Slashdot Mirror
UK And EU May Make Unsolicited Email Illegal
An anonymous reader writes "According to this BBC article the UK and the EU are planning to making unsolicited email simply illegal. This doesn't do anything for prevention practically, but it does legally pave the way for measures that do. Lord Sainsbury of Turville admits it will do nothing to stop spam from outside the EU."
Or at least is targeted at the US - most of the offers I get every day are for cheap dental care, cheap medical care, loans in USD and fake diplomas from US Universities (and of course porn).
;)
This would indicate that most is from the US, so obviously this new law means F**k all, although I guess we could go for extradition or arrest them if they come to Europe on holiday
...it can't (and won't) be stopped. It probably WILL be taxed, however. When these governments realize how much they could be raking in if there was a postage-like tax on spam messages, they won't be able to resist creating a broad email tax. Think, for instance, how much money postal services must be making off junk mail.
- Bill writes an angry diatribe on slashdot.org. In Bill's user profile is a link to his website, which contains his e-mail address. Joe comes across slashdot and, offended by the diatribe, writes an angry flame in disagreement and e-mails it to Bill. Bill gets upset by this and sues Joe for sending an "unsolicited e-mail".
- Bill writes an angry diatrabe on slashdot.org. In Bill's user profile is a link to his website, which contains his e-mail address. HARVESTER-BOT 3.0 comes across slashdot and, blindly following links, adds Bill's e-mail address to the database of a small business, which then e-mails Bill with an offer for herbal viagra. Bill gets upset by this and sues the business for sending an "unsolicited e-mail".
Seriously, are they actually going to try to put up this directive with no reference to "mass" or "commercial" and without any exceptions, or is this article just poorly written? What about exceptions for, like, accidentally mispelled e-mail addresses? I know that it's highly unlikely people would use the law for that reason, but writing excessively vague laws leads to big problems, as anyone following the DMCA has found.And how would this directive work in the case of some 'business' which gets some bullshit, but legal, excuse for the idea that Bill has entered into a business relationship with it, and then sends Bill spam forever without a clear sign of how to remove himself from their lists? Is there a link to the directive's actual text? Anywhere?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Do we even need to discuss this? It's a fact that UK is a memberstate of EU, but NOT of the EMU.
Currently I put everything from china into my SPAM-folder and by golly, I'll just blacklist every country that doesn't have anti-SPAM laws.
The interesting thing is this: let's say that the U.S. and EU do both ban spam, and all the spam is coming from outside the U.S. and EU. A *lot* of people will react the same way you do.
That is to say, we'll suddenly see a lot more careless e-mail blocks being placed on large swaths of entire countries, some by individuals, and most likely often by ISPs. We already see a LOT of huge e-mail blocks being done by ISPs, especially AOL, without much concern for collateral damage; it isn't inconcievable that a number of random ISPs might just look at their statistics and shortsightedly go, hmm, 90% of our spam comes from (for example) Indonesia, who is going to be talking to people in Indonesia anyway, i'll just block the whole country (or maybe just most of their IP space).
Once this starts happening, internet users and businesses in (for example) Indonesia are suddenly going to start discovering that they are having trouble communicating with the U.S., and this is because of spammers in their country. I find it likely that if this happens, their response will be to complain to their government to do something about the spammers that are making the americans block them... until one day, spam is illegal in indonesia as well, and shortsighted ISPs in indonesia are going, hey, all my spam's coming from Myanmar, why don't i just block e-mail from there..
So if the US or EU ever adopted real antispam laws, it could start a big domino effect that would cause a lot of other countries to adopt antispam laws as well.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
IANAL, in fact I didn't even read the article (and proud of it too), but spam is unsolicited commercial email. To keep it simple if your email is...
... then it is spam. If you're just mass mailing rants and raves about non-commercial stuff, it's just chain e-mails (to me at least, not that I love them any more than spam).
1) Sent in bulk to people who did not specifically ask to be contacted via email.
2) Is selling some form of product or service.
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
I signed up with the various *PS preference serviecs but unfortunately still get spam.
The worst one is phone calls. I moved into a rented place a few years back and took over the phone there. Then, when I moved to a house I was actually buying I thought I'd pay the small fee to transfer the number, because everyone knew it by now.
Unfortunately the last person to use the number before me (A Mr. Brown) seems to have signed up to everything in the universe, given them his phone number and not ticked the "Oh God, please do not phone me" box on them all.
So now I get lots of calls that go like this:
spammer: is that mr. brown?
me: no. This has not been mr. brown's number for at least 3 years.
spammer: well, i wonder if you might be interested anyway. we're doing a promotion on gym membership...
me: please remove my number from your database and do not call it again.
So you see, the problem is that the phone number was "tainted" by this Mr. Brown; now all these calls are not technically "unsolicited", because he signed up and gave permission for them to call him.
I have a similar problem with email spam. I actually get very little spam, but nearly all of it is from companies where I used my email address to sign up for something and forgot to tick the damn box for "do not spam me", or from companies who got the email address from them. The reason I continue to get spam from them is because their unsubscribe procedure fails.
OK, that's phone spam and email spam. Now for letter spam. I get lots of this, most of which is unavoidable. Some of it is addressed to the person who lived in the house before me, but most of it is random leaflets advertising stuff that the postal delivery person is forced to deliver along with my mail, or that comes with the local paper (open paper, 5000 leaflets fall out, you know how it goes).
Anyway, my point is that spam, in all forms is not necessarily "unsolicited". It may be unwanted, but it could be that at some point either you or someone before you FAILED TO TICK THE BOX.
graspee
"How come countries don't have nuclear bomb testing anymore? Because it affects the entire world."
Actually more likely that they can't afford it, or political pressure has been brought by the haves against the have nots. You might recall some sabre-rattling between Pakistan and India a couple of years ago before the US started to play mediator.
"Why don't all the countries come together to eliminate spam like they did with nuclear bombs?"
Ah, you mean by refusing to talk to each other for several years, then only acting when it appears that spam is freely available on the black market, allowing for countries without spam to manufacture suitcase spam for making political points amongst the spamless disenfranchised peoples of the world?
"The internet is worldwide and it affects us all."
Oh do give over. You have less than 30% penetration in most of the G8 nations, and the idea of a global community tends to be tainted by the kiddiots that want to 0wnz boxes. Start by inserting CD-R's into your local script kiddie and you stop the next problem in it's tracks.
"We don't need an ICANN."
We need an ICANN without a vested interest, but that's like asking for an honest government.
"We just need the countries to come together and recognize that EVERYONE is involved and EVERYONE should do their part."
Individual states would do for a start. I've been lobbying my MP for as long as I can remember because the simple fact is that _everyone_ hates spam, even the spammers. However, making laws against it will simply drive the marketers underground, so you have to really hit the advertising businesses rather than the spammers.
Of course, I am slightly interested in something that would make advertising illegal, but only from a vicarious and slightly vicious angle.
Drac
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
Yeah, because as a Scot I have no culture of my own within the UK. (And like the majority of Scots, I'm a unionist, BTW.) The argument that closer EU integration will destroy national cultures is completely bogus and introspective. It's also a viewpoint most vehemently held by xenophobic right-wing little Engerlanders.
The current organisation of the EU may be seriously flawed, but that doesn't make the concept bad.
Well, its a good theory, but it is kinda pointless isnt it?
.ca, .com, and .uk domains looking for boxes with port 25 open (smtp) and then mail to all of them. And boom, Bill is in a lot of trouble, not only did he send unsolicited emails, he sent them to over a millon accounts! Bill sure is in alot of shit! Maybe he shouldnt have pissed me off....
Dont get me wrong, i'm all for anything that makes those guys who have the "wonderful drug to enhance my penis" suffer a little....but this really is one of those unenforceable laws.
First of all, how do we catch these people? as it stands now, most spam and unsolicited email is modified so that the mail headers read the reply to and the X-originating-ip have false values. Or just moving my mailserver to another country were these laws dont apply.
Moreover, I can change the mail headers of mail going out, whats to prevent me from forging them? That way if bill pisses me off, I can forge email headers to make the email look like its coming from bill...then i can set a simple script to pingsweep the
Not to mention not all unsolited email is bad. A few days ago I got an unsolited email from someone wanting me to do some work for them (a prospective client). Now in a business were yhe more clients the better, i dont want prospective clients haveing to be at all squimish about sending me an unsoliceted email looking for my services because if i dont like it i can have them charged, or fined, or something. Or that if the wrong eyes sees it they could be fined or charge, or somethimg. And in a business were clients come from all over the world, and in an on-demand era, email really is the only fesiable way to contact someone in the general sense.
There are a few other problems, but based on these 3 i think we can see perhaps this isnt the best anti-spam approach.
Mmmmm, objectivity...
NO `brit' (btw i find that term offensive) wants anything to do with the EU,
Speak for yourself.
The EU is banning all gameshows which give out over 70,000, i.e Who wants to be a Millionnaire is going to have to change or be banned, THATS HOW stooopid the Europeans are.
As a Brit who regularly travels and does business in other European countries, I find it really sad how a lot of Brits do not have an objective idea about Europe and the EU because they do not access to unbiased information about it. There is a concerted effort by a significant part of the UK press to rubbish the EU, and people such as yourself are easily influenced by them. Stories like the one you quote (and on the front page of The Times two days ago "EU would scap NHS if UK joins the Euro") only appear in the UK. And do you know why? Because they are just rubbish, made up, to influence people like yourself. Sad but true.
Britain is Britain, the political alliance of England, Scotland and Wales, we are our own union, we don't want European trash, and we're not in Europe...
It is funny very anti-European people such as yourself like to make this type of comment with regards to Europe, but seem completely blind to the fact that the UK has given away much of it's independance to the USA over the last half a century or so. The sad fact is that the USA has the UK in an economic vice. You should be more concerned that your Prime Minister has to be a poodle for the USA than any supposed threat to your soverignty from Europe.