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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."
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?
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.
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.
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
...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!!!
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!!!
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.
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
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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
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.
Yes, but I've seen some clueless ISP admins cave in to spammer whinings regarding nonexistent first amendment protections.
OK, so what is spam, legally?
Unsolicited bulk e-mail. E-mail sent en masse without the consent of the recipients on the mailing list.
Does it count as spam if it's sent unsolicited to 25,000 people but isn't actually advertising a product?
Yes.
Does it count as spam if it's only sent to 15 carefully selected people and it advertises a product related to their work?
That depends. If all 15 people specifically solicited information on a product such as the one being advertised, then it's probably okay. If, however, it was sent simply because the recipients 'might' have an interest because of their career, then it's spam.
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?
If the recipients signed up for the mailing, then it's not spam. Still, mailing lists should be carefully run to prevent unauthorized subscriptions as they will be able to collect documentation to prove that their mailings were not spam.
What if they signed up for someone else's mailing list, and I bought the list from them?
Unless they specifically requested to be on YOUR mailing list, then it's spam. There have been quite a few companies lambasted for selling their e-mail lists and others lambasted for sending mail to purchased lists, and rightfully so.
A few are honest morons.
I've heard of exactly one "reformed" spammer. He was just ignorant, and once he realised the error of his ways he became an anti-spammer with an attitude. One out of the thousands out there is a very rare exception. It's safe to treat any spammer as a lying thief.
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.
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?
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
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.
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!
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.