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David Sorkin on Internet Law and Spam
KC7GR writes "Cnet has published an interview with David Sorkin, associate professor at the John Marshall Law School. He's answering questions about the current state of cyberlaw, and he also has much to say about why current federal legislation being considered could make the problem of spam worse rather than curbing it."
The Pro version is available for MS Outlook users, and works wonders.
Of more interest to me was the fact that the EU too has plans to legislate against spammers... I wonder whether these will prove to have any effectiveness whatsoever... I can't help but feel that technology will help separate more unsolicited email than legislation...
John Marshall is basically well known for two things: Trial Advocacy and Computer Law. I think they have one of the first programs dedicated to computers and the law in the country. They have a computer law journal and recently hosted the American Bar Association's first conference on computer crime. They also host the American Bar Association Mock Trial Competition every year.
It's really a relatively small school without the cutthroat competition of places like Harvard or Stanford. On the one hand, this means you'll have a better chance to pick apart the law. On the other hand, it doesn't have the Harvard or Stanford name.
I'm not a lawyer (ironically) and so I don't know what John Marshall's reputation is in the legal world. The ABA seems to like it.
Hope this helps.
Finding God in a Dog
TMDA is an anti-spam program that basically does this using the current email system. Unrecognized sending addresses are given a confirmation request email, to which they must reply in order for the message to continue delivery (sorta like a mailinglist signup). This prevents the spoofing problem, which is probably enough to solve all of SPAM, since an essential part of SPAM effectiveness is the ability to hide the origin.
It is a shame that this "dialback" approach isn't standard in the protocol (like it is in Jabber), because now we either have to change the protocol or graft something on top of it (TMDA). I run TMDA at my server, and it works well. I get no SPAM (that's 'zero', baby), but it causes an extra inconvenience to first-time senders, which could otherwise easily be automated with a better email protocol.