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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."
Fuck, man. I just want it to stop.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
You know how Congress works. They'll probably point to their power underneath the Commerce Clause as a viable reason for promoting their anti-spam bill in the name of interstate commerce. Do you really think they care about the First Amendment?
I am over here... now I am back over here!
Spam costs ISPs quite a bit of money in storage space and processing time.
Spammers are thieves. Spammers belong in jail or, better, in torture chambers until they die.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Spammers annoy us, so we want them restricted.
We want free music, so we're against restrictive controls on digital media.
We're just like any other special interest group, there doesn't need to be any internal consistency in our stands on various issues.
NO CARRIER
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
Spam _is_ free speech.
No, spam _is_ cost-shifted advertising. Free speech applies to content, but my objections and the objections of other anti-spammers are based on consent.
The First Amendment does not protect people who steal the resource of others in order to advertise. I don't care if they're sending me viagra ads, charity solicitations or political announcements, if it's unsolicited advertising of ANY kind, I should not have to pay to receive it.
The "frea speach" line is one of the biggest bullshit excuses that spammers use.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
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.
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
Since when does having an email account = "You're ALREADY willing to pay to receive unsolicited mail, or you wouldn't be getting spam!" That's like saying since you've already been robbed, you must have consented to it.
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SCO is weenies
Gator is Spyware
Microsoft is thugs
You write...
"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?"
No, because you're missing an important fact, and it can be summed up in three simple words; 'Private Property Rights.'
Contrary to popular belief, the Internet is not now, nor has it ever been, a truly "public" resource. It remains today, as it was in its humble beginnings, a vast collection of privately-owned computers, routers, switches, and data pipes.
The respective owners of all this stuff have, for the most part, graciously allowed others to use the resources in exchange for periodic fees appropriate to the type of usage. Spamming is not 'use;' Spamming is 'abuse.' Period.
Think about it; If the Internet really were a "public" resource, then there would be free or government-subsidized access for everyone, funded by Your Tax Dollars. Under such a setup, anyone who had a system connected to the 'net would likely be required to carry whatever traffic the government says they have to carry, especially if they're drawing government funds to keep their 'net presence operational.
I can state with absolute confidence that no one is paying me to maintain my servers. All the costs associated with maintaining my 'net presence -- electricity, bandwidth, maintenance and repairs -- are coming straight out of my pocket. No one's helping me; I do it because I want to, because I think the 'net can be a very valuable and useful tool in many ways.
As Jim Nitchalls once put it; "Free speech is not free when it comes postage-due," and that's exactly the problem with spam. When someone spams me, or one of my other users, they are literally stealing my resources for their own personal gain. I will not permit that under any conditions.
To that end, I make use of SPEWS, Spamhaus, other DNSBL's, and my own local blacklist to stop spam before it even enters the mail queue. Other Internet providers, motivated by user complaints, are taking the same measures. To many (myself included), the small risk of losing legitimate mail is worth it if it stems the flow of crap that threatens to overwhelm legitimate traffic to begin with.
If you're happy with spammers stealing your ISP's resources, and adding to your monthly costs as a result (it has been estimated that handling spam adds between $3-$5 to each Internet user's monthly bill), well, that's your privilege. However, don't ask me to accept any traffic from ISP's that are weak about terminating connectivity to their pet spammers, because I won't.
My servers, my bandwidth, my rules. Free speech does not apply in this context any more than it would if someone were to attach a big billboard to the side of your house without asking you, or arranging any form of compensation.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies
Yeah, there's a guy that I work with that apparently averages more than 150 a day... His address is plastered all over usenet and in whois records, on his web pages, etc. He is a member of many online communities (OSS and otherwise) and therefore is an easy target with an address that absolutely cannot change.
He (like me, after seeing how he uses it), uses VM for emacs. If you haven't seen this program, definately check it out. The power of emacs lisp behind an email client is unparalleled. Combine that with SpamAssassin, and most of his spam is caught, combine that with fully (and I mean it) programmable virtual folders, and you pretty much only see the email you want to.
Myself, I don't get a lot of spam. But then again, I use a lot of different addresses with different accounts (and check them seperately) and give out addresses that I don't want to get spam from to *trusted* people (eg. I do not give these addresses to family). Otherwise the next time I get a birthday card in flash it comes with about 30 "enlarge your member" emails.
I know a lot of people who use multiple accounts to give out to different places to track spam -- frankly, I think if you're putting that much effort into tracking where it comes from you're wasting just as much time as the guy who deletes all of his spam. SA is good enough, and will catch most things.
The reality of it is that a very large portion of that spam is not "bannable". They use alternate methods of tracking your ability to receive mail, via HTML mail and the like. Read your email in plain text only -- I have it setup so that when I recieve HTML mail, it goes through a html to text filter, and I get it great. Not to mention that VM tries to use W3 to render html email.... any emacs user knows what that means.
It's really not that hard to prevent spam. You just have to take some time in setting your system up so that you don't have to worry about it.
You've got a very good point. I get a lot of ICQ spam that follows:
Is that really commercial? No. Is it spam? Yes. The website is definately commercial.
This isn't a good law, by any means. A good law could be crafted. A good law won't stop spam all on it's own - but a good law would help.