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Australian Considers Outlawing Spam
An anonymous reader writes "The Sydney Morning Herald has an article on spam down under. I guess it goes to show that if something that bothers us also bothers enough politicians then something may be done. Interestingly, the article discusses international co-operation wrt spam. Good thing too. With only 2% of the global economy, it'll take more than Australia to beat the spam problem. Perhaps someone should send a 'group letter' to all relevant politicians in various countries to start co-operating? :)" Update: 04/16 11:56 GMT by H : There's another article on the subject as well, running in The Australian.
Yes. It depends on the law, but yes.
There are UK laws specifically making UK citizens who commit criminal acts abroad responsible under UK law. i.e. enjoy dodgy recreational pursuits while on holiday, come back and go to jail.
That you are actually committing the crime against another country while IN your own country certainly puts you under your local jurisdiction.
This law would protect the world from Aussie spam more than it would protect Australia from the worlds spam!
Some other interesting points:
The only thing I'd say that was wrong with this bill is that it places the onus on a government body to initiate proceedings. I think that there should be a way, indeed an incentive, for individuals to chase spammers through the courts as well.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Yes he does:
He may an arsehole but not a complete idiot.It sounds good on the surface, and everyone likes the idea of spammers spending some quality time in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
But...it won't work. It's just too easy to move (if its not already moved) these operations offshore to countries where pissed off AOL users aren't a concern. And that's if you can trace the messages and the trail doesn't go cold at some open relay or owned box.
Furthermore, it only invites a lot of unwanted government regulation of email. If DMCA, the Patriot Act and others aren't enough for you, can you imagine having to license an SMTP server?
What we need (and I've started to see this gain more prominance in comments to these stories) is better enforcement of fraud and racketeering laws. Most SPAM is criminal, and the best way to find the crooks is to FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL! The one way the crooks behind spam allow themselves to be tracked is through the mechanism that allows them to collect money from their victims.
If you can eliminate the crooks who are behind most spam, you should see a big reduction in spam. Not everything will go away, but enough should to make a big impact on the people who make a living doing the spamming. If they can't make a buck selling spam services, they might move on to something else.
If the government won't enforce the criminal laws spammers are already breaking, why should we expect them do a very good job enforcing anti-spam laws, except of course where it benefits Ashcroft et al.
My point is, in other words, that if someone doesn't know how to behave as a "netizen" then there is already an informal means of removing him from the community. All it takes is an email or even a phone call.
For the record, The originating IPs of 98% of the spam I get are traceable to the US. about 1.6% comes from .kr and .jp, while the remainder comes from stragglers like .ru. Funny, .ru used to send just under 10% of my spam, so maybe they've seen the light :-)
True, this legislation won't have a big effect on international spamhausen, but it can be used to nail the ones that we know exist and operate from within Australia. For example, The Which Company, also trading as Business Seminars Australia and T3 Direct:
/. reported this, but I can't find the link... here is an article in the SMH about the case.
ABN: 90 091 728 620
Postal: P.O. Box 159, Northbridge W.A. 6865
Phone: (08) 9463 7807 Fax: (08) 9463 7808
These guys send me 2 or three spams a day selling their 'Positive Workplace Strategies' workshops, and 'guaranteed sales handbooks'.
This particular bunch of inbreds gained recent notoriety by attempting to sue a local individual who put a spam block on them.
If this legislation served only to eliminate this bunch from my inbox, it would serve the eliminating a known and prolific source of spam from my inbox, plus give me a warm fuzzy feeling for weeks... and I'm certain that BSA/Which are not the only Australian based spammers.
Russ %-)
... and never, ever play leapfrog with a unicorn.
Forging headers is not an exploit of a bug. Mail servers simply don't look at them. Why?
Received Headers:
1. Parsing and reversing all the domains in there is expensive. (as expensive as spam? probably not but see #3)
2. There's nothing in the RFC that says all the headers have to match up end to end. A large email provider often has separate inbound and outbound mail servers so a mail getting forward will have headers from A to B and C to D, despite being a legitimate mail.
3. Third, there is no requirement for reverse naming on mail servers. If there was then maybe #1 would be a valid tactic.
The from header:
This is what most non-technical people think of when they talk forged headers. Again, this is not an exploit, in fact its part of relaying which is a feature of the SMTP RFC. Some mail providers (like us) actually check the domain you are using when sending and stop you from sending the mail if you are faking it. However this isn't what most ISP's do because not many people actually use the Verizon or whatever address.
This is not the greatest sig in the world, this is just a tribute.
...to Australia for laws about the internet?
Given their track-record in legislating the internet. Are we really sure we want to look to them for guidelines on this?
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!