Spam, Milord

Your daily dose of spam... rjwoodhead writes "Hansard, the official journal of the UK parliament, reports on a recent discussion of spam in the House of Lords which not only mentions Monty Python, but reads like one of their skits." A New York spammer has been arrested. One account isn't scientifically representative, but it's a grim picture when you're showing a spam-doubling every 42 days. And an article in New Scientist suggests solving a puzzle, which is essentially the same idea as hash cash.

Comments

These spam laws are a waste of time

[w.p.richardson]

So one spammer gets arrested. So what? It's just red meat for the rabid anti-spammers, but nothing will come of it. You know, it's not legal to spam faxes either, but guess what... my office fax is loaded with crap every day!

Why waste time with legislation? A more permanent solution would focus on the technical - e.g., changing the protocol to forbid spam, etc.

Re:These spam laws are a waste of time

[bugnuts]

Why waste time with legislation? A more permanent solution would focus on the technical - e.g., changing the protocol to forbid
spam, etc.

You get very few unsolicited faxes a day. Almost certainly, you have or had a business relationship with the fax-spammers, which means it's not truly unsolicited. You should fax them back (on the required number listed on the fax) and tell them to stop. No number listed? That's illegal, too!

Without the legislation, you and others would be receiving literally TONS of fax spam a month (yes, you can measure the mass when using faxes :). The problem is the same with email spam: the recipient bears the cost of receipt. If we consider the anti-fax-spam law to be a good one, it should simply be extended to the email age due to the close similarities. Spammers have been successfully sued based on the fax laws.

The anti-fax-spam laws are absolutely NOT a waste of time. You don't know what you're talking about.

Re:Puzzles = Waste of CPU cycles?

[mblase]

Instead of doing some random puzzle, why not kill two birds with one stone and have machines that want to send email or have access to other services do a small work unit for folding@home or something.

The idea is to authorize the querying computer by giving them a problem to solve for which the answer is already known. Something like Folding@home involves puzzles for which the answers aren't yet known, so if the querying computer avoided solving it and just sent back a garbage solution the host machine wouldn't know the difference.

Mod Parent of Parent UP

[(54)T-Dub]

Oh right, and the war on drugs has been such a success?

Besides the parent has a good point. The answer is not through legislation. What is to stop people from hosting their spam sites off shores where they are protected from the laws. Kind of like the 809 Phone Call Scam.

Re:Techincal Lords...

[pldms]

I am kinda left with images of 70+ year old men sitting looking baffled in a half empty house of commons, prodding their neighbours and discussing under hushed voices what tinned meat has to do with these darn fangled computer contraptions.

Aside from the fact that they wouldn't be looking at a half empty house of commons (they sit in the house of lords) you've pretty much got it.

The Lords, though often befuddled and (let's be honest) asleep, do have some very bright people and have prevented some of the worst excesses of the commons throughout the years.