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Direct Marketers Association Asks To Be Regulated
alanjstr writes "Recognizing that with all the spam out there, the legitimate messages don't get through, the Direct Marketers Association (DMA) has decided that they will no longer oppose federal anti-spam legislation, but that forged headers should be illegal."
What about when I have one mail address on my server with a lot of aliases pointing to it? Can I still "forge" the headers to say that it's coming from one of the aliases?
Yes, yes - this really isn't "illegal"... My question is, when does it become illegal?
I think the Direct Marketers who really want to sell stuff have realized that they need positive marketing techniques, and are willing to realize that the spammers, and other not-so-reputible business establishments have really made consumers sick to death of hearing from anyone selling anything.
The first step for these businesses is to see that spamming and dishonesty doesn't win customers - customers will not do business with you to spite you if they get ten unsolicitated e-mails from people about your business than if you just put on advertisement on television, or just used word-of-mouth advertising.
Not really. They just want a law that will shut down all of the small time spamvertizers so that the big boys will have the market all to themselves. They want the new Federal law, which would only forbid sending mail with forged headers but not other noxious practices like opt-out only lists- to superceed stronger state laws. IOW, they want a Federal law that specifically legalizes spam with a few trivial limitations. Don't think that this will result in you receiving any less spam.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
The DMA (or the gun lobby or you name it) gets involved when they see that regulation is inevitable. Their purpose? To "shape" the law according to their perogatives -- i.e., eviscerate it. Microsoft uses a similar strategy with "embrace, extend, extinguish."
The DMA's job is to promote DMA, not to tailor it to our desires or rights -- requiring opt-out is a good example. They provide a limited opt-out for junk mail and telemarketing primarily to silence their critics and head off decisive government intervention.
Many states already have anti-spam legislation on the books, but it is rarely enforced because of the difficulty in tracking these cretins down. A federal law would provide uniformity and predictability of everyone's rights and obligations. And hey, it might even work.
A recent article reported with a straight face a major spammer's contention that they HAD to forge the headers because otherwise anti-spam zealots would complain to their ISP and get them shut down -- making opt-outs impossible. Ha!
These advertisers can then pay ISP's a 'distribution fee', which allows mail signed by that marketer's key to pass through the ISP spam filter. This ensures that spam is not free, which will drop the number of spam messages, and will also cause a corresponding increase in quality.
We are not getting rid of spam, but establishing a reasonable system for permitting its distribution seems fair.
Hehe. Thanks for catching that! For a second, my deep-seeded cynicism was in danger of becoming slightly less hardened, and my heart slightly less jaded. It was a close call.
... who gives a fuck?
:)
Now, in response to what you found...
I know I say this a lot, but...
"We think the opt-in creates a true noneconomic model," Cerasale said. "We don't believe you get a viable economic model in opt-in."
Yeah, and the laws against prostitution are really hurting the members of the Direct Whoring Association.
I'm sorry, but I just can't stand the "but our business model needs this" legal argument. I'm serious! What university is putting out the MBAs who think whatever dumb-ass business model they think up is going to be okay, and they have the right to see it succeed.
Of course, they have the right to try, and the sad thing is if their stupid argument actually works, then they just managed to succeed anyway.
The enemies of Democracy are
When a company asks to be regulated, WATCH OUT! What they actually want is to be regulated, so that they can control the regulations. Then, everything they do will be legal, so there won't be any reason to block them.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Still, this might help in spite of them. A U.S.-wide law against forged "from" messages from commercial spam would at least dissuade some, especially if it had a stiff penalty. This would make it easier to set up my mailbox so that I raise the priority for people I've talked with before; with stiff penalties, they're less likely to forge friends' addresses.
This would be REALLY good if the federal law also required the "ADV" convention, and nailed down EXACTLY what it means. It's already in some state laws. If I could automatically reject the messages without having to read them all, that would steal my bandwidth and storage, but at least it wouldn't steal my time.
Yeah, not everyone obeys the law, there are offsite systems, etc. But it would be a first step, and some legal tools would make it a lot easier to employ technical ones. For example, there's no point in tracking down offenders if they've broken no law. Also, the evasion techniques make it much clearer that they ARE breaking the law. Finally, if nearly all email from some asian countries are spam, then entire continents can blacklist them... and that would be a real wake-up call that would reduce spam. So, a few basic laws can really enable technological solutions, so even a feeble law might help.
I've written down a few comments and anti-spam techniques at http://www.dwheeler.com/esssays/stopspam.html; some of you may find them interesting. I know many others are interested in stemming this outrageous flood of spam that is threatening to steal the ability to receive email.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
If this gets at least some effective anti-spam legislation on the books then let's look at what an acceptable anti-spam legistlation meeting the DMA's requirement would need to be a good thing. First it would need enforcement with teeth. Long, sharp, pointy teeth. No itty bitty fine and a clear ability to get by the shelters and shell corporations that the spammers set up to distance themselves from their dirty work. Second it would need to have no cascading opt-ins. Nobody has any control over what 'marketing partnerships' (which is really just old-fashioned selling of mailing lists) a company engages in so any opt-in should not automaticaly transfer. Third there should be an option for an enforcable global opt-out. I know that the DMA hates this but I regard it as necessary. We have some e-mail address that just serve business purposes, i.e. info@.... and sales@... amd service@... and webmaster@... and so forth yet these get the worst quantites of spam because they appear on the web site and are picked up by the spiders. But frankly having the DMA not opposing everything means that at least some legislation can be passed (unless the powerfull breast and penis enlargement lobby can block it!)
Is to do what in fact this article says, make it illegal to send spam. Develop a government run system that requires online businesses to register with, and have that system send out the emails to the users registered on the companies lists. Some will say this will cost too much money? So what, make the businesses pay for it. They butchered the use of emails so badly by sending all their junk, they deserve it.
If someone fails to abide by this new law, then slam them with a badass penalty. No one will want to disobey it if it comes with a severe penalty. Unless of course they think they can get away with it.
- Direct Marketers Association
- Asks To Be Regulated
At least they can opt-in. .A couple of us around here have been assigned to create direct mail programs and some of these programs, while initially billed as using strictly Opt-In, degraded into Opt-Out and even eventually into a simple spamfest. I admit I sent out two groups of "spam" (though clearly marked according to California regulations, blah, blah) on behalf of a failing employer. I have to admit: it was fun to do (one was for a legitimate product the other was for a MLM, the Amway web effort) and we had fun optimizing the script to pump out more spam. But the list we were given was complete junk! Over 2 million addresses (took a while to load into MySQL from the CSV file)--including my own father's email address! It also included harvested email from die.net. Ever tried to send mail to die.net? It's a great honeypot/tarbaby for spammers. But 2 campaigns were enough for my conscience (we sent less than 500,000 total messages).
When asked to make a Flash/Windows multimedia program that could automatically extract email addresses from a users machine and send them to a central server--on behalf of serious players in the music industry no less--a couple of us around here drew the line and said "no". [The couple of us I keep refering to no longer work for the slimebucket that wanted to move spyware to a new level in exchange for listening to HipHop tracks.]
Anyway, when complaining about spam realize that someone with technical know-how enabled the peabrain spammer to do his evil.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
if you actually read the article you'd have realized that one of the conditions for the DMA to support anti-spam legislation is that it would have overturn the regulations in 20 states. so basically they want "no forged headers" to be the extent of all the anti-spam laws in the country, which will make somewhat of an impact, say maybe 50 instead of 100 pieces of junkmail a day.
I never said I was smart, I just said I was smarter than you
Corporations are people to! i'm serious. They also pay taxes!
Corporations are people to! i'm serious. They also pay taxes!
Paying taxes does not make an entity into a person. While there are lawyers who have perverted the word to refer to both corporations and human beings in the same way, we don't have to accept their twisting of the English language.
If a corporations are people, why didn't Union Carbide get life in prison for the killing 3,800 people in Bhopal, India?
Why are tobacco companies not being "executed" for killing people? They knowingly sold something that was lethal while lying to the purchasers and claiming that the product was not shown to be harmful. If you started selling arsenic-laced lemonade while claiming that it was safe, you would be in prison or the electric chair.
When corporations are jailed for criminal acts and their ability to do business is halted during that time, then I'll think about sharing the title "person" with them. As of now, corporations have the rights of people with none of the responsibilities.
...only outlaws will forge headers.
But seriously, will legislation have any effect at all? Most of this stuff originates (or at least is relayed) from outside the US.
Garg
Garg
Alumnus, Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
In the case of medical marijuana, the Constitution is clearly on the side of California. Your implication that strong federal law trumps weak state law does not have a basis in the Constution (though the federal government would like you to believe it does.) The powers of the federal government are enumerated. Those which aren't enumerated default to the state. Have you ever wondered how the federal government justifies its anti-drug laws. They claim they have juristiction under the interstate commerce clause. If California decides to raise marijuana and sell it entirely within the state, the federal government simply has no Constitutional authority to stop it. Like I said, I'd like to see California sue the U.S. government over this issue. It would give the Supreme Court a chance to say that after over 100 years of no states rights, the 10th amendment might mean something again.
(Fine, I'm plugging, but it's a good site.)
This sig no verb.
The value of reviews would increase, and publications would come out giving customers said information. Since consumers now have choice, and control over what they're reading, the information is of value.
Yes, a few business models would break. That's always going to happen when you start mucking around with economic rules. New ones will also come up.
It pretty much comes down to "If you don't let us force Foo (useful product news/advertising) on you, you won't get Foo and you wouldn't want that". This ignores the fact that if customers wanted Foo, they'd willingly sign up for free Foo. Yes, current advertising generally sucks from an informational standpoint, and isn't that entertaining. There would have to be changes in the product information distribution system.
May we never see th