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Politicians Seek Spam Loophole
Steve B writes "An article in the Mercury News by Mike McCurry and Larry Purpuro (respectively heading an "advocacy management and communications software company" and a "political e-marketing firm") wraps the case for political spam in all the usual Mom-Flag-&-Apple-Pie cliches. They conclude with a cynical appeal for a special exemption, while condescendingly instructing anti-spammers that their efforts are "better focused on commercial e-mail" and painting spammer Bill Jones as a victim who made a few trifling mistakes."
Is it just me or does what they are saying really just boil down to, "Everyone elses Spam is bad but ours..."
Very similar to the old cliche that some people really believe that their shit don't stink.
yes i run a goth/punk/emo porn site.
First we'll have exceptions for candidates for public office.
Then we'll have demands for party affiliates and candidate support groups to have their own equivalent exceptions added, since they speak on behalf of the candidates (purely nonprofit, of course).
Then we'll have demands from the lobbyists to have their exceptions added, since they push the issues that the candidates deal with on a daily basis, and if a candidate is, say, pro-life, why shouldn't the pro-choice lobbyists get equal say?
And finally, since many lobbyists are on corporate payroll, the corporations can just take the gloves off and ask for their own exemptions, since they might want to support a particular candidate, and as a legal "individual" (without voting rights, of course), they are entitled to endorse a particular candidate in means outside of the normal campaign contributions.
But, of course, once they get their hands on the e-mail lists of a certain group of constituents, you can bet that it will accidentally fall into the wrong hands, along with the demographic/geographic data that accompanies it.
Marketer heaven. And, before long...Spammer heaven.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
I love how he repeatedly says how the candidate saved money. Not once mentioning that it actually costs ISPs money to deliver these things. Like he thinks by pushing the send button, the magical internet fairies come and deliver each email by hand. But then again, politicians were always good at spending other peoples money.
Once political spam becomes mainstream, you'll soon see some dirty tactics.
It's an old trick for a candidate's staff to canvas for votes for the OTHER guy -- at 3AM. No better way to piss people off and get them to vote for you instead of them. Print up campaign stickers for the other guy, and paste 'em on people's car bumpers. Make sure they're the sort that don't come off without special chemicals. There are several variations on this theme that have been used before and will be used again.
So when your mailbox gets bombed with 100 spams, all asking you to vote for someone, and all infected with Klez -- don't assume they actually came from the candidate.
In reading the piece, "Internet can level the political playing field" by Mike McCurry and Larry Purpuro, I felt the overwhelming need to stress a single point that seems to have been completely missed by the writers. They utterly failed to realize that e-mail costs the recipient of the e-mail message time and money. Be it the 3 seconds wasted downloading the message from their mail server, or the cost of the phone call for the internet access, or the usage of total monthly bandwidth that some ISP's allot to users, e-mail costs the receiving party money. This is the very heart of the problem with ANY unsolicited e-mail. Television, radio, and print ads all do not cost the recipient of the advertisement money. If it wasn't an ad for a politician, it would be an ad for some product or service; in any case, the recipient would still receive an ad. But e-mail is a very cheap way to mass sent advertisements to others while making them pay for the "privilege" of receiving the message. This is the very reason why people are not allowed to fax unsolicited ads to other fax machines. The cost is a lot more dramatic in the case of a fax machine, but the cost is still there even in e-mail. It should not matter whether it cost you $.10 because of paper and ink in the case of the fax machine or the $.01 it can cost for the bandwidth, memory needs, and time it can cost for an e-mail.
Here is a simple question that I would like answered. Should we, as consumers, have to pay every time someone sends an advertisement for their product to us? If we did we would all be broke very quickly. The people promoting and advertising products, services, or political campaigns are the ones who should foot the bill of spreading their information.
Unsolicited e-mail is like sending something cash on delivery without a way of refusing to receive the item. Any person or group of persons should be held accountable for any and all monetary charges they force upon others. Unsolicited e-mail in any form should be dealt with in the harshest manor available to the recipient. There is no such thing as unharmful unsolicited e-mail, if it costs anyone other then the sender money, then it is causing harm.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Spam: Bulk email from a stranger. Solved mostly with technology and a little bit by laws. By emphasizing method (bulk), not content, we can use technology to block spam and courts are likely to uphold our rights to do so. Blocks or bans on content (1), non-bulk email (2), or email from a pre-existing business relationship (3) are likely to fail and could make the problem much worse.
Non-bulk email, or email from entities who aren't strangers: not spam, however annoying. Generally solved with boycotts, public ridicule, and questions about ethics "Would you accept 'technically I didn't lie' from an employee? Then why should we the public accept it?" (As for 'friendly' email, replies of "By forwarding this email to me you give me permission to think you're an idiot. There is no virus. Timmy hates postcards. You can't send angelic blessings as an attachment, and if I wanted that joke I'd go to rec.humor.funny-the-1st-time-20-repetitions-ago." might work.)
Laws: Even on spam not a good idea- ineffective at best. Dishonest spam & spammers (forged headers, etc.) don't care about existing US laws- they break laws on contracts ('no spamming' ISP contracts), theft (stolen credit cards to pay for accounts), identity fraud, spam (California requires "ADV," in the subject line...), and more already. And domestic laws can't stop a fundamentally international problem. Even worse, if US laws only ban dishonest spam then honest (think DMA) spam is legitimized. And banning commercial speech alone won't make it because of the Constitution. It protects commercial speech much more than some people might think. Thus, it is bad to focus on...
(1) Content: Political or religious messages can still be spam, and any speech, commercial or not, has to be really, really bad before the Supreme Court will even start to think about unprotecting it. You'd have to prove Spam-speech is equivalent to "'fire!' in a crowded theater" or "riot right now" speech. Unlikely. Instead, focus on...
(2) "Bulk" because bulk is what causes damage. One bounced email: no problem. 100,000: big problem. Courts are likely to find that individually written emails, however annoying, aren't going to cause the damages of bulk - people just can't write that many in a day. Courts won't like punishing a person who wrote one letter ("Hi, I saw an article about you, you might be interested in my software..." is an unsolicited commercial email. Laws that ban it won't last very long.). "Bulk" makes a better brightline. If a spammer is caught breaking an ISP's contract, and claims the emails weren't bulk, easy perjury... Judge: "4 emails with boilerplate text after the first sentence. This isn't bulk?" Exceptionally stupid Spammer: "No."
(3) "From a stranger" for two reasons. One- its easier to prove that bulk email from strangers is inherently a burden. Email from all 200 businesses and 10 candidates you do know: irritating but not impossible to deal with, maybe not worth curbing speech. Email from all 29.9998 million businesses and ten thousand candidates you don't know (opt-outable or not): impossible. Two- if you voluntarily gave your email address out, courts might rule that caveat emptor trumps "punish them because their email annoys me."
The cost needed to run a successful campaign in the US is already ridiculous. And this weeds out people who cannot obtain truckloads of corporate money - surely not a good thing.
How high does it have to go before you would start having doubts?
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Well, I depends on your point of view. I already get a lot of spam on how to evade US tax laws - or how to get certains US permits, etc. Guess what, I don't live in the US. Getting messages from US politicians would certainly be spam in my book.
At least, viagra works - the same cannot be said from politicians. :-)
The core problem is always the same "it's not spam if it is sent to the right people". The problem is, spammers are not very good at selecting the right people.
If you add up all the people that cannot vote in the US, don't care, don't want to get political stuff at their work address or hate the guy anyway - it makes quite a lot of people that will get unsollicited e-mail, eg will be spammed.
Political messages can be handled in the same way that legitimate communications from organisations: by using an opt-in mechanism.