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Microsoft Fights to Weaken Washington Anti-Spam Law
An anonymous reader writes "According to the Seattle Times, Microsoft (probably their MSN arm) is pushing for a change in at least Washington's anti-spam law. Some analysts claim that the changes contain holes that will allow Microsoft to be exempt from the law." Odd that Microsoft is simultaneously trying to stop spam sent to Hotmail users, and to make sure that it can send unsolicited commercial email without penalties.
The logic is pretty simple. Microsoft want to stop other people spamming Hotmail subscribers. It costs them money in bandwidth, storage etc. Microsoft like to send their customer base "email updates and special offers". As the vast majority of computer users use some MS product (be it Hotmail, Windows, Office etc) that gives them a very large number of people to send email to. At the moment, if you use Hotmail you will get a monthly email from Hotmail which will mention some commercial services available and some of their sponsors. If they are unable to do this they will lose the revenue from people who pay to have their products/services included in this type of email. While not unsolicited it is (in most cases) unwanted.
Microsoft want to be able to reduce their costs from being spammed but still want to benefit from eing able to send bulk email to their subscriber base.
You call me a pedant? I prefer the term "correct"
I've been spammed many times from MSN, and from other spammers hiding out in the Redmond Empire's IP range. I've had their entire set of IP ranges in our mail server's 'Deny' list for nearly two years. No regrets whatsoever.
/etc/tcp.smtp file, and recompile it.
For those who want to do similarly, and who run their own mail servers, let me save you a little research.
If you run qmail or a similar package with rblsmtpd, make the following entry in the
207.46.:allow,RBLSMTPD="Microsoft: Access denied." (Or whatever text you want in there).
There are other domains. You may want to add:
207.68.128-207.:allow,RBLSMTPD=(Text as above).
65.52-55.:
213.199.144-159.:
For those using postfix, simply add these to your client_check and sender_check lists, and recompile with postmap.
microsoft.com 554 Go away, Bill. (or whatever you want to say).
msft.net 554 (whatever you want to say)
msn.com (if desired)
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Don't waste the USPS's time with the "return to sender" game.
:(
According to this it probably won't make it back to the sender anyway...
It is quite simple
Haiku should not be funny
Try a Senryu
Wonder if Overture needs the cookie for this to actually have effect. I don't wanna risk it.
This (brief) code is hereby released, without copyright, under the GNU General Public License version 2.
Advertising does work, or it wouldn't be such a huge market. Even if you don't actively pay attention to the ads on the radio or tv a lot of times you'll still pick a bit from it. Ever hum the song from some stupid ad? Also it gets the company/product name out which helps a lot. I think I read that if email spam gets a return of .025% it's considered successful. Working with such small success ratios to be considered effective if you personally never click on an ad it doesn't really change its effectiveness :)
Odd that Microsoft is simultaneously trying to stop spam sent to Hotmail users, and to make sure that it can send unsolicited commercial email without penalties.
Microsoft does an ok job at Hotmail, but there is one thing that it misses - itself.
My mail is set to exclusive on Hotmail, meaning if you are not on my safe list, your mail gets dumped into my Junk Mail folder. Seven day old messages get erased from Junk Mail permanently. This applies to all emailers, except Microsoft, whose 75KB Hotmail ads trying to promote paying for more services show up in my Inbox, not Junk Mail. I have to manually delete these.
Two things I want changed at Hotmail:
1. Microsoft better learn how to filter itself. Properly.
2. Junk Mail should not contribute to my space usage on Hotmail. If I get a lot of spam, Hotmail sends me a message saying to erase it, flooding it further. God forbid I fet another ad. When you have 2MB of space, and Junk Mail counts towards it, 50KB hurts. It wouldn't hurt to make the initial page after logging in say in big red letters "Erase some mail, dammit!"
Quantum Skyline
Ever notice how a powerpoint presentation is often larger than an mpeg of ittself? Thankfully, most mailservers take care of humongous attachements on their own.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
It passed the Senate but never passed the House of Representatives... It's cited by spammers in order to trick you that the spam is legitimate and that you can't do anything about it. See link here.
Scott Hazlegrove is the Microsoft lobbyist they are talking about.
Here is Scott Hazlegrove, "environmental policy director with the Association of Washington Business" arguing against stepped penalties for river poluters, instead he wants a nice flat fee (which would favour the bigger poluters over the little ones).
http://www.crcwater.org/fish/npfish35.html
Here he is as a Surefoot customer:
"I am writing to express my thanks and appreciation for the first decently fitting ski boots I have ever worn.", "I wouldn't think of buying a pair of boots anywhere else."http://www.surefoot.com/surefoot_-_customer_letter s.html
Here he is at his lobbying firm (this page has disappeared from the site, but google still has it):
The google cache link
The bill in question has been referred to the Senate Technology & Communications Committee. The sponsors of the bill happen to be all of the members of the committee, which sounds to me as if the Chairman (Sen. Esser, whose district includes Redmond), has smiled on it rather heavily. It has not had a hearing yet, nor is it scheduled for a hearing the next time the committee meets (27 February). There are just a few weeks left for bills to have hearings in the committees, so it's possible that the purpose of the bill has been served just by submitting it, and there is no further interest in actually passing the bill.
OTOH, it just may not have come up for the hearing yet for other reasons, and it's not safe to assume that it's dead at this point in time when the entire committee sponsored it. So, for those who might be interested in knowing what to do, here are some ideas:
When contacting Senators, please have something short and intelligent to say. If you are going to testify at the hearing, that goes double. MS lobbyists are going to be slick, and if the opponents of the bill look like a bunch of hicks or idiots, the contrast is going to be noticeable. There are more good ideas on how to testify on the legislature's website.
Reading this bit about Washington's law, then the Internet Week article "AOL, Microsoft Unleash Lawyers On Spammers" att icle .jhtml?articleID=6900409
http://www.internetweek.com/security02/showAr
makes me think Microsoft is anti-spam only when convenient (or only if they can make money from their stance?)
"The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." --Harlan Ellison
Both *my* state representatives filed this bill,
one Democrat and one Republican... and guess what? She used to work for Microsoft and he still does.