Cornucopia Of Spam Bills

frankie writes "Anti-spam legislation is getting serious attention from the U.S. Congress and the media. Several bills are on the front burner, including REDUCE, CAN SPAM, and a RICO amendment. However, the strongest contender is a new bill sponsored by Billy Tauzin (R-La.). It would allow spam from any company you've done business with in the past 3 years, override stronger state laws, and block private lawsuits. You can complain now or complain more later."

Comments

I think I'll complain now.

[aeinome]

Any company I've done business with in the past three years? Does that mean that old gas station I stopped at in the middle of Kansas once is going to send me e-flyers? What is the world coming to?

Re:I think I'll complain now.

[Zeinfeld]

Any company I've done business with in the past three years? Does that mean that old gas station I stopped at in the middle of Kansas once is going to send me e-flyers? What is the world coming to?

That is not the main wrecking clause. The wrecking clause is the requirement for individual opt-out from every mailing list. So the spam sender can create a new 'division' once a day and send you new spam no matter how often you opt out.

A global opt-out list is not such a problem, provided it is one-way encrypted (an old MIT suggestion) so the opt-out list can be used to see if a particular email is opted out but not as a source of addresses to spam. Yes we know the spam senders will ignore it, however making people sign up to get a right to sue a spam sender is not a major obstacle.

The real problem is the Republican's attempt to take out the private right of action. AOL and Earthlink have been very effective in suing the spammy bastards into the ground. They have judgements for millions against a lot of spammers. OK they will not collect it all but they will make the spam senders miserable.

In one case they got the spammer's lawyer who set up fake companies for him - now liable jointly and severally for a $6.9 million contempt judgment

Re:I think I'll complain now.

[aardvarkjoe]

AOL and Earthlink have been very effective in suing the spammy bastards into the ground.

Very effective? My spam volume certainly hasn't gone down. Winning a few lawsuits, for which they probably won't even get back their court costs, could hardly be considered "effective" in the grand scheme of things.

Re:I think I'll complain now.

[swordboy]

What is the world coming to?

Why don't you send a letter to Alan Ralsky, one of the largest spammers around, and ask him this question.

Or better yet, order him a pizza and a few cabs.

The stupid moron was dumb enough to use his home address to register his business.

I'm gonna drive over there right now and take picures of the next 24 hours.

Cheetos,

Darren

Re:I think I'll complain now.

[Herkum01]

Does that mean that old gas station I stopped at in the middle of Kansas once is going to send me e-flyers?

Worse than that, if stopped at the gas station to ask for directions that could consider that a past relationship. This law is worse than no law becuase, like the article said, "an attempt to legitimize SPAM." The law is horrible, it is no bite, loose definitions, and remove's enforcement of state laws, WHO, BTW are the one's who have been protecting consumer rights instead of the federal government.

Re:I think I'll complain now.

[Anonymous Coward]

One would assume that "any business that you had dealt with in the past 3 years and who knew your email address" would be eligible and ABLE to spam you.

I don't see this as a very common scenario. "Yo! Before I tell you directions to Kansas City, please write your email address here"....or "Hey Marge! What was the address of that guy who was asking directions a few weeks back?"

I'm beginning to think that just ring-fencing the US and charging an admission fee to tourists is becoming a good option.

Re:I think I'll complain now.

[gmack]

I think instead of badgering ralsky some more(yes I agree it's funny) it's time we set up a blacklist of DMA members. These people need to realise there are consequences to working against the public's interests in favor of their own selfish goals.

The blacklists in the past have forced even the largest isps to clean up their spam policy and it's time we apply that preassure to the political realm as well.

Re:I think I'll complain now.

[realdpk]

Largest, eh? Those pills work?

Re:I think I'll complain now.

[zcat_NZ]

There is a list of the 180 worst spammers here if you want someone to blacklist or harass.

And yes, Alan Ralsky appears at the top of the list. But only because it's in alphabetical order.

Re:I think I'll complain now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Think for a moment how bad it would be if they weren't blocking 2 billion spams a day. You don't realize how juicy a target inexperienced and naive AOLers are to spammers.

Re:I think I'll complain now.

[BuckaBooBob]

SMTP needs to be fixed... Plain and simple... the big 15 email account holders should get together and fund a OS project It will save so much time and money.. and also give more time to courts and governing bodies to do other useless things that they can't affect cahneg through legislation.. not to mention this bill obviously invades my personal privacy so it wont hold up long at all..

Re:I think I'll complain now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nethack is life.

Re:I think I'll complain now.

[surprise_audit]

Maybe your spam volume hasn't gone down, but the cases have created legal precedent that will be very useful in the future. The fact that several courts have found in favor of AOL and Earthlink adds weight to the argument that spammers are the scum of the earth and makes it more difficult for them to sue for the right to send their trash.

Re:I think I'll complain now.

[gmack]

I didn't say known spammers I said DMA members. You know the ones with the political clout? That's AOL, Microsoft etc.

Re:I think I'll complain now.

[JuggleGeek]

Any company I've done business with in the past three years? Does that mean that old gas station I stopped at in the middle of Kansas once is going to send me e-flyers?

Did you give them an email address? If you did, you can expect them to use it. If you didn't, then they aren't likely to email you.

heh.. a Viking dream..

[marcushnk]

"Cornucopia Of Spam Bills"

A Horn of plenty that gives nothing but SPAM!<br>

spam, spam, spam, SPAM!

Ironic...

[Anonymous Coward]

that congress is being spammed with spam laws.
What's next, the spammers getting spammed?

Oh wait...

politics as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

sounds like an easy way to win campaign points.

punk ass politicians....good fer nuthins.

Re:politics as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone have that congress men's home address or his district office? I'd sure like to order his ass couple of pizzas and sign him up for some magazine subscriptions (free trial and all)!

Re:politics as usual

[digitalunity]

What the hell are you talking about? Finally, some good legislation(anti-spam bills are almost always good) comes out of the Senate/House and you complain? Call them punk-ass for giving you what you want?
sounds like an easy way to win campaign points.
That's the whole point. They give you what you want, and then you vote for them again. Ideally, this is how it is supposed to work. I'll vote for anyone who's looking out for the citizens more than the companies. After all, SPAM IS BIG BUSINESS. Alan Ralsky and friends wouldn't do it if they didn't make money. Nuf said. So shut the hell up and vote!

In case the 1st link was /.-ed...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is the text from the first link posted:

In recent weeks, several pieces of legislation have been proposed in the US Congress. We are currently preparing analyses and will publish them on the website as soon as they are available. However, at present we have seen no legislative proposals that CAUCE is prepared to endorse.

On April 30, 2003, CAUCE joined a number of other consumer groups in expressing opposition to the Burns-Wyden CAN-SPAM Act:

[This letter was published April 28 for delivery to the FTC April 30.]

We, the undersigned groups, representing consumer interests, urge Congress to pass legislation to empower individuals to act against senders of Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE). The leading bill currently before Congress, S.877 (CAN-SPAM Act of 2003) does not meet two requirements that we consider essential: an opt-in policy, and a private right of action.

Because spammers impose costs on recipients, the correct policy is to prohibit it, just as Congress prohibited junk faxes in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA). An acceptable alternative would be to enable network owners such as ISPs to post an electronic No Spamming sign, as was done in the 106th Congress's H.R. 3113, which passed the House. An opt-out policy, which is taken in S. 877, will not significantly reduce the widespread damage to consumers' interests and confidence.

The second essential requirement is that recipients of UCE have a private right of action. Liquidated damages of $500, as in the TCPA, are appropriate. ISPs should also have a right of action, but leaving enforcement solely to them, or state or federal regulators would leave far too many spammers breaking the law.

Beyond these fundamental requirements are numerous details, including a narrow exemption for existing business relationships such as the one that Federal Trade Commission (FTC) arrived at in their Telemarketing Sales Rule this year.

The definition of a solicitation should be carefully limited to avoid any impact on non-commercial speech, such as speech about religion or politics. Measures against typical spammer tactics such as the falsification of return addresses and other headers are desirable but not sufficient.

We urge members of Congress to pass anti-spam legislation with an opt-in policy and a private right of action. We also ask the FTC to recommend and support such legislation.

Respectfully

Jason Catlett, President, Junkbusters Corp.
Jeff Chester, Executive Director, Center for Digital Democracy
Tom Geller, Secretary, SpamCon Foundation
Beth Givens, Director, Privacy Rights Clearing House
Ken McEldowney, Executive Director, Consumer Action
Scott Hazen Mueller, Chairman, CAUCE.org (Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email)
Chris Murray, Legislative Counsel, Consumers Union
Gary Ruskin, Executive Director, Commercial Alert

Re:In case the 1st link was /.-ed...

[aardvarkjoe]

The definition of a solicitation should be carefully limited to avoid any impact on non-commercial speech, such as speech about religion or politics.

I really don't agree with this. People shouldn't be allowed to spam me with unsolicited advertising for their church or political party any more than for a new penis enlarger. It may not be "Unsolicited Commercial E-mail," but it's certainly spam.

This is a property rights issue, not a free speech issue; people need to stop treating it as if it was the latter.

Re:In case the 1st link was /.-ed...

[Stephen VanDahm]

I really don't agree with this. People shouldn't be allowed to spam me with unsolicited advertising for their church or political party any more than for a new penis enlarger. It may not be "Unsolicited Commercial E-mail," but it's certainly spam.

I know it's a property rights issue, and that political and religious spam is just as bad as commercial spam. But as a practical matter, it may not be wise to mess with political and religious spam because there's no telling how the courts might see it. Commercial speech is not protected under the First Amendment, and Congress is explicitly allowed to regulate "interstate commerce," so if a spam bill is limited only to commercial spam, it would most likely be safe from a Constitutional challenge.

Steve

Re:In case the 1st link was /.-ed...

[capologist]

I disagree. A content-neutral "time, place or manner" restriction would be more consistent with the spirit of the First Amendment, and with existing case law, than a content-based restriction.

Spamming, in terms of its public nuisance value, is somewhat like blaring your message with multikilowatt speakers in a residential neighborhood at 3:00 A.M. It doesn't matter whether those speakers are playing a commercial advertisement, a political message, a religious message, music, gibberish, or anything else. The annoyment of the residents has nothing to do with the content of the message, and the behavior is illegal regardless of the content of the message. Spam should be treated the same way.

Re:In case the 1st link was /.-ed...

[Anonymous Coward]

People shouldn't be allowed to spam me with unsolicited advertising for their church

Good point. I can see it now: Spam from the First Church of Penis Enlargement. Your salvation is just a Viagra away. Order today!

Re:In case the 1st link was /.-ed...

[edp]

"People shouldn't be allowed to spam me with unsolicited advertising for their church or political party..."

Yes, but this needs to be done carefully. First, we ought to accept any good spam bill. If it is effective against commercial speech, that will reduce spam from a serious problem to a nuisance, for two reasons. One, non-commercial speech doesn't have the powerful engine of money driving it, so it won't be so explosive. Two, if commercial spam dried up, there would not be spamming operations and tools so readily available for non-commercial spam.

If non-commercial spam is to be targeted, it should be done in separate legislation, so that court rulings finding such legislation unconstitutional in whole or part will not affect commercial spam laws. And such legislation should frame the issue as property rights. Instead of making non-commercial spam illegal and subject to action by the government, it might be necessary to treat it as a civil issue and make non-commercial spam a kind of trespass. The right to sue or complain has to remain with the property owners, so it is clear it is they who object to their use of their property, not the government objecting to the speech.

Re:In case the 1st link was /.-ed...

[Divide By Zero]

One, non-commercial speech doesn't have the powerful engine of money driving it, so it won't be so explosive. Never underestimate the explosiveness of the ACLU. Those guys have made an art form out of exploding all over the media.

Re:In case the 1st link was /.-ed...

[DickBreath]

People shouldn't be allowed to spam me with unsolicited advertising for their church or political party any more than for a new penis enlarger.

Agreed. I like large penises, but am less fond of televangelists or politicians.

Re:In case the 1st link was /.-ed...

[Grizzlysmit]

I know it's a property rights issue, and that political and religious spam is just as bad as commercial spam. But as a practical matter, it may not be wise to mess with political and religious spam because there's no telling how the courts might see it.

That seams weird to me, I'm a commited Christian, are you saying that I should have the right to spam people about my faith, please I should be made to abide by the same rules of honour and decency as any one else, spamming is wrong, I shouldn't do it whether it's for my faith or not.

Re:In case the 1st link was /.-ed...

[Stephen VanDahm]

"That seams weird to me, I'm a commited Christian, are you saying that I should have the right to spam people about my faith, please I should be made to abide by the same rules of honour and decency as any one else, spamming is wrong, I shouldn't do it whether it's for my faith or not."

I agree with you from a moral perspective -- all spamming is wrong whether it's religious or commerical in nature. I'm just saying that, from a purely practical perspective, it might pay off to wait until later to go after the relgious and political spam, because you simply don't know how the courts will react. If we ban commerical spam, we stigmatize spamming in general, and while religious and political spam remains legal, it's sleazy by association. After people get used to that, then maybe we can introduce a bill that targets religious and political spam. If people raise a stink over it, someone could say, "hey, corporations have been banned from doing for years" and the practice would be much harder to defend.

Steve

Re:In case the 1st link was /.-ed...

[sketerpot]

There's a discussion about this in A Plan or Spam, in which a better definition of spam is found: Unsolicited Automated Email.

By the way, anyone caught sending me spam will be forced to work at home stuffing Viagra into inkjet cartriges. Be afraid!

The Mardi Gras State

[Anonymous Coward]

"It would allow spam from any company you've done business with in the past 3 years, override stronger state laws, and block private lawsuits. "

I can see it now, no private lawsuits would screw everyone else. Is it just me or do we see people taking this part of the laws to the supreme court?

This comes from the state that gave us MCI.

And also the one who has been fighting against independent ISP's and wanting to force it so that only the Telco's can give internet access.

Oh well...at least they still have Mardi Gras :)

Re:The Mardi Gras State

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention that it is one of the least environmentally friendly states. Big business has more sway than anything over there

Re:The Mardi Gras State

[Anonymous Coward]

MCI did not start here - It started in Mississippi asshole!

And no, I do not particularly care for the idiot Tauzin.

And WTF is this about fighting independant ISPs? I know of no such bullshit going on here.

Federalization is the answer, but...

[guacamolefoo]

Tje issue of spam is a classic interstate commerce issue that needs to be addressed within one unified framework. Jeffersonian experimentation, while indicative of broad frustration with spam, is unlikely to do anything to allow email to be used reasonably (ducking) as a marketing tool. A patchwork response to this is just going to be unworkable.

The problem with federalization is that it is federalization, and the solution must be a very good one. Unfortunately, spam isn't something like, say, drug dealing or murder for hire. It hasn't been around for a long time (relatively speaking) and the best ways to deal with it are not entirely clear. In addition, commercial interests will bear heavily on legislation.

In a nutshell, I fear that the end result is that a first attempt at a federal solution will get it wrong. There is only one way to try to prevent this. Get involved now.

This is one issue that dramatically affects our networks and working lives. If there was ever a time to call your local congressthing and offer your expert advice (with a C.V. perhaps), it is be now.

GF.

Re:Federalization is the answer, but...

[Superfarstucker]

Tje issue of spam is a classic interstate commerce issue that needs to be addressed within one unified framework. Jeffersonian experimentation, while indicative of broad frustration with spam, is unlikely to do anything to allow email to be used reasonably (ducking) as a marketing tool. A patchwork response to this is just going to be unworkable.

The problem with federalization is that it is federalization, and the solution must be a very good one. Unfortunately, spam isn't something like, say, drug dealing or murder for hire. It hasn't been around for a long time (relatively speaking) and the best ways to deal with it are not entirely clear. In addition, commercial interests will bear heavily on legislation.

In a nutshell, I fear that the end result is that a first attempt at a federal solution will get it wrong. There is only one way to try to prevent this. Get involved now.

This is one issue that dramatically affects our networks and working lives. If there was ever a time to call your local congressthing and offer your expert advice (with a C.V. perhaps), it is be now.

I don't really think federalization is the only/best solution in this case. A new mail protocol could pretty much get rid of spam. However, is there really a clear solution to drug trafficking or hitmen either. Both of these problems still exist to some degree despite federalization, and in some cases the feds actually inflamed the issue, i suppose 'the solution must be a good one' eludes to this.

dramatically effect our lives??? I'd say you are being a bit zealous there. E-mail is 'very important' compared to what? the snails in your grass?

Re:Federalization is the answer, but...

[guacamolefoo]

A new mail protocol could pretty much get rid of spam.

The proposal or existence of a public solution should not halt private methods of addressing the problem. If this happens, great.

However, is there really a clear solution to drug trafficking or hitmen either.

RICO worked pretty well for hitmen. The offense still occurs, but at least there is a conceptual, workable framework for dealing with the crime. Drugs are problematic. The conventional wisdom (throw 'em in jail!) clearly hasn't done much but fill up prisons.

dramatically effect our lives??? I'd say you are being a bit zealous there. E-mail is 'very important' compared to what?

I started an ISP while in law school. It is still running. A significant portion of our bandwidth and computing resources are directed at dealing with spam and trying to keep our users' experiences with email and the internet positive. It is a huge problem. The fact that email is still usable at all owes itself to many dedicated and ingenious sysadmins. It is a huge problem.

GF.

Re:Federalization is the answer, but...

[keirre23hu]

The solution is completely banning Unsolicited Commercial Email, no loopholes, no if and or buts about it. If a company I have a "relationship" with wants to send me commercial e-mail, they should clearly ask me about that at the outset of the "relationship"...
On another note, I am curious how the law will handle this Unsolicited email, since I carefully avoid opting into any lists, yet I receive 20+ spam mails a day, (down to 2-3 since I installed Spam Assassin, but thats another article altogether)and just about all of them tell me I opted in to their lists..

"Generic Viagra"

[Spikeman56]

Spam is so damn annoying my last 20 e-mails have all been about viagra of some sort,

• every single one

Re:"Generic Viagra"

[SirVesa]

I get hundreds of mails like this a day from all over the map. Spam laws are a good idea I think - but they won't solve anything as the problem is completely international in nature. A filtering solution or a toll-based solution (or some combo of these) is what I'm hoping for. Bring on the baysian tools because the black/white list and filters ain't cutting it any more

Re:"Generic Viagra"

[Anonymous Coward]

Only 20??? You probably have had your domain name for only 2 weeks or so. My domain is 8 years old and gets 150 or more spams per day.

Re:"Generic Viagra"

[Anonymous Coward]

What';s worse is they are all from the same guy's "affiliates"

Ack!

[B3ryllium]

Spam Bill Spam!

Quick, find a spam bill and forward it to 15 of your friends, with a note that says Bill Gates will give them a thousand dollars if they forward it to 15 of their friends.

Bill Gates will give you a thousand dollars if you do.

Perhaps not that bad?

[Phroggy]

Actually I'm not sure this is such a completely bad thing. Junk mail from legitimate companies that I have given my e-mail address to voluntarily is such a small problem - compared to the other crap flooding my mailbox - that I usually don't even count it as spam, even if it is unsolicited.

I know, some people think anything they don't want is spam and will report it as such via SpamCop or other tools. That's dumb. If it's stupid chain letters from your uncle, it's not spam. If it comes from a legitimate company, they'll offer an opt-out link that will actually works, because they don't want to piss off potential customers and they know how much people hate spam.

With that in mind, what are the other serious problems with this bill?

Re:Perhaps not that bad?

[spoco2]

As the article states though, there are loopholes... which include the companies that you've 'had a relationship with' including those you may have just visited and looked at (They've 'provided information', therefore you have a relationship). Or what about companies with multiple other company relationships? The bill is vague around this point and may allow a company that you have a valid relationship with decide to send you mails from all its associate companies... and you'd have to Opt out of each and every one of the associated companies.

OPT OUT is not a good model. If a person wants to know things from a company, wants to have a relationship of that sort, then they should OPT IN.

So you say that you have no problem with companies you've voluntarily given your address to contacting you... I'm thinking you'll be ending up with e-mails from all sorts of companies you never new you had a 'relationship' with, or that you gave your e-mail to in the first place.

Re:Perhaps not that bad?

[Trillan]

A legitimate company that cares about not spamming people would not be emailing me without me signing up for their emails in the first place in the first place.

Any commercial email I receive that I didn't report is reported as spam. Because it is.

Re:Perhaps not that bad?

[graxrmelg]

Junk mail from legitimate companies isn't much of a problem now, because spam has not been legitimized and is associated mainly with scams and porn. Once spam has a federal stamp of approval, there's nothing stopping "legitimate" companies from flooding your e-mail box as well. They already flood you by phone and snail mail, but they'll send much more by e-mail because it's so much cheaper for them.

And where did you get the idea that companies care about pissing off potential customers with advertising? You may have noticed that we're moving toward a time when every visible surface and every moment of your life is filled with advertising. I haven't noticed any slackening in junk phone calls, paper junk mail, advertising before movies, product placement, or percentage of TV time taken by ads -- they're all increasing, with no apparent upper bound.

Re:Perhaps not that bad?

[Trillan]

This is pretty much the definition I use (from spamfaq.net).

2.1.1 What are UBE and UCE? What is SPAM?

These are all types of email abuse; that is, abuse _of_ the email system. They differ from abuse _on_ the email system (e.g. stalking, sexual harassment) in that they endanger the usability of electronic mail as a communications medium.

UBE stands for "Unsolicited Bulk Email" and is an email message that is:

1. Unsolicited
   i.e. it wasn't explicitly requested by the recipient

   and

2. Bulk (or Broadcast)
   i.e. substantively identical messages were sent to a non-trivial number of recipients

To put it another way, UBE is most of the junk email messages that plop into your email box every day. UBE isn't necessarily advertising, and emailed advertising is not necessarily UBE (advertising isn't UBE if you request it, or you knowingly request something that it is attached to, for example), but most UBE is advertising (because advertisers are the ones with the most interest in making you see something you don't necessarily want to).

UCE is often used as an alternative to "UBE" - it stands for "Unsolicited Commercial Email". Which term you prefer is largely a matter of style. UCE is easier to prove than UBE - it's easier for one individual to see if an email is commercial in nature than to see if it is sent in bulk - but UCE doesn't necessarily endanger the email system if it isn't UBE.

Of course, as a spam-victim, you will probably be in no place to judge whether a suspected spam you received really was sent in bulk, as you'll only get one copy of the spam yourself. For the most part, this doesn't matter, as you can make a jolly good guess based upon what it looks like and whether you solicited anything like it. Unsolicited advertising is rarely sent individually. As the saying goes, if it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck then it probably is a duck.

While almost all UCE is also UBE, the converse is not true - there are whole classes of UBE that are not UCE, such as:

• Political - politicians love to make direct contact with the electorate. Many of them will see UBE as an ideal medium for this.

• Charitable - the world's worthiest causes need our help. Many charities don't understand the issues surrounding bulk email and might think it'd be okay to send UBE requesting donations.

• Religious - there is no shortage of people preaching the end of the world and repentance as the only salvation, and seeing UBE as an ideal way to reach a large number of sinners.

Five minutes spent thinking will throw up plenty more examples.

SPAM is a tasty luncheon meat produced by Hormel (http://www.hormel.com). Spam (note capitalisation differences) is a colloquial term with a large and sordid history; in news.admin.net-abuse.email it is generally used as a synonym for UBE or UCE.

The subtle differences between these terms can be confusing, but for the most part UBE and spam can be equated and UCE considered a subset of them.

Other people may have different definitions. For example, some maintain that spam is any unsolicited, non-personal email. Most definitions are broadly compatible but differ in a few places around the edges.

Re:Perhaps not that bad?

[TekPolitik]

Actually I'm not sure this is such a completely bad thing. Junk mail from legitimate companies that I have given my e-mail address to voluntarily is such a small problem - compared to the other crap flooding my mailbox - that I usually don't even count it as spam, even if it is unsolicited.

The point is that the Tauzin bill states you can't even opt-out of spam from companies you have dealt with previously. In other words, once you deal with a company, they own you for the next three years and you have no further say in the matter. This actually gives the company major new rights they don't have now.

I don't see how Tauzin could have come up with the language he did without being seriously corrupt. There's really no possible way for him to introduce a more pro-spam bill.

Re:Perhaps not that bad?

[WalterSobchak]

As another reply to this post has pointed out, there are loopholes in the Bill. But all in all, I agree that eMail from companies I do business with is no big problem.
Running my own server I can use "disposable addresses", which would tell me exactly who has proliferated it. And it has happened in just a single case (where I might have been tricked into not unchecking that "share email" box).
Also, all of the "legitimate bulk eMailer" have honored remove requests.
IF "has done business with" is propperly defined, I have no problem with this. But this is also the reason why businesses should have an interest in cracking down on spammers, because "eMail marketing" already has a bad name to it in general.

Alex

Re:Perhaps not that bad?

[frankie]

I don't see how Tauzin could have come up with the language he did without being seriously corrupt.

Well... Tauzin is seriously corrupt. So there you go.

Good old America. We've got plutocracy and theocracy instead of democracy, but at least we aren't one of those nasty "-ism"s... :-(

Anyone remember the Detroit Spammer?

[swordboy]

Here's his home address!

The stupid fucker...

Re:Anyone remember the Detroit Spammer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, West Bloomfield. He's a snob too.

The wait begins

[m00nun1t]

It would allow spam from any company you've done business with in the past 3 years

Damn, and I just bought some penis enlargement tablets. Now I have to wait 3 years to stop receiving spam from them!!

Re:The wait begins

[jpetts]

Now I have to wait 3 years to stop receiving spam from them!!

Yeah, but think of all the walls you can beat down with your mighty c*ck while you're waiting!!

Re:The wait begins

[Scroatzilla]

better hope it takes < 3 years' worth for that little thing to grow to the size you wanted it.

Loopholes

[KrispyKringle]

I think the really important issue hardly even mentioned in the Post article is what punitive measures, if any, would be used to actually fight spam. When spammers are so difficult to track, will a bounty system like that proposed by others be used? Will those who's products are being advertised be held accountable? What about ISPs? Clearly, spammers cannot just be tracked down so easily when they break this law, but sometimes those associated with them can be.

As for the "prior relationship" exception, presumably legitimate marketers, like e-tailers mailing their customers, could simply have a click-through agreement making the spam solicited.

Re:Loopholes

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not slashdotted, you Karma-whore.

that's good and all

[Anonymous Coward]

but what does this bill do to keep spam from originating from Nigeria or China, et al? Do we try to sue the business of the guy in vietnam who peddles porn or what? How can we do that without it having a business presence in the US?

Most of the Spam I can't get rid of (ie opt out) doesn't come from the US anyways.

In Australia...

[the-build-chicken]

The only people that _can't_ spam you are people you've done business with. The privacy laws dictate that, unless you have to keep records for legal reasons, or your _primary_ purpose for the records is marketting, then you have to remove them upon request. Which I found really weird. I don't mind if my bank/mechanic/energy company have my details, I _do_ mind that some impossible to track down marketting company called Sydney Promotions Pty Ltd sends me email from pgraysepw@yahoo.com (very professional guys) can get my records from who knows where, keep them for as long as I want, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it :(

Re:In Australia...

[spoco2]

I tend to agree. Most 'legit' companies are quite good about e-mail. If they're not, they build up a lot of bad will. It's the public image moreso than laws that stop them spamming. (And I recently watched a show where they tested the theory by creating a number of e-mail addresses and disseminating the e-mail addresses in a variety of ways. Those that only gave their addresses to companies had far, far less spam than those who simply had their e-mail address viewable on the web by way of it being on a website or through use of Usenet)

These laws aren't really going to stop the current barrage of e-mail spam, as those doing the majority of it already are breaking the law. What it will do is give more room for companies to engage in 'spam' in a legal way... and this can only be bad.

Re:In Australia...

[zakezuke]

That has to hurt, as from what i've been told for atleast broadband in australia, there are monthly megabyte caps, and per megabyte fees among major telcos.

This is something spammers don't take into account, there are some users who indeed pay per byte fees.

what i'd like to know...

[i.r.id10t]

is which bill has been looked over and given a decent thumbs up by people a typical /.'er will have blind loyalty to. A statement from the EFF or some other completely trusted party or something like that.

Re:what i'd like to know...

[pinheadcelt]

While I support the EFF in many of their causes, they are completely clueless when it comes to spam. They think it is a free speech issue. It isn't. It's a private property issue. It's a *theft* issue. Nobody but me has the right to use my equipment for advertising purposes. If you use my servers for advertising purposes without *paying* me for that privilege, you are *stealing* from me. I don't understand why these "frea speach" morons don't get that. Hey, I'm all for free speech. Hell, I even support the ACLU, which makes me a pariah in my home state (Utah), but your free speech rights stop at my front door and my border routers.

Re:what i'd like to know...

[JuggleGeek]

A statement from the EFF or some other completely trusted party

The EFF is a trusted party? Not to me. The EFF is pro spam. That makes them the enemy, as far as I'm concerned. See the link for details.

http://www.eff.org/Spam_cybersquatting_abuse/Spamm ing/position_on_junk_email.html

Did they learn something from the junk fax law?

[pphrdza]

Two participants said the bill initially was to have been modeled after the federal "junk fax" law that bans all unsolicited fax marketing.

Prior to that law I was getting zero junk faxes, and now I'm getting an average of 5 a week.

Re:Did they learn something from the junk fax law?

[Anonymous Coward]

The junk fax law is at least a decade old, hardly material for an "and now" clause.

Re:Did they learn something from the junk fax law?

[Sycraft-fu]

So sue the people sending them. The wonderful thing about small claims court is it is cheap to file a suit, and you don't need a lawyer. What you need to do is first in good faith try and get removed form their list, even if you don't believe you did anything to get on there in the first place. Keep a record of what you do, preferably things like voice recordings of the phone calls. If they are like many scummy places that simply never answer their opt out phone, log that. Keep a journal of each time you tried to call and not that you got no response. Sign it in front of a notary and have them notarize it.

After you have evidence that you tried to get off their lists, but they continue to fax you, go fiel a suit. I think it's like $20 to file in small claims court. The companies you file against will then have to send people to respond. At best, you'll win some money, but at worst you'll cost them a bunch of money in sending their people to go to court.

Hmm

[Gortbusters.org]

But how will this affect the RIAA's cyberwar?

What difference will that make?

[Trillan]

Spammers will still get added to black lists, they'll still threaten to sue those who use black lists, and they'll still lose. Life will go on.

Spam has to be solved by technology.

Re:What difference will that make?

[frankie]

they'll still threaten to sue those who use black lists

Not if it meant revealing yourself to federal charges.

We need three factors to solve the spam problem:

1. good technology
2. effective legislation
3. public shunning of spammers

Blocklists, Challenge/Response, etc, are almost good enough to satisfy part 1. Most of the industrial world dislikes spam, but not quite enough for part 3 yet. Having part 2 would make it clear that spam is not a legitimate business practice, and lead to the completion of the other parts in short order.

WHOOPS - here's a REAL state.mi.gov link

[swordboy]

Sorry, forgot to check my links...

spam is just like...

[dollargonzo]

EULAs. they are both very difficult to enforce/fight, yet they exist nevertheless. in both cases they exist simply because of monetary benefit. companies requiring signing an EULA wants to protect its product, while spammers live on 1 out of a million idiots who actually BUY their stuff! even if a bill is passed, i honestly don't think that will stop many spammers, if any, unless there is a mass effort to dismantle them one by one.

Missing link

[arvindn]

I want to complain more now!

Where do I complain more? The link is missing ;^)

3 year period....who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

"It would allow spam from any company you've done business with in the past 3 years" Who the hell would do business with "generic viagra" dealers anyway. Even if someone was stupid enough to follow this path, such a low-life "company" would not have a life span of three years.

Please suh'

[dethl]

may I have some more spam?

Ridiculous.....my ISP can sue yet I can't? This is good and bad. For one, it would put pressure on the ISP's to stop spam mail, but on the other hand, ISP's who aren't keeping up with the spam could lose customers.

Its my internet connection, I'm paying for its bandwidth, I should be able to sue those who decide flood me with absolute crap.

Re:Please suh'

[Anonymous Coward]

You are better off joining a class action law suit against a spammer / spamming company. You don't own the connection. The ISP owns the bandwidth and you pay them to use it.

Re:Need Assistance

[Anonymous Coward]

OH MY GOD! look, guyz the trap worked! we got a would-be spammer red handed! commence gang raping!! yeee haaaw!

Problems with the Tauzin Bill

[Shackleford]

From the Washington Post article:

Instead, the draft would require commercial e-mail to allow users to "opt out" of future mailings and to provide accurate electronic and physical addresses of the senders. It also would prohibit the "harvesting" of e-mail addresses that spammers using special software obtain from Web pages.

Something that I would like to know is how exactly a law that prohibits use of software that harvests e-mail addresses from web pages can be enforced. What would happen? My understanding is that HTTP log files can be checked to determine if "bots" have collected information on the web page. But how can they tell what those bots did? This is my understanding, I could be wrong, and correct me if I am. And even if they can, then spammers will just look for other ways of getting e-mail addresses. This actually could set the wrong kind of precedent. As they say at the EFF, "coding is not a crime." And is such a law even necessary? According to an article I read a while ago on the CBC web site, obscuring one's e-mail address so that it does not seem to have to format of an e-mail address works quite well. And if you want to annoy spammers, I've seen CGI scripts that generate several fake e-mail addresses. You can implement one of those on your web site if you would like to annoy spammers right back.

Also from the article:

State attorneys general think the proposed bill is riddled with loopholes, in addition to preventing states from enacting and enforcing tougher laws.

Loopholes. Great. And I wonder if any of the legitimate businesses that you do business with (within three years, and why three?) would be able to do what they want with your e-mail address once they have it. Such as selling them to spammers. So in a nutshell, I'd have to say that I still have yet to see any anti-spam legislation that I like

Re:Problems with the Tauzin Bill

[isn't my name]

As to how to tell if a bot has harvested from a website, if you are unlucky enough to have a single e-mail address, it would not be possible. However, if you have your own domain, it is likely that you can set things up so that any non-existing userid@yourdomain.com comes into a catch-all account.

Then, all you do is use different e-mail addresses for everyplace you are forced to supply one. Joe-Bob's Meat Cleavers site won't let you browse his site without an e-mail and you just have to read the link you followed from a slashdot post? Sign up as joe-bob-meat-cleavers@yourdomain.com. Then when you get spam using that e-mail address, you know where it came from.

I have a few that have recently become very active for spammers, and I know exactly where they were harvested from. These are addresses that I am conviced were harvested, not ones that were sold by the website they were used at. Either way, were I so inclined and legally permitted, if I could sue, I would know exactly where to start the discovery requests to try to determine where these addresses came from.

Constructive... my personal boundries

[zakezuke]

I will accept some spam from my ISP. It's rather a price i'm willing to pay, and I can always choose not to use their e-mail account (Actually I don't so this doesn't bug me). ISPs right or wrong do indeed have the right to make the rules, and i'm willing to live with that.

I will not accept SPAM from some place I bought flowers for someone from or other internet based gift shop. While I appricate the fact that I was a customer, and some people might enjoy this sorta promotional mailing, this should be an elective not a given right. But I can always setup a seperate hotmail account for this eventualy.

I will not order viagra online... i'm not in the market viagra, nor do I wish to see, "Gay Canadian Studs" nor am I seeking herbal meds for metapause(sp).

I will not order porn from the Adam and Eve catalog. MST3k the movie had this joke when doing their spoof on "This Island Earth". Enter a room filled with boxes, "Oh, must have been ordering from the Adam and Eve catalog again". I know some people who wanted some gag gifts, and were rather distressed by the multitude of free gifts. They have since moved, but the gifts are still comming. Thanks to this I got the joke.

If Echelon is listening ...

[Mikey-San]

Before I say this, I realize the government probably doesn't care at all about tracking my 'Net habits, but I thought this was particularly unsettling:

That firstgov.gov site tries to set three cookies on page load and two on page exit.

Meh. Blacklisted. Yay Moz.

Sorry for the horribly off-topic post.

Um ...

*tries to steer it back on topic*

I hope they didn't just harvest my e-mail address for bulk, friendly offers from the U.S. government. Apparently, there are lots of horny co-eds in the White House, and they all want my thick--

What? I can't finish this comment, Taco? What the--

Re:If Echelon is listening ...

[Mikey-San]

Wait, my post here got a +1 informative point? Which part was informative, the part where I mention the cookies, or the part where I mention the horny co-eds in the White House?

-/-
Mikey-San
Leading the charge of cluelessness since 1981.

Weird, /. editor actually EDITED my article

[frankie]

FWIW, my article submission had links to REDUCE and RICO, and correctly referred to Tauzin as (R-Bell).

Some synopses:

• REDUCE: Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Professor Lawrence Lessig's plan to set a bounty for citizens catching spammers
• CAN-SPAM: Sen. Conrad Burns et al, requires valid headers and working opt-out, but doesn't allow private lawsuits
• Do-Not-Spam: Sen. Chuck Schumer's proposal covers everything from CAN-SPAM plus has a national do-not-email registry and bans address harvesting.

And there's lots of others.

Re:Weird, /. editor actually EDITED my article

[Tackhead]

> REDUCE [house.gov]: Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Professor Lawrence Lessig's plan to set a bounty for citizens catching spammers
>
> CAN-SPAM [senate.gov]: Sen. Conrad Burns et al, requires valid headers and working opt-out, but doesn't allow private lawsuits
>
> Do-Not-Spam [senate.gov]: Sen. Chuck Schumer's proposal covers everything from CAN-SPAM plus has a national do-not-email registry and bans address harvesting.

The Lofgren bill sounds promising.

As for the other two:

• "[Several forged headers, and obviously bogus reply addresses] This mailing is in compliance with the CAN-SPAM act. All headers are valid and our opt-out works. To opt out or to tell us what you think of us, contact our special opt out team at root@127.0.0.1."
• "This mailing is in compliance with the Do-Not-Spam act. If we are emailing you in error, we apologize, as our carefully targited mailings are take several [days|weeks|months|years] to prepare and we must have prepared this mailing before you were added to the registry."

I like the RICO angle. Does that allow for asset forfeiture? Seems to me that'd make a lot of municipal governments direct the police to take a harder line against spam, and give the cops a little motivation to join in the party -- after the local police station's got its upgrades, there are plenty of schools that could use some "free" computers too. (Put in a 5-year sunset clause, because there are way more public sector workers who need "free" computers than there are spammers to supply them ;)

Just hit delete

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeez, just hit the 'd' key guys.

Re:Just hit delete

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, spend several hours a day combing through a daily avalanche of several thousand spam emails searching for the legitimate message in there that needs to be responded to. That's a plan.

Fucktard.

Re:Just hit delete

[Spruce Moose]

Dude, you were trolled.

The Next Stage...

[JimBean]

It's my impression that the AOL, Yahoo, and friends are taking advantage of the situation in Congress now. While new legislation may stop the annoying Viagra and Porn SPAM, it might also legitimize corporate-sponsored SPAM. I guess it's not surprising when the corporate lobbyists are sitting around the table with Congressional leaders drafting the legislation. Corporations also fund campaigns: Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.) received $8,000 from AOL, $5,500 from Microsoft, $1,000 from Yahoo, and so on during his last election (2002, opensecrets.org). Just another example of corporate distortion in American politics. Complain hard and loud now or else we lose.

Re:The Next Stage...

[Guppy06]

"Corporations also fund campaigns: Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin (R-La.) received $8,000 from AOL, $5,500 from Microsoft, $1,000 from Yahoo, and so on during his last election (2002, opensecrets.org)"

Except he had no campaign to speak of. I can remember maybe one advertisement in each of two local news papers, but that's about it. If you look closer at his expenditures, all he seems to do with most of his money is funnel it off to the national GOP. I wish I had some of the "excess funds" he seems to be troubled with...

The man has been in office since the 1980's and has continued to get obnoxiously large numbers of votes, even after he changed parties in the mid-90's. At this point I'm afraid the only way he'll leave the House is voluntarily.

"Complain hard and loud now or else we lose."

I tried. And there's still a lien on my car after that stunt. I should have followed Bill Bier's example and not spent anything.

Re:The Next Stage...

[JimBean]

Tauzin had no campaign because he had no real opponent (I think there was an independent candidate). This is not unusual in Congressional races. I don't have 2002 numbers, but in 2000, 99% of incumbents were re-elected, largely because they had built huge coffers that could not be matched by opponents. Given that 95% of candidates who spend the most win, most potential opponents are discouraged from running if they don't have the money. You have to pay to play under the current system, and I think the only real solution will be to institute a "clean" money system similar to those found in Maine and Arizona at the federal level (no easy feat).

The only good thing about this

[mao che minh]

The only good thing about this is hardware or software manufacturers sending you service related updates concerning your product.

Say that you bought a $15,000 Canon ImageRunner copier/printer/fax/network (auto email and faxing from the desktop/panel) machine next month. During a troubleshooting call, your email address is recorded. A year from now, an update on firmware is available which fixes a severe security flaw in the version of Apache it runs for remote management through a web browser, or perhaps even the mail server it uses for automatic emailing of copied documents. Recently introduced bills would usually block a mass email from Canon alerting it's customers, because the email "appears" to be SPAM. But, since the bill in question was passed, Canon can get this important update to you.

Such a scenario could also apply to software. This is the only good thing that I see could ever come from this.

Of course, this bill would also allow Canon to SPAM you with unrelated marketing material concerning their newest ImageRunner. All in all, I don't like this proposed bill.

Re:The only good thing about this

[WCMI92]

"Say that you bought a $15,000 Canon ImageRunner copier/printer/fax/network (auto email and faxing from the desktop/panel) machine next month. During a troubleshooting call, your email address is recorded. A year from now, an update on firmware is available which fixes a severe security flaw in the version of Apache it runs for remote management through a web browser, or perhaps even the mail server it uses for automatic emailing of copied documents. Recently introduced bills would usually block a mass email from Canon alerting it's customers, because the email "appears" to be SPAM. But, since the bill in question was passed, Canon can get this important update to you. "

Would any REASOBABLE person object to such a notification?

I think not.

Define "ISP"

[krray]

I now have multi-homed bandwidth. Dialup users. Network users from various locations. Inter-connections betwee the offices. Handle all my own forward and reverse (classless) DNS, web, and email traffic. UPS' to generators ranging from T1's to 10Mbit uplink wireless.

I have more users than some ISP's I know. I just happen to also EMPLOY them and they use computers supplied by me getting data from servers I own.

I can't sue? PUHLEEZ...

Which "ISP" should I call for my spam then to sue on my behalf? Apple? Earthlink? MCI? and a couple of dozen multi-homed "ISP"'s feeding me. Heck, I even back feed many a employee @ home through some wireless connections on a tower erected on one of the properties.

Can I sue yet? Oh -- I need to call SBC or Verizon I guess.

Isn't public networking fun. Fuck 'em, my rules just changed too. Spam me once and that /24 subnet is gone. Even have some /8 blocked (210. 211. ring a bell?). MY time frame? _Forever_. I unblock (whitelist) IP's upon a PHONE CALL ... and trust me -- the callers get a copy of the SPAM to pass along to their ISP.

+11,000 subnets blocked. ~150 new daily recently. THOUSANDS just blocked. Three phone calls in YEARS so far. Problem ISP's will just go away as their "good" users will leave if they don't clean up their act.

Re:Define "ISP"

[mark_space2001]

Can I sue yet? Oh -- I need to call SBC or Verizon I guess.

I assume that you need a business license that says Internet Service Provider on it, and some reasonable books to back that up. If you meet these very modest criteria, then I think any court would find that you are an ISP and allowed to sue under this (proposed) law.

Hmmmmmm....

No I don't like proposed law this any more than you do, but I bet there's ways around it if it comes to pass.

Seems to me like the DMA is behind this...

[WCMI92]

While I want to see the likes of Ralsky wiped from the face of the Earth for their crimes against Humanity, I DON'T want to see them replaced with today's telespammer types.

Which is what the Tauzin bill would create.

As much as we hate spammers, the DMA hates them worse... Why? They are competition. They want to drive them away so they can take their place.

I pay for my bandwidth. "Marketers" should have to PAY ME for what they use of mine if they want to reach me with their copy. If they want to provide free bandwidth in exchange for receiving their crap, fine. Until they start SUBSIDIZING my internet bill (which is considerable, considering I'm running dual-dialups, because I can't yet get DSL or cable out here in the sticks), they have no RIGHT to intrude.

Unlike TV, which throws ads at me in exchange for "free" programming, or even websites that throw banners and even pop-ups at me in exchange for "free" content, a spammer gives NOTHING AT ALL to me in exchange for their intrusion.

I don't think even "prior business relations" should be an exception, unless there is an EXPLICIT OPT IN. But even then someone should be able to OPT OUT at any time they choose, and the spammer be obligated to stop.

Just like legit mailing lists. I opt in. When I want out, I opt out. Mail stops coming from the list.

Honestly, spam has such a HORRID reputation, does the DMA think they will EVER get it accepted?

But it is manageable

[bluGill]

I don't want to get email from every place I've ever done buisness with, but at least that list of places is manageable. I can unsubscribe from them all if I have to, and if they are a legitimate buisness I even have reasonable confidence that the unsubscribe will remove me from their list, forever.

Compare that to the 80 spam messages I deleted just today! I hope I didn't delete anything that is not-spam but was automaticly tagged as spam. At one time the false positive rate was 5% so it was worth my while to go through them all looking for mistakes. Now the false positive rate is less than 1%, so I delete them all, but the number of false positives hasn't changed, just the number of unwanted messages.

The list of places I've don't buisness with that will email me is much smaller yet though, because most places don't get it. SubWay didn't get my email address last week, the local cafe didn't get it yesterday. Cub didn't get it today. Those are all places I do buisness with fairly often that don't have my phone number or email address. They don't need it.

Re:But it is manageable

[Phroggy]

the number of false positives hasn't changed, just the number of unwanted messages.

Quite so. I do still glance through them, but the legit messages SEEM less and less common in relation to all the junk.

Good thing so many spammers put "Re: " in the subject line, since "Re: hey" from an unrecognized address is obviously spam while "hey" could be legitimate.

The list of places I've don't buisness with that will email me is much smaller yet though, because most places don't get it. SubWay didn't get my email address last week, the local cafe didn't get it yesterday. Cub didn't get it today. Those are all places I do buisness with fairly often that don't have my phone number or email address. They don't need it.

Precisely! In fact, each time I give out my e-mail address, I add a new alias at my domain, so if I do get spam I can find out how they got my address and it's not a big deal to change it. The ONLY time I get actual spam at these addresses are the ones that get posted to web sites, such as the addresses I use for eBay and Bugzilla. As long as I periodically change those addresses (and never re-using the same address, since once it's gotten spam it will always get spam), it's really not that much of a problem.

REAL spam, not advertising from known companies, is what clogs my mailbox.

This is one problem that does not need legislation

[snakecoder]

Technology alone can win this. The first generation was black lists. They have done an excellent job in getting things started but cannot entirely stop spam and as well, can stop legit e-mail. The next generation that will win this battle is white lists coupled with challenge authentication. There are the simple solutions that require only a reply to authorize and there are more complex ones involving the reading of a GIF or JPEG. These solutions put the grunt work on the spammer and can easily be changed when spammers come up with circumvention methods. I predict a bright future with no spam, without any laws. No, really I do.

R ??

[lateralus_1024]

".....Billy Tauzin (R-La.)...."
Nothing to see here, move along, move along sheep.

Re:R ??

[Guppy06]

Until a few years ago, he was "Billy Tauzin (D-La)." Don't even try to blame this one on a particular political party.

Re:R ??

[Anonymous Coward]

Billy Tauzin changed parties in 1995, at about the time that the Republican party underwent a severe ideological shift and turned into the party of doubleplusgood saboteurs it is today. These people think Revelations is about them! They run the country as if they knew the rapture were coming.

I miss the party of Reagan. George Bush Sr. was the first president I ever voted for once I was old enough. But these people running the Republican party now are just crazy.

(Posting anonymously so I can keep my citizenship)

Re:R ??

[Anonymous Coward]

I am glad I am not the only person who feels that way.

extrans

[SHEENmaster]

turn html into plaintext. < become < and stuff like that.

Re:extrans

[marcushnk]

thanks :-P its the first time I'd tried it.. and wasn't sure what it would do but "sounded" right..

I want one simple thing

[JudgeFurious]

I'd like to see someone start offering an email service that flat out doesn't accept anything but what the user says can come in. Basically you start out with a mailbox that blocks everything. Nothing anyone sends you gets through by design. Then you add the addresses you are willing to accept mail from and mail starts being accepted from those Every time you need to start getting email from someone else you have to add their email address before they start sending. Colossal pain in the ass yes but I'd be more than willing to pay for one completely spam free mailbox no matter how much trouble it was. I bet a lot of pods out there would be willing to spend some money for that too.

Re:I want one simple thing

[codefool]

Thunderbird has an option to junk everything from anyone who isn't in your address book. This might be something close to what you want. And if not, get the source and make it do it.

Re:I want one simple thing

[velo_mike]

I'd like to see someone start offering an email service that flat out doesn't accept anything but what the user says can come in.

How do you know in advance everyone who you're interested in hearing from? Sent any resume's out? Used Dice/Monster/etc? Use Ebay or the like for anything? True, throwaway addresses could be used but I'd much prefer a "permanent" address.

After reading about it here, I believe a challenge/response whitelist is the way to go, Active Spam killer [paganini.net/ask] knocked my spam count from 150+ / day to 6 in three months.

Re:I want one simple thing

[JuggleGeek]

I'd like to see someone start offering an email service that flat out doesn't accept anything but what the user says can come in.

Where have you been? There are numerous ways to run whitelist only email accounts. You make it sound like they are impossible to find.

Re:I want one simple thing

[JudgeFurious]

Ice cave just north of the arctic circle for the last seven years.

I know you can do it and in a number of different ways but I think what I should have said was that I would like to see someone start up a mail only service based on this and widely advertised in order to see how many people would be interested in paying for completely spam free email.

Re:I want one simple thing

[JuggleGeek]

I'm not recommending or endorsing any of these, but here are some links. Check these out before signing up - some have been known to send spam themselves. I'm sure there are others available also. Personally, I use mailwasher, a free piece of software that helps sort the junk from the real mail, primarily by using whitelists.

http://www.mymailsafe.co.uk/design/

http://www.mailblocks.com/login.htm

http://spamarrest.com/

http://www.spamstopshere.com/

http://www.mailwasher.net/

Holding the spam beneficiaries responsible

[codefool]

I've heard this mentioned once or twice, but haven't heard of any real law about it. How about just holding the beneficiaries of the spam accountable? That is, someone somewhere wants your money for some reason. If you can't identify who is sending the spam, etc., you sure as heck can identify who's collecting the money. If you were able to fine those that hire the spammers, then demand for generating spam would dry up right quick. Am I missing something?

The DMA's idea of "responsible"

[Animats]

The Direct Marketing Association wants to spam "responsibly". This is what they mean:

• The CRE agrees that marketers must not falsify the sender's domain name or use a non-responsive IP address without implied permission from the recipient or transferred permission from the marketer. (It's OK to fake the sending address with "implied permission?")
• The CRE agrees that marketers must not falsify the subject line to mislead readers about the content of the e-mail message.
• The CRE agrees that all e-mail marketing messages must either include an option for the recipient to unsubscribe from receiving future messages from that sender, list owner, or list manager, or valid and responsive contact information of the sender, list manager, or list owner. (Not only is this opt-out, it's narrow opt-out. It's not clear what's supposed to stop if you opt out.)
• The CRE agrees that marketers must inform the respondent upon online collection of the e-mail address for what marketing purpose the respondent's e-mail address will be used. (Inform either online or via e-mail.)
• The CRE agrees that marketers must not harvest* e-mail addresses with the intent to send bulk unsolicited commercial e-mail without consumers' knowledge or consent. (Note "knowledge or consent", not "knowledge and consent". Something hidden in a terms of service page could be construed as "knowledge")
• The CRE opposes sending bulk unsolicited commercial e-mail to an e-mail address without a prior business or personal relationship**. (But their idea of "prior relationship" includes any marketing contact, however vague. Clicking on a web page that returned a cookie is good enough for the CRE. That's far weaker than California law right now.)
• *Harvest is defined as compiling or stealing e-mail addresses through anonymous collection procedures such as via a Web spider, through chat rooms, or from other publicly displayed areas listing personal or business e-mail addresses.
• **Business or personal relationship is defined as any previous correspondence, transaction activity, customer service activity, personalized marketing message, third party permission use, or proven offline contact.

This is really weak.

"Narrow opt-out" is a major issue. It worries the DMA that opt-out could mean "put me on the global do-not-email" list. They don't want an easy-to-use "opt-out" option that means that no DMA member can ever spam you again. A DMA member could lose a valuable mailing list by letting it be used for some obnoxious mailing that generated many opt-outs.

Re:The DMA's idea of "responsible"

[jefu]

I just want to underscore some of the excellent points made here :

The CRE agrees that marketers must not falsify the sender's domain name or use a non-responsive IP address without implied permission from the recipient or transferred permission from the marketer

Implied permission could come from just using a site with one of those multi-volume "Terms of Use" things with the permission buried in it. Note too that this makes it legal to use a non-responsive IP address (ie faked) under all kinds of conditions.

an option for the recipient to unsubscribe from receiving future messages from that sender, list owner, or list manager, or valid and responsive contact information of the sender, list manager, or list owner. The narrow opt out is particularly fun. Re-read that sentence to see just how sneaky our "elected representatives" can be.

must inform the respondent upon online collection of the e-mail address for what marketing purpose the respondent's e-mail address will be used. (Inform either online or via e-mail.)

That email used to inform you could be part of a spam message itself. In fact that spam message could easily be informing you (after the body of the spam where you'd be unlikely to see it) that the email address is being sold to another spammer who will then use the same trick.

prior business or personal relationship ...
is defined as any previous correspondence, transaction activity, customer service activity, personalized marketing message, third party permission use, or proven offline contact.

This is the loophole from hell. "transaction activity" (cookie?), "third party permission use" -- sounds like if Company A has a business relationship with you that they can sell the right to send spam to you to companies B, and C, and D, and E, and F, and G and .... and AA, and BB, and ... AAA, and BBB .... and that by part three you can shut up one of these companies, but not all of them.

Personally, I think that it should be legal to launch a DOS attack against any site connected with spamming (after all they're launching a DOS attack against others on some level). Period. Keep the congresscritters -- with brains that work like the dumbest of critters - one track minds after money and willing to do any trick to get it -- way, way out of it before they sell our rights to the highest bidder. (Not that Scalia would mind, he thinks that we all have too many rights as it is - though I suspect he doesn't think that he has too many rights.)

Why doesn't this surprise me?

[Cyno]

Because I think I understand a little about how our media system works. See, a few weeks ago CNN was running several front-page headlines on their Technology section covering the topic of internet spam. One of the articles was how AOL was fighting it in Virginia or something by using legislation that was enacted in that state. These types of articles being published on CNN or Fox can easily be the catalyst for action from our representatives, who probably keep well informed about the News.

Its interesting because its not just our executive branch that gets their news from CNN and Fox. Our financial analysts get their information from the same companies. Its funny to think that perhaps the dotcomcrash would have never happened if CNN and Fox didn't make it a financial best seller when the time was right.

In other news...

[dcavanaugh]

Congress has given up on all spam legislation, having deemed it unnecessary in the wake of Pres. George W. Bush's decision to launch "Operation Unsubscribe"

Dictionary attack

[mdfst13]

A global opt-out list with one way encryption is still susceptible to dictionary attacks. No longer will spammers have to dictionary attack ISPs one by one (fixable by silently dropping email with no valid recipient now), they will be able to do so all at once.

A global opt-in list is different. It would be a mapping of email address to allowed email address pattern (presumably a domain). If your domain is on the list, bulk emails that include that email address will go through. Otherwise, they don't. Note: unfortunately, legitimate list servers would have to use this as well. At least now their lists will be able to get through if someone really opted in.

Re:Dictionary attack

[Zeinfeld]

A global opt-out list with one way encryption is still susceptible to dictionary attacks.

Only if the only addresses you add to the list are valid ones. You can also add invalid addresses to the list that are not in use but are being spammed anyway.

But thanks for pointing that out since I had forgotten to mention it in my paper for the legislators.

I don't see a big difference between opt-in and opt-out for the first spam legislation. The majority of spam senders are out and out crooks who do spam to support an ecology of frauds and porno businesses.

Later on we can ram a decent privacy bill down the craw of the DMA. First delegitimize the worst of the worst, then go after the next worst and so on.

ATTENTION: This is a fact

[Anonymous Coward]

If laws are passed which outlaw sending an introductory e-mail to someone, they will be instantly stomped into the ground on Constitutional grounds.

It cannot be made illegal to introduce yourself. Period. To do so would bring the economy to a complete standstill.

Spam is BULK, UNSOLICITED, COMMERCIAL e-mail. All three must be present or IT IS NOT SPAM.

Of course, this whole discussion is hilarious, since the people who gripe about spam "stealing bandwidth" are usually the first to defend warezzzzzzing the ever-living fuck out of everything else.

Just goes to show...

[whereiswaldo]

What kind of a world do we live in when the top priority is stopping spam from hitting our inboxes? What about social issues facing us every day? Cleaner air, water, nutritious food, mental health, affordable living, I could go on and on.

Where are these issues in our government's agenda? Spam will go away on its own - we have the tools to fight it, so legislation is not needed. Laws should not be a first resort.

Re:Just goes to show...

[Lord_Dweomer]

"What kind of a world do we live in when the top priority is stopping spam from hitting our inboxes? What about social issues facing us every day? Cleaner air, water, nutritious food, mental health, affordable living, I could go on and on."

Simply put, not everybody can work on what you consider "social issues". And this isn't meant as an attack, but who are you to determine the priority of those things? And i'd certainly say spam is directly related to mental health, do you have any idea how much stress it causes some people?

Re:Just goes to show...

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply put, not everybody can work on what you consider "social issues". And this isn't meant as an attack, but who are you to determine the priority of those things? And i'd certainly say spam is directly related to mental health, do you have any idea how much stress it causes some people?

Why can't everybody work on "social issues"? Everybody worked on the war effort in America and Homeland Security.

I think these issues are a higher priority than spam because it affects every person in every walk of life and any age. Not just people who use computers with Internet access and who have spam problems and who make the decision not to use the tools available to them. In my mind, that automatically makes it a higher priority. Plus these issues have been around for ages and not people still pretend they don't exist. It's time to face the music and make everyone's _life_ more enjoyable.

Those people who are stressed out over spam can use one of the many tools against spam, or simply change their email address. You can't compare it against life's "real" problems.

Re:with no apparent upper bound

[Technician]

Actualy there is an upper bound. When enough consumers drop TV, Cable, DVD's, Going out to movies, etc, this will be cut back. It's just seeking the balance point between advertising dollar revenue and loss of market share. They are looking for the max profit point.

How many blockbuster movies have you avoided because the start was delayed half an hour to push advertisements. How many times have you arrived late to a move because you knew you wouldn't miss the start. When enough people show up 15 minutes late as the norm and ask if the movie has started yet is when they will start to take notice.

A hundred times?

[mdfst13]

I get about a hundred spams a day. If I did not use filtering, I would probably have to spend around an hour going through them. Why should I have to give up an hour of my day just to use email? This was supposed to be the easy communication method. Why do I have to face the possibility of a false positive causing me to miss legitimate email?

Also, what about the damage to me when someone who would have liked to receive my email accidentally deletes it because he doesn't recognize my new email address? I have actually already lost a contracting job because of this. The delete key is not always a positive.

Further, what about the fact that 2/3 of all traffic is spam. Why do I have to pay my ISP to provide services to deliver email to me that I don't want? How is the delete key going to get back my money?

Re:A hundred times?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use SpamProbe. It is by far the best spam filter and I have tried most of them. My spam reject rate is about 99%, with zero false triggers on good mail.

Spam vs. Cable TV theft

[rkuris]

Since I spammed once before, I'd be exempt from wasting other's resources? I wonder how this would apply to, say, cable television theft: "If you've stolen cable TV in the last three years, you can keep stealing it". Why is spam any different? Next thing you'll hear is that they're licensing spammers to raise revenue to combat the nation debt. - Registered Spammer #7872969879789

tmda.net

[mdfst13]

You can configure tmda.net the way that you want. There are several others that offer the service itself rather than the software.

Note: you can also set it up to allow email from people who respond to a challenge. Then at least you know that a real person had to take the time to send you that email.

The links were borken...

[Goonie]

I'm a subscriber, so I saw the story early, and the links in the posted story were borked.

I (along with probably many others) emailed the on-line editor about this, and when the story appeared the links had been removed...

Re:The links were borken...

[frankie]

Drat. Yet another example of /. being RFC and W3C non-compliant. I correctly escaped the reserved characters in the search string of the URLs:

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl ?sid=03%2F04%2F26%2F1842215

And /. couldn't handle it.

Easily abused

[mdfst13]

It is easy to see who is collecting the money. It is hard to see who is sending the spam. Under a system where one could get fined for benefiting from spam, there would be an incentive for the competition to hire spammers to get a company fined. This possibility should be kept in mind, so that any prosecution must demonstrate that some of the money eventually goes to spammers.

Still, there should be some enabling legislation allowing lawsuits against companies selling this stuff. Mainly to allow discovery to follow the money to whomever is sending the spam. If we could dry up the market of people paying for spam, the spammers would disappear.

Re:Easily abused

[codefool]

Still, there should be some enabling legislation allowing lawsuits ...

While I'm for this (mostly), I would still like to see good penal law against spammers. It's a very different thing when you can get law enforcement to be the heavy. And I think that most anyone pays more attention to a law person at their door than a court server.

Re:Easily abused

[mdfst13]

Jail spammers (those actually sending the emails).

What we were talking about was the companies who are providing product (who may or may not actually know about the spam). I would like some kind of responsibility for companies that benefit indirectly from spam. In other words, if Pfizer sells Viagra to someone who then uses spam to sell it, I would like Pfizer to be responsible for paying back the profit they made as an indirect result of spam. If it is shown that they knew that they were selling to someone who spammed, then I would like them to be fined. If they sent the spam, then jail terms and such could apply.

The problem now is that we can't sue the company selling the stuff without proof that they are actively involved with the spam. It would be much easier to track down the spammers if we could tell the seller that they have to show us who profits from that sale. Obviously, one of the people profiting is sending the spam (otherwise, why is it being sent?).

Re:Easily abused

[codefool]

I wouldn't suggest holding the manufacturer of the product responsible, unless they were the ones instigating the spam.

I really don't think its that complicated. You get a piece of spam, and say you actually do what it says. Where does your money go? The recipient of that money is the direct beneficiary of the spam. That's a direct link from your credit card to someone's pocket. You can find that out since, I would assume, the recipent would want their money. It would then be in their best interstest to give up the spammer to reduce their penalties.

International concerns are a problem, however, as they always are.

Re:Easily abused

[mdfst13]

Yes, but that assumes that they know about the spam. Without a law making them liable (i.e. now), that will generally be true. However, with a law making them liable, then it is to their competitors' advantage to spam in their name. That gets them fined. They can't give up the spammer, because they have nothing to do with it. Thus, they get hit worse for doing nothing than would someone who was actively involved in the spam.

What I am saying is that if someone sells a product with the knowledge that it is going to be sold through spam, they should be liable. I would be very surprised if Pfizer had no idea who was selling their product through spam. As such, they are an accessory and should be punished as one. Further, if companies find out that they can be punished for their resellers using spam, they will stop supporting it.

Re:Easily abused

[codefool]

Good points all. However, I wouldn't thik a fine would be an 'automatic' thing. An investigation would have to ensue. And if no link could be shown between the company and a spammer, then its better to err on the side of justice.

PcMag.com Article

[elid]

There was an opinion piece at PcMag.com written about a week ago regarding the CANSPAM bill. Link here

Turnabout is fair play

[Anonymous Coward]

It would allow spam from any company you've done business with in the past 3 years

So, if I have a business, and I receive spam that clearly states that I have opted in, that would indicate that they had agreed to do business with me. That would make it legal for me to spam them. In fact I could have the entire readership of a website capable of generating the Slashdot Effect send them my reviews of free software. For ease of use, these reviews are always accompanied by full source, and binaries for all popular open source operating systems. I only review really big packages.

A non-government solution.

[$criptah]

Our beloved government will never solve a problem with spam! Hell, it can't find Bin Laden, do you really think that Uncle Sam will be able to find thousands of people who stand behind unsolicited e-mails? Give me a break! Spam is profitable (otherwise who would do it?), but what about anti-spam? If there are so many people who hate spam then I am sure that they can become potenial customers of a business which can provide a spam-free email accounts. Because this type of business will depend on customer loyalty chances are that such a solution will be far more beneficial rather than a bunch of laws that we won't be able to enforce. If anybody is interested in this sort of idea, reply to me: I am unemployed and desperate for money :)

Make Her Scream "Oh God, Oh God, Oh God"

[Anonymous Coward]

Increase your penis size 3000% and have your woman find religion!! Cowboy Neal's Herbal Viagra Money back guarenteed if she's not satisfied.

Companies you do business with won't spam

[Thagg]

You see, everybody hates spam, and 99% of the people who get spam from a company causes them to hate that company. No business owner in their right mind would abuse the trust and good will of their current customers. Any business that started spamming its customers would soon go out of business -- and that's a good thing!

thad

I wrote my senator

[fname]

This is what I wrote:

This is in regards to the so-called anti-SPAM bill being written by Billy Tauzin, here.

I believe that this is a terrible bill that will only lead to increase in the amount of unsolicited commercial email received by internet users. The bill will legitimaze the mass sending of unsolicted commercial email, and puts the burden on the consumer to "opt-out" of receiving these unwanted messages from hundreds or thousands of different organizations. For example, I could be required to opt-out of receiving these emails from dozens of subsidiaries. Further, this weak federal legislation will pre-empt state laws, and prevent consumers from seeking compensation against unsavory spammers.

I believe that strong anti-spam legislation should be enacted, but the bill being written by Rep. Tauzin will only make the problem of unsolicited commercial email worse.

Sometimes, just let em know...

[Ian Peon]

I've subscribed to NetFlix for years now. I love the service.

A few months back, I started receiving spam advertising for Netflix. Checked the origin, and there was an "opt-in advertising agency" sending the e-mails. So, I sent a polite letter to NetFlix telling them how much I loved their service, and how much I HATED spam and how this particular advertiser was behaving. I also pointed out that I NEVER do business with anyone who advertises with spam.

Didn't get a response, but haven't gotten any more Netflix spams from anyone.

free speech doesn't mean right to impose costs...

[dh003i]

Whether it be advertisers or political groups, free speach does NOT MEAN the right to impose the costs of YOUR speach on ME. No-one has the inherit right to impose their cost of speech on me. Thus, unless these religious fucks and these advertising fucks send me a check compensating for my LOST TIME, LOST COMPUTER RESOURCES, and (in the case of faxes) LOST INK and PAPER, they are STEALING FROM ME.

None of this is protected speech. Since when does free speech mean you get to impose a multi-million dollar cost on ISPs (thus, their customers) so that you can say what you want to say?

You want to send me ads -- fine, so long as I OPT IN. OPT IN has to be the mandatory, because all OPT OUT options are FRAUDS. OPT OUT means the spammers get to verify that they have a valid e-mail address, and they'll continue spamming you.

You want to speak out about your political or religious beliefs? FINE -- post it on a newsgroup or website. Don't e-mail me with your crap.

Laws won't stop the meat-like substance

[hipster_doofus]

I don't really think that anyone here believes that a law of any type will effectively stop spam. Spam is just like any other "problem" that the government has with the Internet: there is no effective way for them to legislate it because the Internet is a worldwide tool.

I'll offer Internet gambling as a case-in-point. Bills have been floating around Congress now for several years - at least since the late 90s - that seek to eradicate Internet gambling. None of them have passed to this point and none of them will get the job done because they can't effectively stop the money flow out of the US. Credit card companies have basically stopped dealing with Internet gambling transactions and even PayPal stopped providing money transfers, yet there are more ways to deposit today than there were 5 years ago! If Congress tries to cut off the money in some way, the casinos will find a way around it. After all, they aren't governed by our laws.

We can get into the issue of whether or not transactions that are processed by a server offshore - yet are originated in the US - are governed by US law another time.

The only way to stop spam is to make a fundamental change to the way we handle email across the Internet. As much as filters have helped in the spam battle, they clearly aren't a viable answer. A good solution to this problem will be a change that will enable me to avoid getting spam on a new Hotmail account that I've never even used. I can also only deal with a blacklist/whitelist concept until the blacklist gets to a certain length - then it becomes hard to manage.

</rant>

Whew! I feel better. Time for a b33r.

Idiots

[io333]

You naysayers, skeptics, nerds, virgins, stupid geeks all of you.

Have any of you ever actually *tried* any of the offers you get in your inbox?

I'm not as stupid as all of you. I have taken advantage of every fantastic offer. My penis is now HUGE I can no longer leave my chair on account of my stupendous GIRTH and solid mass. A female friend came over the other day and saw my TREMENDOUS BULGE and ran away screaming in shock!

Ha Ha HA! Soon my penis will be so ENLARGED that I will rule the world !

Re:Idiots

[Lord_Dweomer]

" You naysayers, skeptics, nerds, virgins, stupid geeks all of you. Have any of you ever actually *tried* any of the offers you get in your inbox? I'm not as stupid as all of you. I have taken advantage of every fantastic offer. My penis is now HUGE I can no longer leave my chair on account of my stupendous GIRTH and solid mass. A female friend came over the other day and saw my TREMENDOUS BULGE and ran away screaming in shock! "

Stop trying to manipulate us Alan Ralsky

Re:Idiots

[Anonymous Coward]

TALK ABOUT PENIS ENLARGEMENT

Operation Unsubscribe is hilarious:

http://www.trailervision.com/trailer.php?id=141

How about this...

[ShadowDrake]

Seeing all those "Here's his home address, send him a pizza or letter bomb..." posts gives me an idea:

Just require that all commercial mail have a *valid* street address included. Post-office box is unacceptable.

Tick off your customers and watch as they come down for some personal satisfaction.

What I'm wondering is

[Lord_Dweomer]

is how they define "prior business relationship" at the ISP level. Because in the vast majority of cases the mail goes through the ISP and then to the user. I sure hope this doesn't affect the ISPs ability to sue the spammers, as neglible an action as it might be.

At least when the ISPs sue it gets the media's attention and in turn hopefully has the same affect as the RIAA suing for eleventybilliongazillion dollars, which is that it scares the piss out of many people who do it and they stop from fear. (well, alright, we all know how well THAT has worked...)

Forget legislation

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a problem that can be solved through technology. Such problems should not be legislated. It wastes our tax dollars while a bunch of overpaid white christians who want little more than to buy a mansion and send their kids to ivy league schools.

Do something about it:

http://www.cloudmark.com
http://www.spamstopshe re.com
http://au.spamassassin.org

and so on and so on. I assure you, there's no shortage of solutions on the market.

Why use laws...

[Anonymous Coward]

... when you just can harass the spammers over the phone?

+49 651 1 46 09 52

Should be a cheap pleasure, especially if you already live in Germany...

Re:Why use laws...

[Anonymous Coward]

As I do live in Germany, and DO get a lot of Spam, be so good to tell me who I would reach there....

heh heh

Prior business relationship loophole

[Anonymous Coward]

That's going to be a problem. It's not that you will get spam from these places related to your business with them, but that they will become spam gateways charging others for the legal right to spam you. "legal" meaning you wont have the right to do anything about it. I'm already seeing this with snail mail spam from my bank and credit card companies that has no relationship with their primary business.

Does your state have. . .

[alizard]

Computerized touchscreen voting machines from ES&S?

If it does, you should be able to figure out where his votes are coming from and more to the point, who his loyal constituents really are.

Re:Does your state have. . .

[Guppy06]

No, the state standardized on old-fashioned mechanical voting machines a few decades ago and haven't had a problem since.

And why should the state pay a private institution to do all this vote analysis when the state seems to do it just fine by themselves.

why not....

[Anonymous Coward]

...make it illegal for a company called acme corp. to send email under something like sxcsf@hotmail.com and only allow them to send under something like offer@acmecorporation.com.

If on top of that you make the seller of the product responsible if the 'marketeer' uses these kind of addresses or their 'company' is an untraceable P.O. box.

Then you should be able to stop most spam, even if it's an offshore company, or looks like it. Most of the time the company on who's behalf spammers are acting are american or american run.

Billy Tauzin

[thesolo]

Let's not forget that Billy Tauzin was one of the two Congressmen involved in the Tauzin-Dingell bill, which was previously covered on Slashdot. If you recall, this was the bill that would make it legal for the Baby Bells to offer DSL over their own lines, but not open their lines to other providers, such as Covad.

Tauzin is unfortunately pretty much in the pocket of telecom and marketing companies. If you don't agree with this seemingly pro-spam legislation, call your congressional representatives today!

Spam is good for the economy?

[OldHawk777]

GOD BLESS THE USA (wave the red, white, and blue flag, no dummy not the French flag)! [The us/me congress/senate won't.]

US Citizens must realize that personal information, time, and home based resources belongs in the public domain which exist to protect and support american Business in driving the economy to success for us/me. The FACT is it (including Spam) works best this way, and why change things when they work just fine for us.
USA economic policy (by the us/me folks) has returned to the sensible "Trickle Down" (TD) economics. This TD theory of economics worked in the past and should be expanded to protect american Business, the assets of the Rich, and jobs for the rest.
TD economics supported by the congress/senate provides tax relief that may trickle into jobs for some folks as more private country clubs are built, luxury cars/things/gadgets purchased, and other assets of the Wealthy are enhanced for their posterity.
TD economics provides laws that protect Business interest and promotes Business schemes that help get the money out of the tight fisted hands of the masses and back into the Business economy for all us. We do not need any stinking commie laws that may negatively influence economic expansion for us, and provide protection for the criminal under-classes.

Also, REMEMBER, a poorly educated population supports the economy with lower paid workers, which means less jobs will be exported overseas to lower paid workers, this is how to help keep american jobs here at home. We can always import (with green cards) any additional scientist, engineers, doctors, and other workers that have a good expensive education (then export via INS when no longer needed).

OldHawk777

Reality is a self-induced hallucination.

Has anyone actually READ this bill?

[Folic_Acid]

I have, and it's not nearly as bad as you think. The Post got a lot of stuff wrong (not surprising), not the least of which was their report of the state law preemption. Instead of preempting ALL state law, the bill only preempts state laws that impose labeling and inclusion requirements. States can still pass (or keep) state laws dealing with fraud, subject lines, etc.

When spam is outlawed...

[gone.fishing]

When spam it outlawed, only outlaws will have spam.

Sounds like cruel and unusual punnishment to me therefore unconstitutional in the U.S.

Add IL to the list of states considering spam laws

[netringer]

In today's news is the story that new Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich is considering signing anti-spam legislation for Illinois

The Chicago Tribune story [Free registration required]

SPRINGFIELD -- On-line marketers would be required to clearly label unsolicited "spam" e-mail sent to Illinois residents as advertising or pornography under a measure passed by the Illinois Senate Tuesday and sent to Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Designed to reduce the flood of unwanted e-mail, the bill also would penalize businesses that sell customers' e-mail addresses after they have requested removal from mailing lists. It would require a spammer to set-up a toll-free telephone number or valid reply address that consumers can call or write to demand removal from the company's solicitation lists.

There's an online poll on that Chicago Tribune page on whether the anti-spam bill should be signed.
Vote!...in the Chicago tradition - Vote early and often ... /. em!

Just one more from Tauzin...and...Ralsky Time yet?

[siskbc]

Remember, this the guy is the one who threatened to block the federal "Do not call" list poroposal. That time, he backed off when he realized he was going to get crucified because the FCC let him get attacked by the media. This time, he may have his shit in order. The most disturbing thing is that he's on the commerce committee. One more example of the fox guarding the henhouse, eh?

Hey, anyone think it's time to give this Tauzin fucker the Ralsky treatment? See if THAT changes his tune.

DIY

[Anonymous Coward]

The government is essentially an anti-Midas; anything they tough turns to shit. The solution is to take your own measures to solve the problem.

For example, you can deal with telemarketers by using an answering machine and/or caller ID and not answering until you are sure that the caller is someone you want to talk to. Moreover, some people begin their answering machine message with the three tones you get when you call an invalid phone number. This tricks the telemarketers' computers into thinking your number is invalid and removing it from their lists.

Technological solutions can be applied to spam as well. It would be useful to have a browser that incorporated its own programming language, just as emacs has its own version of LISP, to allow programming of sophisticated filters, e.g. do HTML character entity translations, remove HTML tags, blanks, and nonalphabetic characters, coerce to lowercase, and scan for "asseenontv" or "viagra". Email identified as spam can be discarded or redirected to random companies, as deemed appropriate.

Moreover, those truly determined to do so will eventually uncover the spammers' addresses so people can Ralsky the bastards.

Spammer alert!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tracked down a MAJOR spammer:

Malda, Robert

2001 Woodlark Dr

PARK, MI 49424

616-399-3125

Let's go medieval on his ass!

Opt in (yeah right)

[Grizzlysmit]

Most of the spam I get say's I opted in, but I've never heard of them, and certainly never opted in. That's going to be a big problem with such a law, these guys couldn't lie straight in bed, they'll claim fictitious bussiness relationships, and opt in's till the cows come home, but all it'll be is lie's.

Assuming you opted in somewhere...

[Kjella]

If it comes from a legitimate company, they'll offer an opt-out link that will actually works, because they don't want to piss off potential customers and they know how much people hate spam.

At least the way the law here (Norway), you must have opt'ed in at some point. But even if I recieve something that might have been legitimate because it said so on the EULA page 23 section 5 paragraph $42, I consider it SPAM. And I never *ever* respond to SPAM.

Responding to SPAM means:
a) The e-mail address exists
b) It's not used by a machine, but read by people
c) You're stupid enough to not immidiately recognize it as SPAM and delete it before ever reading it
d) You bothered to read the mail to find the unsubscribe link, even after realizing it was SPAM.
e) You're gullible enough to go to unsubscribe links, which usually sign you up for more SPAM beucause of a)-d)

That being said, I've had *one* SPAM from a legitimate company (actually a theater). After quoting them the anti-spam law, I never heard from them since.

Kjella

Re:Assuming you opted in somewhere...

[Phroggy]

But even if I recieve something that might have been legitimate because it said so on the EULA page 23 section 5 paragraph $42, I consider it SPAM.

If I gave them my e-mail address, I figure I've basically given them permission to send me e-mail at that address.

If they bought my e-mail address from another company, crawled the web to find a bunch of e-mail addresses and came across mine, or guessed my e-mail address at random, they have no right to contact me. That is spam.

On occasion, dealing with the former has been mildly annoying at times. However, they ALWAYS have an opt-out link that WORKS and doesn't sign me up for spam*. I have NEVER had a major problem with this. If I had a problem, I'd know exactly who to complain to, since I'd know exactly who the company is.

The latter is what takes up my time and resources.

* I generally use a different e-mail address with each company, so if I start getting spam at the address I gave a particular company, I'll know that company sold my address. This has NEVER happened. The only spam I've gotten at these addresses are the ones that made it onto the web, such as the address I used for eBay.

Just mandate the adv: header in the email....

[gte910h]

And every ISP in the country will offer "NO advertisement email" within 2 weeks.

Mr. Tauzin should find other work

[symbolic]

As I recall, Mr. Tauzin was a vocal opponent of legislation that would have identified and prohibited the obvious conflict of interest between accounting firms that provided both auditing and consulting services. Mr. Tauzin was also the recipient of some fairly significant contributions from none other than Arthur Anderson/Anderson Consulting, which turned out to be the cornerstone of one of the biggest breaches of public trust in this nation's history. If he's sponsoring legislation in favor of any commercial entity, the very next question on my list would be, "who is contributing to his campaign, and how much?"

No e-mail

[Dr_Ish]

So, in response to this /. story, I thought that, as a resident of Louisiana, I would try and e-mail Billy Tauzin on why his proposed bill is silly. After doing some digging, I could not find an e-mail address, other than the usual web form [i.e. auto-ignore]. However, I did find a phone number for his office in Houma, Louisiana (1-800-352-2890). When I called there, Donya, who answered the phone informed me that Mr. Tauzin doesn't have a regular e-mail address. Of course, this is probably not entirely true. Does anybody have an e-mail address for Tauzin? I'd like to send him a few 'get rich quick with Nigerian printer cartridge enlargements' offers I keep getting. Alterantively, perhaps a few /. folks might like to call up Donya and let them know how they feel. After all, what could be better than a man without an e-mail address proposing putatively anti-spam legislation!

Or, you could have your spam and eat it too

[Anonymous Coward]

IBM Research announces Super Spamatoresistive (SSR) disk technology ... the picture alone here is worth the click.

Let them feel our pain

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a very simple solution to SPAM:

Publish every government / politician email address you know of, in every place you can, so they recieve as much SPAM as we do.

Once they feel our pain, they'll respond.

Who hasn't had a Coke(tm) in three years?

[bhsx]

Coca-Cola has a lot of affiliates. They don't do it, because the timing isn't there yet, but if "legitimate" commercial e-mail gets legislative protection of this type you can expect all of those affiliates to start bombarding you regularly. Maybe not Coca-Cola, but what about the USPS, which is now a psuedo-private corporation? Miller Bottling Company? Kraft? ABC, NBC, Disney, or worse... FOX? Now i'm creeping myself out.

why was this posted at 10:30 at night?

[asscroft]

this is important, and I almost missed it.

SPAM PACs in D.C. then?

[MMHere]

Sounds like there's a Spam PAC throwing money around D.C.? Except for those who send it, Spam seems universally reviled by recipients.

Why would this R-LA guy sponsor said bill when it doesn't address core concerns: people don't generally want UCE unless maybe they've opted IN for some source with which they maintain a relationship.

Is this another case of a congress critter being bought off, or is he simply clueless -- or both?

Political spam will be exempt anyway

[waferbuster]

It's in the nature of politicians to sell themselves to the public in hopes of getting reelected. In order to sell themselves, they spend truly obscene amounts of money to ensure full media coverage.

You don't really think they are going to sign a law which prevents them from bombarding people with their public views *with little to no cost*?

Of course political spam will be exempt... just like the phone solicitation at dinnertime around election time. Even if you are on an opt-out list, you'll still hear from every tom/jane/harry who is running for dogcatcher/president/mayor.

It's purely a matter of enlightened self interest!

Let me guess...

[Anonymous Coward]

You paid them $205 and they gave you five rolls of quarters and some super glue? ... and ran away screaming in shock!
Sure it wasn't screaming with laughter?

Even better aim some laws at the porn bot spammers

[galah.net]

Report just to hand, a guy running a vBulletin site had 1100 bots online last night. We have been battling these things the last few days as well. Surely in the US there must be some legal remedy for this. It takes considerable time adding links to your favorites and then deleting the posts ;)

Spam lovers

[Anonymous Coward]

Billy Tauzin (R-La.). sounds like a spam lover, so why not, once a week forward it to him and choke their mail system right up. Send smut, porno, pyramid schemes and all. Don't forget commercial spam.

As far as I am concerned, they should post a bill that fines spammers $1000 per message plus expenses. This will allow the lawyers to deal with them. Think, at the amount of spam being sent, at $1000 per pop would likely pay off the nation debt is less than 30 days if only 5% of the fines could be collected. (And that is just US sourced spam).

Governments should look at spam as a potential revinue source, like speeding on the freeway.

Politician needs to learn what the DMA is about

[herbierobinson]

So Rep Tauzin is promoting the DMA and spam. http://catalogrequest.com/ is still there.

Some mailing addresses for Rep Tauzin:

2183 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Federal Building
Room 107
423 Lafayette Street
Houma, Louisiana 70360

8201 West Judge Perez Drive
Chalmette, Louisiana 70043

210 East Main Street
New Iberia, Louisiana 70560

828 South Irma Blvd.
Room 212-A
Gonzales, Louisiana 70737