Slashdot Mirror
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."
"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
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.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
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.
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 :(
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.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
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.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Prior to that law I was getting zero junk faxes, and now I'm getting an average of 5 a week.
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?
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.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
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.
/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.
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
+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.
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?
Corporatism != Free Market
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Five Dolla Moddy-Moddy?
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.
The Chicago Tribune story [Free registration required] 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
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