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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.
This is a typical Australian head-in-the-sand position (IAAA): 'ban' it and it will go away.
Unfortunately Senator Alston does not seem to appreciate that we are connected to the rest of the world by this internet thing, and it may just be that courts in Russia and China will not recognise Australian juristiction in this matter.
It would be better if they saved their breath and did something useful like investigate some sort of token-based email, and maybe funded its development.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Most spam I get is of the 'down, under' category :-). Incidentally, is hotmail banned Down Under? How else can they outlaw spam?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
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!
Bruno: [looking at spam] Ooh! Ah, that's it. I'm going to report this to me member of parliament.
[yells out window] Hey, Gus! I got something to report to you. [Gus tends his swine]
Gus: That's a bloody outrage, it is! I want to take this all the way to the Prime Minister.
[they go down to a lake] Hey! Mr. Prime Minister! Andy!
Andy: [floating naked on an inner tube with a beer] Eh, mates! What's the good word?
Considering that Russia and China have adopted both the "ban it" methodology and rely on kangaroo courts, they might get along with the Australians just fine.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Just about every legal solution to a technological problems end up backfiring. The problem is that most laws are so broadly written that they usually end up making something legitimate illegal as well.
Usually these laws end up fining someone who sends 'spam' described in legalese. Then, you forward a joke to someone who gets offended by it, calls it an unsolicited e-mail message, and then uses the law to extract money from your wallet. Meanwhile, since the spammers never send anything using their own return address, they just continue doing what they always have done.
I think of laws as the social equivalent of bug fixes in code. You fix one problem and unintentionally create 5 new problems.
Tom
This law would protect the world from Aussie spam more than it would protect Australia from the worlds spam!
That's basically the idea. The report states that the Australian Government should push for the creation of an international agreement on outlawing spam (i.e. similar to the current international IP agreements).
Introducing domestic anti-spam laws is obviously the first step to achieving this. It would be difficult to convince the international community to introduce similar laws if Australia didn't have them in place themself.
Despite this, until some form of international consensus is reached, these laws are basically just a symbolic gesture.
So if you did want to encourage law makers to pass anti-spam laws, I think it may be fairly easy to make it happen. Borrowing from the recent campaign to harass a spammer, what if people started putting the e-mail addresses of various lawmakers on the lists of spammers? I would imagine that if the lawmakers started getting tons of spam, they might be encouraged to do something about it. And I'm not just talking about US lawmakers, I'm talking about lawmakers everywhere. If Chinese or Russian lawmakers are overwhelmed with spam, they might just do something about it.
Send/track messages to 100K people: www.xPressAlert.com
It would cut down on the amount of spam from 'spam newbies'.
It would allow for the creation of a blacklist on non-authenticated SMTP servers. This would encourage those not running authenticated SMTP to do so.
It would also fix the 'no roaming' SMTP problem. I could travel abroad and still send mail thru my ISP's SMTP server, since there would no longer be any need to restrict SMTP access by IP address space (though doing both would allow for extra security measures).
You could trace back the originating user. Now, user accounts could still get hacked, but it's an added measure of security.
There's also a big flaw in your suggestion. Such a system would allow for easier harvesting of email addresses. Someone could easilly write a piece of software to check for valid accounts, with the added benifit of not suffering from bounceback messages!
It's better to burn out than to fade away
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.