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Inappropriate Spam Reaching Children?
peeweejd writes "Wired has an article stating that four out of five children receive inappropriate spam e-mail touting get-rich-quick schemes, and almost half receive spam linking to pornographic materials. Should spammers be held responsible for the spams they send out? Can someone sue a spammer for offering to sell 'adult only' items/services to children?" There are more details from survey originator Symantec's press release - and yes, Symantec does sell mail filtering software.
Should spammers be held responsible for the spams they send out?
Yes.
From the underlying study:
The survey, conducted online for Symantec by Applied Research, a
full service market research firm, interviewed 1,000 youths
between the ages of seven and 18.
I wish they disclosed the breakdown of ages. There is a vast
difference in seventeen year old reading e-mail without their
parents and seven year olds.
I would like to know how many of the children in this study were
12 or under.
When asked how often they check emails, 72 percent of the
respondents said a few times a week to a few times a day. When
asked how important it is to always have mom or dad check emails
with them, nearly one in three said it is not important, 21
percent said they don't care and 16 percent said they don't want
their parents to check their emails with them. Furthermore, when
asked whether they get parents' permission before giving out
their personal email addresses to friends or even people and Web
sites with which they are not familiar, 46 percent of the youths
responded that they do not..
Again, this is highly dependant on the ages of the children.
Younger children would be more likely to ask their parents to
help them get their e-mail, while teenagers would be far more
likely to want their parents to just leave them alone.
It's difficult to infer anything meaningful from these numbers.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
What is their to think about? Yes. If you are offering porn to my (or anyone's) children, you should held liable by either your or my state law.
What's worse is those HTML emails that have porn already in them, with misleading subjects. So the even the kids that know to delete them but use the preview pane in Outlook will see it.
Should be illegal.
at least with email you can specify who she can receive email from and block everybody else. if you gave her a cell phone whats to stop some creep from calling her and talking nasty and/or lurring her out someplace.
if your kids are walking by themselve's down the strip in vegas chances are they might catch a glimpse at one of the millions of bunny ranch flyers flappin in the wind and just all over the place. the internet is a similar place.. 18 and over seriously!
bite my glorious golden ass.
"Inappropriate spam"? Ehm... is there any other kind of spam?
that's like saying that Girls Gone Wild is offering anyone watching TV at night, despite age, and should be punished. Why don't the parents add a spam blocker? Better yet, why are the rents not putting some sort of parental controls on the internet connection? Or hey, maybe the kids are getting that spam cuz they keep filling in those "Get free porn in your mailbox" things. I hate spam and wished it would die, but people need to take responsibility for their own actions
YOU SUCK BALLS!
I receive some really raw spam, and not just words but pictures. If I were a parent, I'd be in favor of flaying alive anyone sending this kind of stuff to my kid. I can't imagine how parents cope these days.
I someone was caught trying to sell children a dildo in the street that person would probably serve jail time for that. Cant see how offering dildos to kids through the internet is different.
Sindri Traustason.
Most pornographic e-mails that I get contain hardcore graphic images inline, that load just by clicking on the message.
With titles like "re: what's up?" and stuff, I *have* to open them because it might be someone I sent a message to a while back...
In the U.S. it is illegal to show pornography to minors...so you'd definately have a case.
I don't think you've seen a lot of the porn out there.
"Mommy, what's that lady doing to that horsie?"
We aren't talking about playboy and cheesecake here. Some of it is wildly inappropriate stuff.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Don't you have to be over 18, or have permission from a parent/legal guardian to purchase an Internet account? Shouldn't it therefore be the account-holders responsibility what a minor sees using their account?
Spam has long been out of control. Where I work currently, spam consists of about 81% of all incoming email. This is at a company receiving over 1 million emails a day.
There are laws existing to protect children from exposure to 'adult' materials. These permit their parents to control, to some extent, the exposure of such material to their children.
Spam is getting away with breaking these laws. I can't see any parent, no matter how open minded, wanting their child to see breast enlargement, penis enlargement and watch this teen fuck barnyard animal emails.
When they see this stuff, they start to form opinions. Without guidance, these opinions can be off base by a large margin. Seeing the enlargement ads, children could well get the idea that they need to have 44DD breasts or 14" penises (penii?) in order to 'fit in.'
Exposing kids to the hard core images in these emails surely must be against some laws and if not, they should be expanded to cover it.
Also, Spam email should be part of the telemarketing crack down. There should be an opt-out email list to keep from getting unsolicited email.
These adjustments to law would go a long way to reducing wasted bandwidth on the net, as well as improving the moral growth of our nation's children. Sheesh, I sound like Jerry Falwell, but I'm far from it.
"Daddy, what's a penis enlargement?" when he's 6...
What about this one, "Daddy, why do girls suck on guys dicks?"
Spammers are just the scum of the earth, along with the RIAA, MPAA, Congress, Senate, MS, etc.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Agreed. I think 14 is a little old to be having a cow over receiving porno spam. I know it's a fiery debate over what's moral, but I think that at 14 if the individual isn't mature enough to not become over offended or disgusted or just simply delete the mail and forget about it he or she is sorta weak. And for the 14+ like 15 through 17.. gimme a damn break if they are stupid enough to use those silly emails as good porn resources they are stupid. i think they know where the good stuff can be found by now.
Apply this test to the spam: If someone sent that same image to a child via the post office, could they be prosecuted under federal statutes? In many cases, the answer to the question is "yes". Why, then, is spam treated any differently from regular mail?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Parents need to educate their children about the dangers of spam and how they can avoid being exposed to offensive content or becoming innocent victims of online fraud
...
...
and when Mom and Dad are done teaching how offensive, disgusting and dangerous spam can be, little Johnny will hurry to the couch to catch Reservoir Dogs. Then when the show is over, he'll go play a little Grand Theft Auto
Come on, kids today know more about sex and violence than their parents when *they* were kids. I'm thirty-ish and I thought Terminator was pretty cool and clean when it came out. My parents still think it's a gross movie. And today's kid know better about trust on the internet than their parents too, and I doubt they're taken by plain-text spam that easily.
Different generations, different tolerance levels
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Is MicroSoft evil?
Is the sky blue?
Are taxes too high?
Should we eat and drink and be merry? I mean, come on, guys, the answer is patently obvious. -1 on the article for redundancy.
This sig no verb.
don't get me wrong, sexual hypocrisy is a problem in the world, especially in the us.
but everyone can support a legal measure that insists on a hands-off attitude towards children and sexual overtures from adults... from sexual conservatives like john ashcroft, who has to cover up naked breasts on statues behind him on stage (snicker), to righteous liberal sex-advice columnists, like dan savage. nobody likes pedophilia, period. no slippery slope here folks.
now, since spammers spew indiscriminantly, they have no way of knowing if the account they are sending to is owned by a child. meanwhile, responsible email mass-mailers have means of knowing who their audience is and can easily avoid this pitfall.
result? a legal weapon against spam everyone can get behind. it can be mercilessly enforced, with moral and righteous indignation. no grey areas, no controversy. pedophilia is evil, period. jail time anyone?
this is an excellent development. bravo symantec.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Blocking the dirty spam is along the same lines as why video stores put the porn in a back room and why gas stations keep the porno mags behind the counter. Its inappropriate material that has laws concerning the age of the person who views it, and therefore MUST be treated differently.
Since the stores don't know the age of their potential customers, they have to keep those adult things seperated. Same goes for spam.
If I went to the post office and got 10,000 post card stamps and then printed a picture of some boobs on there, and mailed the cards out to 10k random people, I bet I would get my ass sued by at least 100 of them. Why can't the same thing happen to spammers?
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
The problem being there is no way to tell how old the person who checks the email address is. An email address is just an alias, the person who checks that box could be 8 or 80, there is no way to tell. Unless there is some way to tell how old the person who checks the mailbox is, there is no way to hold people responsible for sending emails inappropriate for children to that mailbox. You can send porn to a physical mailbox, and the person who gets the mail may be a minor, but you can't be held responsible for that minor seeing "inappropriate" material.
They should e charged for sending spam (where applicable) but trying to prosecute them because they are sending mail to an emailbox where a child has access is very slippery, because there is no way to know who the box belongs to.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
if there were ever an angle that would justify the legal wrangling that would be required to pass a law that would ban spam, (and the Internet anonymity that spam relies on), this would be it.
"won't somebody please think of the children" pulls any American's hearstrings a lot louder than "right to privacy" or "right to free speech" or "right to make lots of money". (but not necessarily "right to bribe congressmen").
The spam problem, at it's root, is born from Internet anonymity. Internet anonymity is a powerful rights issue. As long as Internet anonymity exists, spam will exist, whether it's banned or not.
This is a very sticky issue - and it became a sticky issue when the Internet was changed from a network of academic and scientific interests to a commercial enterprise. It was not a well-thought-out plan. This was unforseen fallout.
Clearly, there have been huge benefits to humanity at large from this transition. But these are some very thorny issues to work out. In the end, it just doesn't make sense to combine the Information Superhighway that will educate and enlighten with the freewheeling Las Vegas style business environment it's become. How do we reconcile it?
It's not as simple as quoting Zappa; "Protecting the children is a good way to raise a generation of kids that can't stick up for themselves."
I have young kids, and I do not let them surf the internet or read email unsupervised for this very reason. And probably won't until they're 16. It becomes a VERY time-consuming task for a well-meaning parent. I'm certainly not afraid of explaining homosexuality to my kids. I'm not afraid of my 9 year old son seeing a breast. I'd be worried about him watching a film of a guy getting it on with a donkey. I'd be especially worried about my daughter watching a "BDSM scene" castration mpeg. Most adults can't handle watching that stuff.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I don't have any kids (yet), but if/when my kid gets explicit e-mail, you can bet I'm going to hunt down the dirtbag down. If a lawsuit doesn't work, maybe a baseball bat will...
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
While I'm the first to agree that kids ought not to be receiving unsolicited porn email, I am very hesitant to invoke the familiar "save the children" cause in prosecuting spam-- I presume that the bulk of pr0n spam is sent from fairly unprosecuable locations anyway, whether they be sufficiently obfuscated or from a riverboat off the coast of Nigeria.
If I were a parent I'd set up a POP account for the grommet and then whitelist filter incoming stuff at the server anyway.
oh. and use something like eudora and "don't automatically download images" (no email/web bugs). By the time they're smart enough to get around these measures, they're smart enough to be getting their own porn anyway.
Bullshit. If you can't be sure that you aren't sending obscene materials to minors, then you have no business doing so. The crudeness of the internet is no excuse to ignore corporeal sensibilities.
If some other adult gave you some indication that it was acceptable to send such materials to a particular destination, that's another issue entirely. You would not be acting with reckless disregard of the foreseeable consequences of your actions.
This isn't just about legally obscene materials. Business proprietors should have a legal incentive to not act like total morons.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Unless there is some way to tell how old the person who checks the mailbox is, there is no way to hold people responsible for sending emails inappropriate for children to that mailbox. You can send porn to a physical mailbox, and the person who gets the mail may be a minor, but you can't be held responsible for that minor seeing "inappropriate" material.
Unless there is some way to tell how old the person who walks by is, there is no way to hold people responsible for posting pornographic billboards inappropriate for children on that street.
I'm sorry, but I just don't see your argument. 'Broadcasting' is no excuse for exposing children to this stuff. It's not acceptable out in public, nor on TV (unless you subscribe to something, in which case the control is on your side), so it sure as hell shouldn't be allowed on the Internet.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
It's another of those things that's different just because it's the internet. Would we even be having this discussion about the local sex shop visiting the infant school to sell penis pumps and breast enlargers? No - because it wouldn't even happen. And if it did you could bet the sellers would do jail time. So why should it be different just because it's the internet? Dear ima2yearold@kids.com, get a bigger penis! Dear spammer, goto jail, do not pass Go, do not collect £200.
The spammers like to claim that all the email they send out is opted in for. Where this true children wouldn't be getting this stuff.
The problem is that spammers lie. I know I never asked to recieve ads for child porn, yet I get it. And I can't make it stop.
Spammers must be forced to post real contact info, which I don't think is going to happen.
My 14 year old neighbor is always coming over here to use the computer, work on her website and use our high speed connection. She is very upset by porn spam. She isn't requesting this stuff either.
I think the only thing to to is make legit businesses see how much spam hurts them. I get email from 4 or 5 companys that I actually requested and want. Most of the time I don't get these mails becuse of the strict spam filtering I have had to use to stop the 300+ messages a day I was getting. If big business gets pissed then perhaps we will see some action.
I'd rather be allowed to hunt and kill spammers, but that's me.
I for one don't think inappropriate e-mail will hurt kids one bit as long as there's a parent around to explain stuff. I for one cycled through a part of the red light district of the city I lived in to get to school from the age of 12 and as far as I can determine I'm as sane as the next guy.
But if there are influential people who see the fact that inappropriate spam reaches children as a reason to seriously start fighting spam I'm all for it.
I can't recommend this open source program enough for stopping spam. Anyone can set it up, and while no heuristic based spam stopping program can be 100% foolproof, this will certainly stop a large amount of inappropriate spam from reaching your children. It works by matching unique words in mail, and you can constantly train it. After just going through a few pages of mail and training it I get absolutely NO mortgage, porn, penis enlargement, or viagra spams at all.
Download it here
Thank you Mario! But our princess is in another castle!
Something does need to be done, but I don't see how any of it can be fixed without changing the basic infrastructure of email communications.
Point of information: Your Dad's Playboy collection was not porn, it was erotica. Compared to the tasteless stuff that I see in my spam folder every day, it just doesn't belong in the same discussion.
> I don't see the problem in them [kids] seeing these materials
Maybe you don't have a problem with it, but I sure don't want MY kids thinking teenage girls F*ing a horse is OK. That is the picture that arrived in a spam this week.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Well parents should be the first line of defense. Just because there are filtering programs, that doesn't mean they shouldn't play an active role in that.
But just as any adult material is required to do for snail mail, there should be a disclaimer (perhaps in the subject), so that should be able to be easily identified by programs, or people.
i think if you let your kids access the internet you should control what they can see... it's just like buying booze or going to a strip club... after you pass the control you may pass but you can look at the advertisement anyway
set up email filters, restrict the websites they can visit... but don't blame those who supply them.
a kid may not be able to buy a filthy magazine but it can still look through it until somebody notices. it's not that the spammers offer them free access to their site
and no i am not a spammer
it's not about mimicking reality, it's about believability
Well, let me ask you this... in the long run, what's more harmful for the child, out of the following choices:
1. The child sees a sexual act in a spam message, and you, being the responsible, intelligent and loving parent you are, explain to them what they're seeing, and how it's morally right or wrong.
Or...
2. The government steps in and makes spam e-mail illegal because there's no viable solution for checking the age of an e-mail recipient before sending the message. Given how government generally operates, it should only be 3-5 years before snail-mail junk is outlawed also, leading to several hundreds (if not thousands) of lawsuits within a year. After that, probably another 2-3 years until someone comes up with the idea that since they don't approve of some e-mail or snail-mail they're getting, it's offensive and unwanted, therefore, must be spam... leading to more legislation defining the term "spam" and "unwanted commercial e-mail", eventually leading to the breakdown of even more of individual's basic human rights, especially Freedom of Speech, Press, and (although not specifically mentioned in the Constitution), Privacy. (My sig has particular relevance here.)
Granted, I'm not going to run aroun showing dirty pictures to kids, but in the grand scheme of things, there are only 2 groups of people that can do anything about it -- government, and IT. We're the IT, so let's try to come up with a solution before the government starts.
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
Well, at 18, not a baseball bat so much. I think they should be legally culpable for breaking the laws of the US, just as someone in the US should be culpable for advertizing Nazi memorabilia across the internet to someone in France (if I remember my google / ebay precedents right). [BTB, I agree with American policy there: it may be bad to sell Nazi memorabilia, but I don't think it's the government's call.]
Very good question, actually. I started by thinking, "Well, anyone who sends that stuff to a seven-year-old is really fsck'd in the head. They're seriously morally reprehensible and such behavior shouldn't be tolerated." I think in our culture, most people would agree with me.
But pornography for adults is reprehensible and depraved as well -- not to the same degree, but it is. Why should I tolerate one, and not the other?
Especially since pr0n spammers aren't content to sit and wait for people to come to them, but actively seek out people, who may be trying to avoid it. Porn addiction is a real thing; there are many men who struggle with it, who want to quit, but can't. I've never been much tempted in that way, but I've had friends who are. Many pornographers know this: that's why they spam and put out teasers, because they know the bait works.
It'd be like a drug dealer, not willing to simply let people come to him, sending out "free samples" of heroin or coke in the mail, that when you opened it automatically injected you with something. It's preying on the weak-willed, just like casinos, and even credit-card companies (Are you paying off your bill every month? Let's raise your limit, so you're tempted to spend 'till you can't! I have like a $13,000 limit on one of my cards due to this effect.)
Or perhaps more apropos, like a liqour company sending out airline-size samples of their warez to random people, not caring, probably even knowing that some of the recipients were recovering alcoholics.
But getting back to your question: I live in a culture that takes a laissez-faire attitudes towards adults. If you want to pollute your body & your mind, we'll let you do so; it's your responsibility (once you're old enough), not ours. One advantage of that kind of a society is that when you do reject that crap, it actually means something: you're doing it because you want to, not because you must. And I think that makes the choice more valuable.
So no, I don't intend to attack the pr0n industry with baseball bats. Still, if you send pr0n to someone in Saudi Arabia, you should be legally culpable. =)
TCP: Why the Internet is full of SYN.
set up email filters, restrict the websites they can visit... but don't blame those who supply them.
I don't have a problem with people providing access to pr0n - But there's a huge difference between someone going out and finding pictures of cheerleaders screwing bulls and having someone deliver such pictures to everyone indiscriminately. I *do* blame those who supply the spam.
Since arguing by analogy is de rigeur on slashdot, here's mine: Someone opening a porn bookstore down the street is fine. The same owner tacking porn to my door is not.
Everyone here familiar with the federal 'Do Not Call' list for telemarketers? Wouldn't it be possible to create a similar product for the web? A 'Do Not Spam' list? Anyone sending say... 100 emails a day would have to cross-reference the recipients addresses with those on the list. And just maybe to support the thing... pay a dollar per account to get your name added... maybe... If you care enough about your kids to keep them from seeing pr0n, pay the buck, if not, don't pay the dollar. Kinda like a mixture of the preposed Public Domain Enhancement Act and the federal 'Do Not Call' list.
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
"Maybe you don't have a problem with it, but I sure don't want MY kids thinking teenage girls F*ing a horse is OK"
Why would an email convince them its okay?
I gave my daughter an email account on hotmail last year (at age 11). I told her that she will get some email that is disgusting and perverted, and that she should just delete it. If she's puzzled or concerned, she can call me to look it over. And never talk to anyone unless you've met them in person first.
I'm sure she got the spam that you speak of (most of the internet did). It didn't twist her because she has the *foundation* to know right from wrong at age 12.
Its like when she asked to see the Matrix movie (she's in 7th grade), I said "well, it has some rough language". She said "Dad, kids talk that way all the time, I don't use that kind of language". Its just what I wanted to hear and I let her see it.
By age 12, kids really do understand right from wrong. Hell, 100 years ago, 12 and 13 year olds were already married, so the idea that children are fragile is a relatively recent thought (since WWII).
Anyway, if kids think that email confers a degree of acceptability of an action, then I suggest the child has more fundamental problems and probably shouldn't have an unsupervised email account to begin with.
18 is cutoff for porn and 21 is for alcohol most places in the US.
No. When I see naked bodies popping up on my screen, it's my problem. For about the last year I've been recieving several pornographic emails a day in all three of my accounts. I turned 18 one month ago. I, for one, don't want to see that.
Don't tell me "If you don't want to see it, set up a spam filter.". Spammers try to get by filters. Fake senders, subject lines, misspelled text, use of images instead of text... Using a spam filter is an obvious sign I don't want spam. Spammers only hope that I'm addicted to pr0n, so I'll visit their site. All they want is to hook another soul.
Stop the Slashdot effect! Don't read the articles!
Someone can sue a spammer any time they want IF they can find out who the spammer is. That's the problem.
If spam is getting to inappropriate people (i.e. children) that's just yet another potential illegality among many that have been continually perpetrated, among many that the authorities on virtually every level seem uninterested in enforcing.
I keep saying over and over, the spam problem is not one that needs new legislation. It's one that needs state, local, national and international authorities to enforce the laws already on the books that are currently being broken. People need to start asking questions of each new elected official as to whether or not they're going to prosecute spammers or continue to ignore the laws they break.
Maybe this particular crime's political incorrectess might finally motivate the authorities to actually pursue the spammers? One can only hope, but since almost every spammer already breaks numerous federal laws, it's a crap shoot to determine if anything will be done.
I am a VERY liberal middle-aged guy who abhors censorship when it comes to folks choosing what they wish to see or read.
But when it comes to young children, who have no mental toolkit for evaluating HOt RuSSian BABEz or Ho's N Horses, the dangers of misunderstanding, and the disturbing notions that can take root in their, literally, virgin consciousness, are too awful to contemplate, let alone sanction.
I have no magic bullet solution. But I do know that toleration of this is unacceptable.
The FCC has ruled that the Internet is not broadcast, it is not subject to the same rules and regulations.
I'm against spam as much as the next person, but we have to be careful. Your line of reasoning is how things like the CDA came about, remember that?
If you say things like "If you can't be sure the other party is of age, then you can't send anything that is adult", then we wind up with a G-rated Internet for kids, and we no longer have a free venue for expression.
I'm not arguing that spam is free expression, or anything of that sort, only that your line of logic, when extended to other protocols, could be very dangerous.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
The problem being there is no way to tell how old the person who checks the email address is.
Since when has government concerned itself with the limitations inherent in the real world ?
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Actually no, you are wrong on this case. The method is opt-in, by doing an opt-in they can ask for the age of the person using the computer. If the persons says they are over X age, then you have to beleive them and then if they are not over age X then you are not responsible because you asked the question with no reasonable method of verification.
But the way spammers work is they send it to anyone that they can reasonably find has a legitimate e-mail address, not how old the person is that recieves the spam. It would be akin to sending nude magazines 1400 10th avenue leavenworth kansas, just because you found out the street address existed and accepted e-mail. When the address is actually to a high school, so basically you would be sending porno to a high school. Now I knwo that it wouldnt be veiwed by children in that case, but it shows indiscriminiate spamming and how it can get to people.
You can easily know who the box belongs to, you ask. If they trick you, then your not liable, because you were tricked. The same reason you are not liable if someone comes on and buys a dildo off your web site with a valid credit card and other information, and then you find out that that person is a 10 year old buy who knows a little to much about his computer and his parents credit card.
It is also a good reason not to be liable if a child comes to your web site and you have a warning on its index page, this way you are not responsible if they see bad content, because they violated the agreement by being too young and you had no method of verifying that they were who they claimed to be.
In fact, I would say there was 100% liability for sending porn spam to a random box and not having any verification it was a child at all. You are pushing a supply onto the user, instead of recieving a demand for your product from someone you cant verify.
In fact, child porno, and other indecent things, might be one of the best reasons to ban at least sexually oriented spam, and spam inapropriate to children. (IE drugs that could be dangerous for children to have, because it would increase interest in taht drug from someone who might not be mature enough to make a good decision regarding how the spam is handled).
Buzz OUT
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
And email is not a subscription service?
Of course it is, but the source of the pornographic spam is probably not the ISP. Hence, signing up for email service is not the same as signing up to receive unsolicited pornographic email.
Actually, signing up for an email address is signing up for anyone to send you anything at any time. An email address is an open invatation for anyone to send you email. It is not a "white-list" service (unless you make it one using filters on your end). Email is set up to take any mail from anyone, with any subject. Signing up for an email account is the same as signing up for every piece of email you receive. Unless the way email works is changed, having an email address is an open invation to send you mail.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
yes, it can
you can wage war to end war
you can abort fetuses to save children
i say these things with a perfectly straight face
if you don't know how these things are true, then you have the moral depth of understanding of a child
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
2. The government steps in and makes spam e-mail illegal because there's no viable solution for checking the age of an e-mail recipient before sending the message. Given how government generally operates, it should only be 3-5 years before snail-mail junk is outlawed also, leading to several hundreds (if not thousands) of lawsuits within a year. After that, probably another 2-3 years until someone comes up with the idea that since they don't approve of some e-mail or snail-mail they're getting, it's offensive and unwanted, therefore, must be spam... leading to more legislation defining the term "spam" and "unwanted commercial e-mail", eventually leading to the breakdown of even more of individual's basic human rights, especially Freedom of Speech, Press, and (although not specifically mentioned in the Constitution), Privacy.
No, we don't all share your prejudices about government.
Federal law passed in 1991 (known as the TCPA) makes it illegal to send any material transmitted via facsimile that advertises the commercial availability or quality of any property, goods, or services which is transmitted to any person without that person's prior express invitation or permission. If the fax was deliberately sent to you (as most junk faxes are), federal law entitles you to recover a minimum of $500 and, depending the judge's discretion, up to $1,500 for each such fax that you receive. Junk faxes are illegal (I just got a $500 settlement from a junk faxer) and that has not ended civilization as we've known it.
Title 39, United States Code, Section 3010 authorizes the Postal Service to keep a list of persons who do not wish to receive sexually oriented advertisements through the mail. You can add your name and address to the list by filling out a "Form 1500" and submitting it to any post office. When your name and address have been on the list more than 30 days, it is unlawful for anyone to mail you a sexually oriented advertisement. Mailers who violate your protected status make themselves subject to court enforcement action by the United States Government. You can also have any of your children under 19 years old who reside with you or are under your care, custody, or supervision included on the list. Has that law ended all forms of direct mail marketing? Has it resulted in the government suppressing free speech? Of course not.
Not all of us hold opinions about the government that are similar to those of Ted Kaczynski and Eric Rudolph, so please stop your anti-government rants. It's silly and gets in the way of considering whether legislation is part of the answer to the problem.
Spamming using dictionary methods is beyond inappropriate for porn vendors. If Abercrombie and Fitch can get sued for sending their questionable catalogs through the mail to under-age people, porn vendors are in no better position.
Some of you have said, "But there's no way to know the age of the kid." No, but you make a reasonable effort. If you or one of your trusted partners has thier credit card number, either the email address is legit or you have been the victim of fraud. Heck, if someone has simply clicked, "Sure, I'm 18" on your website, you have at least done some filtering. There are ways of at least trying to determine the age of the people attached to the email address. People who deal in porn are responsible for taking those simple steps.
The problem is with dictionary spammers and those who buy the generic large lists. They are advertising porn to children and many are sending them samples. I have to believe this is illegal and if it isn't it damn well should be.
Finally I have to say that I hope this is in the YRO catagory because the rights of kids are being violated. If there is serious concern about the rights of pornographers to spam us, we have real problems and need to look inward.