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Yet Another Anti-Spam Bill In U.S. Senate
ackthpt writes "Another bill has been introduced in the U.S. Senate, according to CNN/Technology, by Sens. Conrad Burns (R-Montana) and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) Yahoo supports it, but DMA and AOL want to polish it a bit more. Version 0.9 beta would require States Attorney Generals to sue spammers on consumers behalf. (So long as I get some moola from these jerks, I'd be happy with that) My wishes are: craft a strong enough bill to stand 1st Amendment challenges and punish violators in the pocketbook enough and a few prosecutions will bring most of the domestic junk to a screeching halt. I tend to daydream about winning the lottery, too. Contact your Senators and Representative with your wishes, maybe this time something will get a move on."
If you guys cancel out my spamming. How do you expect me to make money? I make a living off of spamming. Jerks. I'm gonna protest this.
Sure I am tired of my spam but its not really an inconvenience, a couple clicks and it is gone. Isn't all this legislation going to start infringing on rights in the future if not now?
Checking out my form of escapism.
How is this going to stop them in OTHER countries? How much spam is really sent from within the US of A?
Congress has not done a decent job of creating legislation in the past, so why should they start now?
I'm sure they'll infringe on some type of rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
I am over here... now I am back over here!
Well, we (the collective /. crowd, myself included) seem to be in favor of an anti-spam bill. However, we're polarized against the RIAA, another group dedicated to stopping an quasi-illegal act (music theft, if you can call it that). Now, I'm not saying that the RIAA is justified in their methods or anything, but if they are violating first amendment rights, certainly an anti-spam bill would violate said rights. Can someone explain this to me? Because there are certainly moral ambiguities for both issues.
Fuck, man. I just want it to stop.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
Do not worry. A fine non racist non segregationist republican with "fine upstanding christian morals" like John Ashcroft will not let a petty thing like The Constitution stand in his way to power and glory (and mad moolah).
Remember folks, he's a rich white republican. Nothing can stop rich white republicans. Not even the truth or justice.
-DaedalusHKX
PS - feel free to mod as you will. I'm restating what most college kids and people from countries NOT brainwashed by corporate media know to be the truth.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Ok, when I posted the same info from a Yahoo article several days ago, this was rejected, but now it's news?
I even mentioned the fact that all it's asking for is legit reply addresses and obeying remove requests (of course if the reply address is bogus, you can't ask to be removed, and the attorneys general have a harder time suing anyway...).
Can anyone explain what makes this reference by Timmy to a CNN story migut be more respected than mine to the Yahoo story?
Design for Use, not Construction!
A_holes rule the world -- A_holes send spam. Figure out who's going to win this one...
If they want to do it right, ban ALL SPAM that is not sent via the senders own email servers.
You can't claim the 1st if you've stolen bandwidth from someone else.
While you're at it, make sure they don't sneak in BS exempting various groups.
Like the telemarketing bills, the usual exempted-from-spam-and-telemarketing-legislation parties include:
Personally, I'd love a ban on election TV advertising; politicians should be required to submit detailed biographies, full position statement(s), and if they're incumbants- their voting and attendance records, as well as campaign contributions. All the information should be distributed by the state(just like tax forms, available in libraries, post offices, town halls, etc). Let voters decide from that and public debates- not 30 second sound bytes.
Please help metamoderate.
I don't like the idea of my state's AG having to sue on my behalf. I don't like the states with anti-spam laws that say I must have my AG's permission to sue a spammer. That's BS. I'm the victim. I don't need the AG's permission to sue for damages under the law. I don't want to have to rely on a political person like an AG to take action either. I'm the victim and I should be able to seek restitution.
Basically,
Having SAGs being the only ones who can sue means that nothing will happen. Your elected representatives are crafting a feel good bill.
Caution: Contents under pressure
Here's the thing though then, the issue of cross border internet related laws is still a thorny one. What if all spam operations then simply shifted overseas? What then, these laws couldn't be enforced there? Maybe it'd be another excuse to invade: they SPAM us!
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
...because it wouldn't outlaw spamming, rather it would outlaw one particular tactic used in spamming.
Even though the bill doesn't say that it's perfectly acceptable to send junk e-mail with valid return addresses, spammers will still appeal to the wording as 'proof' that their postage-due garbage is 'free speech' and as such their ISPs shouldn't terminate them.
Spam should be outlawed, period. We don't need laws that define 'legal' spam, all spam should be illegal because all spam is postage-due advertising. Anything else will give spammers something to toss into their e-mails as a 'disclaimer' to 'prove' that their mailings aren't spam (notice many spams that STILL reference a bill that died in committee as though it had been passed into law, not only citing a bill that never made it into law but also completely misstating what the bill would have done).
All spammers are thieves and liars. Don't give them any ammunition.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The bill is S. 877. However it's not up on the Library of Congress's Thomas server yet. Usually takes a couple days for the text to show up.
Internet portal Yahoo! said it supported the bill, while the DMA and Internet provider America Online said they would work with the Senate to craft an effective bill.
First, the DMA cannot be trusted. They've long supported the 'right' of advertisers to harass and annoy people and to send cost-shifted unsolicited advertising. They should not be allowed to have a say in any anti-spam legislation. Preferrably, they should all be put to death.
Second, Yahoo! is a known spam-friendly place. Anyone at stores.yahoo.com is free to spam out advertisements for their Yahoo! stores and Yahoo! will do nothing. Heck, Yahoo! hosted known criminal Jason Vale for some time even though it's well documented that he sells a lethal poison as a "cancer treatment". Yahoo! is run by criminals and they're openly tolerant of criminal activity on their network. They shouldn't have a say in this either.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
I'm still learning, every day, how the system is set up to let the bad guys screw the innocent, and having more system just doesn't seem to cut it.
My most recent problem is with www.picusnet.com [really omegacomminc]; because I was headed out of the country, I tried to downgrade my ISP service to email; they said sure. 7 months later I get a bill for ISP service. I try to call their customer service [no answer], so I go to their web site, and discover that if you use their online customer service, you agree to a whole new TOS. So I read that, and it says essentially that they can without warning and retroactively change your billing rate at will, and you will pay it, and if you don't you will pay for their collection and lawyer fees too.
So I immediately disconnected, called their signup number and said "disconnect me". They said "send an email to billing@omegacomminc saying that you're disconnecting and why. So I did. That all happened *before* the bill was due.
So now, this month, I get a collection agency letter from Connecticut at my American address; they want $45 for services unauthorized and unrendered, plus collection agency fee.
***BLACK BLACK OUTLOOK***
Of course, I'm still not in America.
So I've sent them *another letter*, this time through registered mail, saying all this, and giving dates and all that. But looking at the collection agency letter, they essentially say "don't pay, and we'll go get a judgement..." And now I'm thinking, the way some states are set up are so that businesses based in that state and paying taxes there can run a racket, and I suppose connecticut *could* be one of them. Ideally, with me having sent these letters, the collection agency would have to present them to a judge before he could get a judgement. In which case, the judgement should be in my favor. But why bother, if it benefits the state coffers? Much better, to tell people halfway across the country or the world, "spend $2000 coming here, or give $140 extortion to this upstanding instate company, or pay $500 afterwards."
Ummm... enough of my rant. I wonder if anyone knows whether my worries are justified... but at this point I can't find myself in support of any more law and order than we've got now. I'm up to my neck in unjust laws and orders. And, of course, let's not forget that this same Senate is keeping law and order down in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Venezuela, and Argentina.
*ack*.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
We need Operation Emailer Freedom wherein we shoot tomahawk cruise missiles at spammers, have Delta Force sneak in spammers' houses and 'neutralize' them, and issue sanctions on rogue ISPs which provide safe haven for spammers.
Sure, it gets bounced off of open relays in korea, or whatever, but if the originating company is either a US company, or does business in the US, then they are potentially liable. And that covers the vast majority of spam.
This tendency to bash white republicans, rich or not, is approaching a level of racism.
make a law that smtp has to go and better system has to come, in 18 months, and push it through both in europe and in states, after that pretty much everyone would HAVE to follow.
if they think they can force drm/other/digi-tv why don't they force any _good_ crap? if people are willing to pay for ms for stuff they can't use with their old systems why wouldnt they be willing to upgrade their email client if they _had_ to? sysadmins have to patch their servers regularly anyways and i would bet patching/upgrading/tweaking spam filters is much more time taking than what it would be to switch to something else.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
And for the record, it really says <name>, I'm not editing out my name. How can I not be interest in "Internet Business"?
Spam is theft of services; every Internet user subsidizes spammers. We pay for our bandwidth, connectivity, storage, and processing power. Spammers pay minimal fees for sending their crap to millions of unwilling recipients. They do not pay the true cost of distributing their crap, as do senders of paper junk mail.
Spammers do not pay for the millions of dollars spent by ISPs and network admins who have to deal with the floods of spew.
Spam is a denial of service attack; anyone who runs their own mail servers sees relentless probes and re-sends. It's also DOS when you have to wait for a bunch of shit to download before you can get to your legitimate mail.
Spammers are vandals; they ruin every goddam thing they touch.
There are no Constitutional issues here; none of us are required to listen to anyone's speech, none of us are required to fund the distribution of their speech.
This Senate bill is crap, it's no good, it merely serves to legitimize spam. It's not good enough to be able to filter it more easily, it must be stopped at the source. Bigger and better spam filters is like bigger and better water filters; wouldn't it be better to get clean water from the source?
Please read this excellent essay, "Thank The Spammers" http://www.spamreaper.com/thankspammers.html
---
SCO is weenies
Gator is Spyware
Microsoft is thugs
Unfortunately the spammers are still shielded against direct lawsuits, this only allows state AGs to sue them for us. I'm not sure that this could hold up in court anyway, but the feature of mandating real return addresses would be nice. Another section of this law would require a mandatory opt-out for people who want it. I wouldn't mind spam so much if I could actually opt out of it and be able to send cease-and-desist letters to the addresses of the spammers. For the few people out there who actually use this to make money, I have little pity for them since they are well aware of how much the public loathes the spam-masters. Find another job in public relations or just hire a good lawyer and settle out of court or mve your operations to a server off of US soil (I hear Grand Cayman is nice...). Forty percent of all e-mail is now officially thought to be just spam but I'd say it was more like 75%; they also say the average American gets 2200 spam messages a year but I got 35-40 yesterday alone.
If we are serious about getting the spammer to quit but don't want to violate the first amendment, we could try crafting a law that makes the use of false return addresses equivalent to minor fraud or a misdemeanor charge. When these spammers intentionally use false e-mail addresses for return/reply boxes, they engage in deceptive practices by preventing people from saying no to unwanted e-mail. Sure, they have the right to send these things by e-mail, but their rights to send such things should not interfere with our right to privacy. People should also be allowed to sue spammers directly since a wealthy spammer could easily settle out of court with one state attorney but could they do so as easily against 5,000 private citizens in small claims court asking for $5k each? Probably not. Anyone else have ideas forh how to defeat spammers without compromising the first amendment?
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
That's all, just no fraud. I don't even care about lying Subject: headers, that's too subjective (ha ha). But I want honest headers sufficient to track them down, and a removal process that works. Opt-in would be nice, but I would be satisfied with honest headers.
Oh, and let anybody sue the bastards for fraud, whether ISP, recipient, AG, or anybody else.
Why is honesty in headers too much to ask for?
Infuriate left and right
...because it wouldn't outlaw spamming, rather it would outlaw one particular tactic used in spamming.
True, this will not eliminate spam. It will, however, reduce spam, in addition to making some spam easier to identify and filter.
Even though the bill doesn't say that it's perfectly acceptable to send junk e-mail with valid return addresses, spammers will still appeal to the wording as 'proof' that their postage-due garbage is 'free speech' and as such their ISPs shouldn't terminate them.
ISPs are private companies, and they have clearly posted terms of service. An ISP has the right to terminate the service of any customer they don't like, whether they're spamming or not. I've seen customers terminated just for pissing off a tech support rep. If an ISP terminates your service, it's because they don't want your business. They are not in any way obligated to provide service to you; they just want to make money.
Spam should be outlawed, period. We don't need laws that define 'legal' spam, all spam should be illegal because all spam is postage-due advertising.
OK, so what is spam, legally? Does it count as spam if it's sent unsolicited to 25,000 people but isn't actually advertising a product? Does it count as spam if it's only sent to 15 carefully selected people and it advertises a product related to their work? Does it count as spam if it was sent to a list of people who signed up for a mailing list, even if some of them reported it as spam anyway? What if they signed up for someone else's mailing list, and I bought the list from them?
Anything else will give spammers something to toss into their e-mails as a 'disclaimer' to 'prove' that their mailings aren't spam (notice many spams that STILL reference a bill that died in committee as though it had been passed into law, not only citing a bill that never made it into law but also completely misstating what the bill would have done).
Precisely why we need REAL legislation that makes it clearly illegal to do just that.
All spammers are thieves and liars. Don't give them any ammunition.
A few are honest morons. Do they deserve the same punishment as liars and thieves? Probably so, but decent legislation should also make education easier.
Remember, the law can always be ammended as needed. Baby steps first.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
That statement contradicts itself. One does not make a bill stronger to make it "withstand" the First Amendment, rather, it is made to comply with it. The only way to get something to be strong enough to "withstand the 1st Amendment" is to amend the constitution. Otherwise, you need to make it comply, or hope that that courts interpret it as being in line with the constitution.
I don't go around hoping that our lawmakers make laws to "withstand" our constitution.
Let's think about it. Yea, sure spam sucks. but by supporting the bill, you're also supporting regulation of the net. I preferr the goverment stay the hell out. And we as a community should deal with spam ourselves. The more you let the gov. in, the more you can say goodbye to your rights online.
states attorney generals? since when do you need to pluralize the adjective to make something plural, let alone 2 of them?
State Attorneys General, or maybe the States' Attorneys General.
-Ryan
AUWYHSTOT (Acronyms are Useless When You Have to Spell Them Out Too)
Legislation to hamper spam probably won't be worth the price. I for one don't want any more of my liberties taken away from me, and the first amendment is a big one. Say what you will, but the ability to spam sure does seem like it would be protected by freedom of speech. Is it annoying? Of course. The only way to get spam to slow down (it will never stop) would be for ISPs to charge them per email, the same way snail mail costs money. The problem with email is that it's practically free. It's up to the ISPs to hunt down spammers within their userbase, and frankly, they probably won't do it as they won't want to lose the business. But how do you differentiate spammers and legitimate mass mailers? This is something way to complex for Congress to tackle if you ask me. Strom Thurmon probably thinks the only spam out there is the canned variety. Stop bitching to the goverment to stop spam. It's going to have to happen some other way.
Nothing from nowhere I'm no one at all
What are you, some teenager looking for a cause? Its the US Senate that has to be eliminated!
As you can see from the fact that many of the products and services advertised this way are offered "to customers in the U.S. only" (p0rn, piracy and p.... enlargements seem to target a rather international audience though), the contents for most of it do originate there indeed, although of course servers all over the world are (ab)used to spread the spam.
Even though it will be a while before spam is outlawed universally, national and regional legislation setting a standard in some countries is an achievement that tends to influence at least the views held in courts and the associations of legitimate businesses.
In Europe, the proposal to outlaw spam was met with initial hesitation either, and thorough studies as well as public outcry against anything less than opt-in were required to finally convince politicians (unsurprisingly bombarded with misleading rhetoric from spam lobbyists) of what every netizen could have told them from the start:
The minimum requirements of any meaningful law against spam are that advertisers be required:
If the companies you do business with are trying to make extra money on your data, lawmakers will have to make sure this happens only on terms that protect your privacy.
Domestically, there is no reason to settle for anything less either, as the courts have repeatedly ruled that banning spam is perfectly compatible with both the Interstate Commerce Clause and the First Amendment.
So, do look abroad indeed, not for sources of spam but for models of workable anti-spam laws, which can be well-balanced solutions like the European Directive 2002/58/EC (excerpt below), still permitting legitimate eMail (without redefining the technical standards), even within a narrowly defined business relationship, but outlawing all of the abusive practices that operate at the recipients' expense.
It's European, it's long, it's legalese, but probably it is just the inspiration American lawmakers need nonetheless:
I really don't understand why the AG has the right to sue on a consumer's behalf. Why can't those businesses effected by the huge amounts of spam sue the companies directly for eating up all their bandwidth? I'm not sure we need another law here to deal with spam. If the AG sues on someone's behalf, where does the money go?
I take the personal position that there doesn't need to be any new laws for dealing with the Internet, all the old laws still apply. Government is far more evil and powerful than all the spammers combined, and if we let them regulate this one aspect of the Internet (spam), they're going to see that as permission to run around and regulate everything else too (.kid anyone?).
I might sound paranoid, but I really think this timid, politically-correct legislation is a springboard for a more heavily regulated Internet.
This is exactly like a bill (Murkowski - the famous S.1618) that passed the Senate in 1998 that the spammers crowed over because it would allow them to go after spammers under restraint of trade laws. A copy of the original DEAA crowing is below. It would actually increase spam because it would be otherwise respectable companies spamming.
When Korea introduced similar legislation, Korean spam increased by a factor of 12 within three months. Most of that spam comes from otherwise respectable companies.
Even if this weren't going to result in more spam, how many people have enough time in the day to "opt-out" of all the spam they get now?
As much as I hate SPAM, I don't think congress should be regulating the internet. Period. All their friends get exceptions so they can spam anyway (execptions for politicians, etc.) Besides, i don't see how they will effective outside the US.
Just wait for congress to use SPAM as an excuse to monitor email. Next, they will monitoring traffic for music copying. I think the US government should be kept from regulating the internet as much as possible.
I am sure that the spam will not move off shore like 900 numbers.
Will a bill being passed in the US even make a difference? Who is to stop someone from using a server based outside the United States to send spam?
I don't think Congress should be regulating the Internet at all; besides the fact that any American laws have little to no effect outside of the US, letting Congress decide what information can flow freely seems like the start of a slippery slope.
What I think we should do instead is get rid of SMTP and replace it with something that provides a little more identification in email headers. It would require cooperation between email client and mail server programmers, but think of how it could be done.
If the Outlook, Eudora, and Sendmail/Postfix/whoever guys supported this (possibly by supporting SMTP and this new protocol simultaneously and gradually migrating people to the new protocol), they could advertise this as a new feature: use our upgraded product and cut down on spam. Eventually if everyone had mail servers that only supported the new, secure protocol, then spammers could actually be identified and dealt with.
This is a technological problem; let's find a technological, not political, solution.
the coolest club on
If you get one spam email a week, it's unnoticeable. If you get one a day, it's not a problem. If you get one an hour, it's an inconvenience. If you get one a minute, it's a big problem. If you get one a second, it makes normal email extremely hard (unless you have some amazingly accurate filters, and broadband or an ISP with a huge mailbox)...
I'm relatively lucky; I get something like 10 a day (after BrightMail has filtered out a few more than that), which is an inconvenience at worst. But I understand that other people's experience of spam differs widely, and it wouldn't take more than an order of magnitude or two increase before I'd be demanding the death penalty for spammers...
So far, the problem has only got worse, and more and more rapidly. Should we leave it until everyone has stopped using email before we take action?
(Of course, since most spam is international, I'm sceptical of the effects of any national law, but that's another story!)
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
The first thing that is disturbing is that an advertising company, the DMA is involved in this and second of course AOSMell. I hate SPAM as much as the next geek, and am actually torn at the government getting involved. How would they handle international douche bags hiding behind servers in China or Russia? As for the AG filing a lawsuit on behalf, who gets the money and how they intend to try to collect I would like to know in advance. If the government must be involved I would only like it to pass legislation that truly punishes these bastards, such as mandatory imprisonment and banning all access to possible internet devices for a very long time much like how they caged up Mitnick.
Also there needs to be a technical solution to this scourge such as verifable origins and servers. Maybe the additional traffic from a new TCP style based protocol would add additional traffic but surely would be a significantly smaller drain than the current wastes caused by spam which accounts for what...%40 of internet traffic? The Internet Community needs to come together as a whole and address this issue as a Global Community and make global changes lest we really want to see governments starting to get involved and have a foot in the door for additional legislation and control. Develop a new mail protocol, work with major developers of email clients and servers to develop easy to install patches, and start migrating with an absolute end date with no backwards compatibility.
Might be a pipe dream, but better than just whining about it.
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
I don't want Honest Headers. I never want to be required to tell the world that I sent something. Furthermore, I want to be able to send something without a return address. Similarly, I can send a snail-mail message without any notice of where it originated from (well, I suppose they know the original postal-district, but that's all).
Why?
Because I think I have a right to speak anonymously. I don't like spammers, but I'd rather keep the right to speak anonymously.
It will not reduce the total volume of spam. Instead, it will actually increase it because it will be used by spammers as justification to fight the ISPs that try to disconnect them. Those ISPs, fearing being sued, will then let the spammers continue abusing everyone else's mail servers (those who don't have mail servers of their own will end up paying more to cover the increased costs of their own ISP having to upgrade the server capacity to deal with all the postage-due spam).
Right now, one major problem is that many ISPs are refusing to terminate spammers. That needs to be changed. The ISPs that let spammers abuse networks should be equally liable for the costs if they refuse to terminate the spammer immediately.
Defining spam is, of course, a major difficulty. The way I define it is when both of the following are met:
I do agree that any bill that allows spammers to say "this isn't spam" or "this is legal" is a serious mistake. But we also do need to get it as right as possible the first time. Going back and amending a law is actually very rarely done because you end up with too many people saying "it's not a big problem anymore" and "let this law have 10 years to work itself out". Lawmakers are worse than programmers at fixing bugs.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
What's the bill number on this?
Yes, there needs to be a way to send anonymous email.
.001% return makes it a good investment, it will survive.
I suppose it all comes back to the cost issue, that as long as sending spam is so cheap that even a
Thanks for keeping my head on straight.
Infuriate left and right
The US government planning a law that benefits the general public and is a hindrance to sleazy and corrupt businesses?
Surely not!
Since everyone seems to know what SPAM is, but no one knows how to stop the SPAMMER's, let's tax all financial transactions resulting from a SPAM message by 3000%, at the buyer's cost. That should significantly reduce the financial incentive for the idiots that buy SPAM crap. If the company utilizes a true, registered return email address no tax would be incurred. Of course to implement this it would probably take more government monitoring of people's purchases than most would want to tolerate, but at least it would be self funded through the tax and wouldn't require a "stamp" per email. It also wouldn't matter where the sender was located, only the purchaser. If people want to buy SPAM crap in some other country it shouldn't affect our bandwidth that much here.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
Before I explain why spamming should not be illegal, let's deal with some other things.
Let's take reverse-engenering. There are laws aganst that in US, and every week there are AT LEAST a couple of stories about the evils of those laws *cough*DMCA*cough*... And what's wrong with them? Well, apparently they inhibit research, learning, etc.
Ok, fair enough, I buy that. Let's take laws against breaking into people's computers. I think people of
Let me say that again: Legal solution to a technological problem.
Why is this bad? Because it allows software companies to take a big sigh and to relax... They don't have to worry about security as much anymore -- and their customers don't have to worry as much too -- because the gov't now does, and punishes people who break through their security. I hope (no, pray) that
Now onto SPAM... It's the same deal. There is less incentive now to develop more secure software. Yes, SPAM is annoying as hell. Yes, it consumes bandwidth, and in the end, money. But it is a technological problem. If you don't want to get SPAM, filter it out. If you don't have the tools to filter it out, write them/invent them/open source them/buy them/whatever.
Just because there are laws in US against spamming, doesn't mean we won't get any more spam, just like because there are laws agains breaking into people's computers, while such laws may deter a 14-year old script kiddie, they will not deter somebody who is determined.
Let the community develop a technological solution.
When someone uses your network to spam and the lazy cops/fbi/whomever don't want to trace it any further; or can't because you don't have logs. Guess who has to prove innocence. You go by-by for someones spam; or broke paying the fines.
Guilty until you've proven innocence. Ask any ex-con. If your innocent then why would anyone need an "Alibi".
Oh well; just another thing to get thrown in jail over.
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
spamers should have all hardware connected to the spam Mac address, killed, bios killed,piece by piece and the ip and mac should be left on a kill list for 6 mths, ie: anything connected to either, is a paperweight instantly, and if done by the right U.S department, all spammers hardware,should crash and burn, wheather local or forign, hey if you can id the spammer, tie him/her to a post and set fire to him/her, then crash a bus/car into him/her.....die spammers die.
crist, do it under homeland protection, and nuke everything within a 100 mile radius.i mean who cares, if i am the only one left online, as least i can send myself mail, without spam.crash the planet, as long as spammers get theres,crash the planet, back to sticks and firewood.
Just. Not a whole lot. Automatic delete on everything "NAME, get ..... /number-letter-thing/". Semi-automatic delete on "I can't contact you!! 232". Delete on "make yourself B-I-G". Delete on "rooms for rent", "LEARN ENGLISH NOW" (Huh? How'd I read this subject if I did not speak English?), delete "free access!" and a number of other things.
Whose rights it's going to infringe? What would you say if someone followed you on the street shouting "GET YOURSELF A BIGGER MEMBER". Politely say "No thank you" each time? If you tell him to shut up and go away he'd say "This is my right to the free speach!" and go on. Not a pleasant picture, is it? Then why doing the same thing through Email is different? Even more, why COMMERCIAL speech ("Buy yourself a member enlarger") can mask as non-commercial?
So, to those "free speechwriters" I say: filter on you, fee on you, and curse on you, so that your member would get as long as many spams you sent about it, so you can go and fck yourself easily.
Hyperom.com
"My wishes are: craft a strong enough bill to stand 1st Amendment challenges"
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Nowhere in the First Amendment does it say you get a free soapbox. You "deserve" to spam the same way you "deserve" a free billboard.
What would you folks out there imagine will be developed in the long range future that will solve the spam predicament?... a. software?... b. technology?... c. or ...?
d. ...?
Why are people concerned over First Amendment violations when it comes to anti-spamming legislation? Right now our government is handily ignoring the Fourth and Sixth Amendments, imprisoning folks indefinitely without recourse to the law for merely being 'material witnesses' to unspecified crimes.
Really now, if we can throw people in jail on a whim in direct violation of the basic laws of this land, then what on Earth does it matter if anti-spamming laws violate the First Amendment? Indeed, why can't we simply accuse spammers of having 'terrorist connections' or being 'witnesses' to various crimes and toss them in jail as well?
Now that I think about it, doesn't the annoyance of spam, the server load caused by spam, seem like a terrorist act in and of itself? Perhaps those spammers should be arrested and investigated, after spending months in dog kennels at Guantanamo....
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
If someone reads one of my posts, decides I'm not getting enough and types in a personalised email offering me Viagra, I don't call that spam. Sure it is a potential problem, but it is not the actual problem we have today.
Todays problem is that the emails are written by computers and then injected into a channel intended for humans. So there is an endless flood. Humans can no longer read email in person. They have to use programs to filter out the crap injected into the system by other programs. The spammers crime is making email unusable by humans. They are the enemies of free speech.
Any convicted spammer needs a special kind of life sentence - for the rest of their life, their email address(es) and any and all domains owned by them should be listed on a public web page maintained by an agency of the United Nations. For all to see. Then the wired planet can email these people and let them know just exactly how we feel about them, every single day. A second conviction of spamming or a conviction of circumvention of the first sentence will result in life in solidary.
I just want to stop being collateral damage in some ISPs war-on-spam. Earthlink, AOL, are you listening?
U.S. Federal Judge Stanley Sporkin:
"[Spammers] have come to court not because their freedom of speech is threatened but because their profits are; to dress up their complaints in First Amendment garb demeans the principles for which the First Amendment stands."
Chief Justice Berger, U.S. Supreme Court:
"Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit. We categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another. If this prohibition operates to impede the flow of even valid ideas, the answer is that no one has a right to press even 'good' ideas on an unwilling recipient. The asserted right of a mailer, we repeat, stops at the outer boundary of every person's domain."
Spammers can say whatever they want by sending to opt in lists, or by posting to a web page. They don't have the right to force their crud on me and you while making us pay the bills. Standing outside of my window yelling at me with a bullhorn would still be considered harassment, and screaming "Right To Free Speech!" doesn't change that.
The 1st Amendment stuff is talked about because spammers are afraid of losing the ability to spam, and because people don't understand the 1st amendment. Spammers use other peoples resources to spread their message, and the 1st amendment doesn't give anyone the right to force any publisher or broadcaster to spread their message.
Spam via foreign countries? True, no US law is going to stop all spam. However, as long as the companies which are advertising by spam are held accountable, a US law outlawing spam would stop a very large amount of it.
Is this a good law? No, of course not. It shouldn't even be considered an anti-spam law. It's pro-spam from the beginning. The law begins with the assumption that they are allowed to send the spam, and that we have to beg them to stop. That's opt out. While any good anti-spam law should require (among other things) that you be removed from mailing lists if you ask to be removed, a law which is actually trying to stop the spam wouldn't give them the right to spam you prior to your begging them to stop. And the fact that you asked to be removed from one list may simply be used as an excuse to add you to a bunch of others, as they now know that they have a real person reading mail at that address.
A good law will also not require the AG's to be involved. They have plenty to do already, and spam is going to be a very low priority for them. Saying "You can spam until people ask you to stop, and continue spamming until an AG decides that you are worth his time" isn't going to stop spam.
Summary:
I'm in favor of a US law against spam. I'm under no illusions that such a law would stop spam, but I believe it would help. And it's clear that this law was crafted by the DMA and others who want to make sure they don't lose the right to send spam.
Suppose that you have one email to tell you that you've been accepted for a job, and please report to work Monday morning.
One message. Among 10,000 spams.
Do you really think you'd find that one message?
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
They end anonymous mail servers.
My mixmaster node can continue sending messages to the world at large. I'm just asserting that I sent something in a way that cannot be denied. If I'm sending spam, this is an invitation to call my to task. If I do so frequently, it is an invitation to blacklist me.
What I choose to do with identifying headers is an entirely different question.
I forget what 8 was for.
Free beer, Free speach
the 2 are different
so Free speech is fine , but not on my soap-box, you rent your own soap-box to shout to the masses from.
If you steal my soap-box to preach from it's still theft
They are free to say what they will, but not with my resources!
Type unto others as you would have them type unto you.
The bill in question is S.877 The contents of the bill haven't been posted to Thomas yet, but should be in a day or two.
I can't really say what I think about the bill, just yet, because the articles I've read are giving conflicting stories. One article says that ISPs will be able to sue spammers, while another indicates that only the state attorneys general will be able to.
I can say that the DMA is supporting, if not the bill itself then, the idea of anti-spam legislation...which gives me some pause.It would be really bad if people sent me spam at uce@ftc.gov - why it would make me feel really sad. And if someone were to harvest my email address of uce@ftc.gov and send spam to it ... well, I might cry!
> --- All Of The Above --- >
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,BT_CO_20030 411_005761-IFheoZhlqF0xJuqZXqYjNSTkL,00.html
Gives better coverage, IMO, including rebuttal from CAUCE.
For a Nickel I Will; Bob's Ultimate Anti-Spam Solution
By Robert X. Cringely
The Pulpit_March 13, 2003
gewg