist on the books in your state and sue the advertiser named in the spam. File it in small claims court, then subpoena their advertising records to prove the purchase of service from the spammer. Even if the suits are thrown out we're still talking about a cost of several hundred dollars per suit to the advertiser. At some point it would have to become more expensive to defend the advertising than to stop it.

That really is the key here, to make it more expensive to advertise this way than not, and ideally the law should make both the company advertised and the spammer liable. That together with a spam email being prima facia evidence of the crime placing the burden of proving the spam was sent without the advertiser's knowledge on them.

Re:far more serious?

[SystematicPsycho]

Why is that a troll comment? If you think that is something I would do your incorrect.

and you forgot 6

[Anonymous Coward]

6. NOT FUNNY ANYMORE!!!

Re:Jurisdiction, round 2.

[Anonymous Coward]

And to complicate things, the state courts can reach a differenet conclusion on the same question in the same state as the federal court (and have).

For example in Eastern Dist. of Missouri, where the district court held the state did not satisfy its burden to uphold the junk fax law against a constitutional challenge, the STATE courts have reached to opposite conclusion, that the junk fax law (47 U.S.C. 227) does NOT violate constitional principles of speech... .and these came AFTER the fedral decision. Some of those state courts are even in the Eadstern District of Missouri too.

At least seven federal judges in three different circuits have already held the junk fax law does NOT violate constitional free speech guarantees. This one moron in Missouri is an 80+ year old coot that will be reversed. DOJ and State of Mo. have already filed their appeals to the 8th Circuit. Briefs are due Aug 21.

Disabling memory send is trivial

[swb]

On most machines, the local buffer holds a scan of all the pages BEFORE the machine even dials. Your machine may differ.

There's lots of problems with the continuous black page attack, but this one is the most easy to mitigate. Most FAX machines that I've dealt with can disable the "memory send" feature, which results in a direct transmission of the FAX. I do this all the time, since my FAX machine is brain dead and waits 5-10 minutes before even starting a memory send.

The other problems others have mentioned: no actual printing machine on the other end, expensive toll calls, are hard to get around. I would imagine that "pro" faxsmappers use outbound-only trunks that cannot accept an incoming call, their computers are originate-only. And how do you get their number in the first place, providing they're dumb enough to call from a regular line with whatever machine they have set to accept?

Better to get their home address, some friends and a couple of fungo bats.

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Re:Meanwhile, that law is found unconstitutional..

[FreeUser]

First, fax machines are definately not a 'commons' in any sense of the word. By printing stuff on my fax machine, or sending spam to my server, they have committed a trespass.

Excellent point. In addition, you are paying the cost for their "speech." Clearly the constitution intended for speakers to provide their own soap box, not be required to be given one at someone else's direct, monetary expense.

Second, there is no possible way to rationally interpret the first amendment as granting the right of trespass. They can send junk email [sic?]; my mailbox belongs to the federal gov't. But my fax machine is mine. [emphesis added]

Was this a typo? Surely you meant the can send you junk postal mail. Your email box belongs to you. It is a file you own (literally, and in several senses of the word if you run UNIX or GNU/Linux), residing on your hard drive, with data that comes across the internet or telephone connection you pay for. It is not, in any way, owned by the government.

Email SPAMMERS are exactly like Fax spammers ... they are using your equipment and your resources to advertise their products, at your expense. There is nothing whatsoever in the constitution that bars a well crafted law from banning such activity outright, or from providing harsh remedies for those who do violate such a law.

Postal mail, on the other hand, is another story, as you correctly point out.

Automatic dial announcement devices illegal in USA

[yerricde]

It's worth noting that in my state (Arizona), [spamming telephones using automatic dial announcement devices] is illegal.

It's also illegal in the United States for anyone involved in interstate commerce. It was made illegal as part of the same junk fax law (47 USC 227), which I refuse to call the TCPA because of the Palladium implications.

As a business

[CaptainZapp]

Is that so hard?

It's not hard, it's impossible. You must publish your email address on a website and this address is publicly accessable and will be farmed by evil bots.

Of course I have a couple of garbage addresses, but there's no way I can mask my business address. OK I could use a gif, or I could mask it with clever tricks, or I could pay a service to filter spam.

The bottomline however is, that legit mail, which might mean business (which is an asset in such hard times) might get filtered or go under due to those fuckers, that actually cost me real money.

I just wanted to point out, that it's not necessarily my stupidity, which gets me drowned in spam, as you imply.

This company has provided me free FAX service for

[roliver2]

Thanks for nothing FCC. I sure hope the cost of fighting this dosn't kill the company. If they sent unsolicited stuff to fax machines they should be fined. I doubt this is the case on any grand scale though. My guess is that someone signed up their ex boss up to receive the adds for revenge. I have used their free service to receive things to e-mail for years and have received a very small number of ads. This is even though I am sure the fine print of there service gave them the right to send thing to me.

hehe...

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

ROTF LOL... hehe... that one's *really* good. :)

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How to put your competitor our of business...

[InfiniteWisdom]

If you, proprietor of Acme Penis Enlargement, Inc. want to drive drive Infinite Toner Supply, Inc. out of business... all you need to do is find an untraceable fax number and send ads for Infinite Toner Supply, Inc from there!!!

It's been deemed unconstitutional

[bigchris]

Announced on Kuro5hin first: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/8/7/134934/3810

http://www.politechbot.com/p-03394.html

Chris