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Stronger Anti-Spam Law Proposed
NumberField writes "The fight against Spam is making for some strange bedfellows. A new bill sponsored by Senator
Charles Schumer (D-NY)
and the right-wing Christian Coalition
that would let individuals sue spammers for $1000 per message. What isn't clear is how they will define spam broadly enough to outlaw it, but narrowly enough to avoid making it a bonanza for lawyers. For more information, see Schumer's
fact sheet (PDF), or his
press release." Update: 06/13 14:20 GMT by M : The draft bill (pdf) is available.
You can propose all the anti-spam laws you want. But if you keep it restricted to one country, you won't go very far. Spammers will use other locations to send their spam from. So it only works if you have an international law.
That's all very well, but for a large chunk of spam, identifying the spammer if difficult, and to it in a way that would hold up in court would be even harder..
I lay awake last night wondering where the sun had gone, then it dawned on me.
They too get spam, you know (or they'll make sure they'll get it.)
I propose the following:
1. Get local spam under control.
2. Start sanctions agaist countries / ISPs from which spam originates.
Not sure this makes any sense though, but if countries like China find themselves at a disadvantage due to a handful of local spammers I would think they would be more motivated to deal with the problem.
I'm not proposing any tehnical solutions though... anyone have ideas on that?
.: Max Romantschuk
If the law is drafted in a manner which allows authorities to go after the people benefiting from spam, rather than just the people actually sending it, then they could make substantial progress. Most of the spam I receive is for US-based companies, even if it was actually sent from China.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
let individuals sue spammers for $1000 per message
I don't think many individuals would bother with this, it's easier to just the delete the spam mail than it is to risk loosing money on some lawsuit, and even if they did decide to sue them they would only have "defeated" one spammer (or his team or whatever it could be). 1 down 50000 to go.
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
When right-wing religious groups start supporting something I believe in I always have to re-evaluate my belief.
The ONE country affected and profiting from spam and anti-spam s/w is never known to suffer in silence when other countries cause economic harm to it. In other words, if outside spam was the real problem, this would have been solved a million times by now.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
How about the spammer gets 1 minute in jail per recipient for any unsolicited commercial email they send?
do we need to prove that those emails suspected of spamming are truly unsolicited? how do we prove that we never subscribed to a certain mailing list? can spammer 'fake' subscriptions?
and with the "Do Not Spam" registry of e-mail addresses, wouldn't it make it easier for spammers to request such do-not-spam list and spam it??
If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. like the article stated, it might endanger legitimate Internet services.
I don't see the point in having a 'do not spam' list for the US, when the majority of spam the rest of us are receiving on this planet comes from the US. Is the US govt seriously going to compile a list for all 6 billion of us?
This proposal still makes it a civil matter for the recipient, having to sue the spammer for damages. What's needed is a federal US law making mass junk emailing a criminal offense. Instead they are just pushing it back onto the people to fight in civil courts. The only winners here are the spammers and lawyers.
Dude, I feel the Nigerian spammers already trembling;o))))....
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
If you'd like to see it passed, ask your Senator to cosponsor
Christian Coalition endorses Schumer bill that would for the first time impose tough criminal and civil penalties on spammers; New law would create no-spam registry like highly-effective do-not-call registries that have stopped telemarketers
Political odd couple find common ground protecting children from obscene emails
Pornographic pictures appear in 1 out of every 5 spams; 1 in 5 kids are sexually solicited on the Internet; and 1 in 4 had an unwanted exposure to obscene pictures
US Senator Charles Schumer and Christian Coalition President Roberta Combs announced today that the Christian Coalition is endorsing Schumer's Stop Pornography and Abusive Marketing Act (The SPAM Act), legislation aimed at cracking down on pornographic email spam that is sent to children. Internet and email use among children has skyrocketed over the last few years, with America Online and MSN reporting millions of child users.
The avalanche of pornography being sent to kids by spammers makes checking email on par with watching an X-rated movie. Parents need to be able to keep offensive material out of the family room and I'm working with the Christian Coalition to do just that, Schumer said. The bottom line is that America's children have been under attack for a long time from violent TV shows, racy music videos, and now pornographic spam. The v-chip gave parents control of the TV. My SPAM Act will give them control over the computer.
I stand side-by-side with Senator Schumer in the fight against pornographic email, Combs said. Parents need the ability to keep their children from being subjected to lewd material and Schumers legislation will do just that. I am proud to stand with Chuck on this issue and we will continue to work together until this bill is law.
Purveyors of spam have exploited the popularity of the Internet and e-mail to gain access to millions of consumers from all sectors of the population, advertising everything from herbal remedies to get-rich-quick schemes to adult web sites. The traffic in explicit images is particularly acute according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which reports that pornographic pictures appear in almost one out of every five emails that spammers use to advertise adult web sites. Many of these explicit images reach the in-boxes of millions of young e-mail users.
In a June 2003 survey by the California-based Internet security firm Symantec, 47% of children reported receiving junk email with links to pornographic web sites. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, one in five kids between the ages of 10 and 17 are sexually solicited on the Internet, and one in four had an unwanted exposure to pictures of naked people or people having sex but only 40% of these children told a parent.
According to a 2001 Department of Commerce study, 75 percent of 14-17 year olds and 65 percent of 10-13 year olds use the Internet. The same survey also found that forty-five percent of the population now uses email, up from 35 percent in 2000, including millions of children. As of November 2002, America Online had 16 million screen names limited by parental controls while MSN, the operator of the popular free e-mail site www.hotmail.com, had an estimated 3.6 million subscribers under the age of 18.
Schumer and Combs said that the implications of these studies are disturbing: parents are not only powerless to prevent such imagery from being sent to their childrens in-boxes, they also often d
Why don't they just pray it away?
(from the pdf linked in article):
Prohibit Harvesting of E-mail Addresses and Dictionary Attacks:
The bill will also prevent spammers from assembling e-mail lists through the practice of address "harvesting" carried out by software known as spam "bots" that mine web sites, chat rooms,
I really wonder how one can prevent harvesting, and how that could be enforced without making non-spammers pay.
main(char O){O++&&(((O-291)*O+27788)*O-868020?1:putchar(O++
Recently there was an article posted here about taxes on cable modems here, but it occurs to me that spam, like postal junk mail, could help pay for infrastructure just as easily.
Not an original idea, but like a state sales tax (or one of several European VATs), the onus would be on the merchants, or in this case those relaying spam, to collect and pay up.
Now, since American companies are being required to collect and disperse VAT for sales made in Europe, surely there will be some sort of reciprocity there, and in general America (or the states therein) would impose sanctions on countries that did not abide by these new spam tax laws.
With spam in the news as much as it has been lately, surely some government types will take notice, that there is cash sitting in their inbox (or in their filtered spam folder if they're smart). And SpamAssassin catches a huge percentage of the spam I get lately, so if my mail machine has to do a little bit of filtering so that middle America can get cable modems and dsl, and so that maybe the last mile can be fiber someday, well, I'll bite the bullet, as long as I don't have to pay cable modem taxes or any other such things and get this spam.
If they are able to legally define spam (not that easy), the spammers will immediately find an alternative which is not illegal...
It's useless for the same reason P2P can't be wiped out!
Long live the freedom of information!!
I want my karma, and I want it now!
would this bill be used to attack people you don't like rather than the real spammers??
:)
one would think that sexual harassment lawsuit is used when you're fired by your female superior, not when you're sexually harassed
Spam is so easy to kill: add authentication to SMTP and create a new email network of authenticated email. Servers won't accept email from unauthenticated sources, and spammers will be unable to hide their tracks.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The press release is only about Porn targetted at children, shouldn't that be unwanted email targeted at everybody??
As they stand, the proposals seem to target all spam, not just porn, although it's clear that the christians are in it to stop the porn. It makes me uneasy when reasonable people ally themselves with crazy people, even if the end is good. How long before some of the christians realise that the bill does nothing to combat the exchange of pornographic materials between consenting adults?
It is not the government's place to tackle the spam problem. If they try, they'll just fuck it up, like they've fucked up so many other things in the past. Spam has all the telltale signs of a problem that legislation won't help. It's a relatively victimless crime (or rather, its victims, with the exception of those companies who run the huge backbones, are at most marginally impacted by the problem), it can be done in a relatively anonymous fashion, and any laws banning or regulating it will be very difficult to enforce. Problems like that (drug abuse and so on) are never helped by laws, and instead just get worse with each additional crackdown.
The problem can never be fully solved by technical means, being a sociological problem, but technical solutions can do a much more effective job in curbing the problem than any legislative solution, and cause fewer additional problems in the process. Rather than try to get the government to pass ineffective feel-good laws, let's fix the problem from our end. It's time to replace SMTP with a less trusting protocol - the Internet is clearly a very different place than it was when SMTP was originally created, and we need a new mail protocol to match the times.
Keep the government's laws off my Internet, people. It is a medium that spans the entire globe and is not under the jurisdiction of any one government anyway, so laws will never do the job. They'll just cause more problems and never solve anything.
Most of the spam that I receive comes from South Korea, Russia and China, not the United States.
If the spam is advertising goods or services sold by someone in the U.S., the spam came from the U.S., regardless of what physical server delivered it. As they say, "follow the money." I don't care that Alan Ralsky pays for his spam to be sent through Brazil. His spam still came from the United States. An effective anti-spam law will allow you to sue him for a significant sum of money ($1000 or more) and federal, state, and local law enforcement to prosecute him for a crime.
Want to deal with overseas firms sending spam to U.S. citizens? Then handle it like the "war on terror." Pressure other countries to turn over spammers for prosecution for violating U.S. laws. This can be done with multiple tools, including threats to revoke a country's "Most Favored Nation" trading status, reduction in aide to countries where we provide same, tariffs, and even federally-mandated blocking of Internet traffic to and from that country.
It should be about consent rather than content. Creating two classes of spam is a bad thing.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
heres an article on what Australia along with other countries are doing to fight spam.
1 09 20208.html
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/09/10550
I like the sound of this. Defining Spam would be a problem.
If you could prove that there is either no way of requesting an end to the spam or that it didn't work when you clicked on the link then that might stand up in court.
If you still get spam then you should be able to forward it onto some Government organisation who would deal with the company with an army of beurachrats.
Here in the UK, we have a good system for stopping unsolicited phone calls and text (SMS) messages. It is called TPS (Telephone Preference Service). You basically register your number(s) with this organisation and marketeers aren't allowed to use that number. If they do you can report it, they can check phone records or something and fine them something like £5,000. This system does work.
From the fact sheet:
Anyone who sends spam to these addresses will be subject to stiff fines. The database will be protected by military-caliber encryption to ensure the protection of its contents.
Nonsense. How can the database be encrypted if all potential spammers are deemed to have notice of every address on it?
Such a provision would make it easy for anyone to cause harm to a company or individual by forging spam that appears to be benefitting them. It's a bad idea.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
My suggestion is that the SUPPLIER of the advertised goods is fined, not the spammers. The supplier is, after all, paying someone to send the spam, and they're easily traceable (otherwise they'd have trouble fulfilling your orders for Viagra, septic tank cleaner and goat pr0n).
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
One thing spammers always get correct in spam, is the details of how to buy whatever they are advertising
Why don't we ignore the spammers and punish the companies who's products are being advertised?
Spam wouldn't exist if people weren't paying the spammers to spam.
Target the advertisers contact details, like how BT disconnects numbers advertised on tart cards in London phone boxes.
"Sure you can advertise by spam it'll cost you $10000 for 2^8 mails unfortunatly within 12 minutes of the 1st mail going out your contact email and website will be deleted."
Alex
How many of my email addresses will I be allowed to register? Let me see, assuming a maximum of 64 characters per username (it's probably more), and 36 different characters (actually there's more there, too), that would be potentially 40119919145476304800650533877024438126904024877418 12225955731622655455723258857248542161222254985216 addresses. Of course no one would have that many and no database could store them all. But spammers could dynamically generate random ones. As more and more mail services support tagged addresses, spammers will likely start adding random tags to make sure they have a defense of "no match in the do-not-spam database".
I use a different email address for every mailing list I subscribe to. Should I register every one of them with the database? Most of them have already been spammed (probably harvested from online archives of those mailing lists).
One possibility is requiring that tagged format address be matched with respect to the base address (tag characters usually being "-" and "+"). Another is registering a whole vanity domain making it applicable to every username possibility. I'm sure aol.com will get registered like that, as will just about every domain out there. Mine will be.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Spammers are smart people. You are never going to get the definition of spam such that it will block out all the forms of spam. And if there is a hole, spammers will rush to take advantage of it.
I'll illustrate with a snail-mail example:
A few years back everybody could get a sticker (the yes/no* an no/no* stickers) which we could stick on our mailbox to prevent "unadressed mail" (read: yunkmail) from flooding your mailbox. Good initiative: saves paper, time, money and irritation. BUT: Suddenly all yunkmail got addresses prionted on them and we were stuck with the same pile of paper we didn't read and had to take out to the paper recycle bins.
Nice initiative, didn't work. Wait, that's not entirely true; it still has a function: It blocks the local newspapers.
* yes/no for local (free) newspapers; no for unadressed mail.
IT WORKS!! BELIEVE ME!!!!!! Here is what you have to do: check your INBOX and look for unwanted mail, no matter who send it to you. AND THEN SUE THE PERSON WHO MAILED YOU AND SEND ME A MERE 1% OF THE AMOUNT YOU RECEIVE!!
Everytime you do this, it adds $990 to your account. I couldn't believe it either until the $$$ started to flow my way! My wife does it, and now we have no more financial worries!!!!!!!!
Don't feel left out, check your inbox today and start to make money!!!!
By the way, this mail is not spam. No, Sir. Honest. It just a one-time mailing. Really. Trust me.
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
Spam merchants are brain-dead. Look carefully at my e-mail address {once you've sussed out the auto-munging that Slashdot has thoughtfully provided} and see what you notice about it. Then explain why I keep getting advertisements for products that are only available, or only work, in the USA. Like cable descramblers ..... British cable TV is digital, for crying out loud .....
Spear the spam-merchants with this! It won't stop it altogether, but at least it'll give you evidence as to who is harvesting your address and how widely it is circulating.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
This article in the UK "Guardian" claims that the recent blitz of viruses was done by spammers trying to generate open relays.
You've just inspired me. I'm going to start up an Internet business using direct spam marketing to sell tin foil hats.
Not only have you demonstrated there is a market for them, but that the target consumers are afraid of any laws to stop the messages.
The Internet is generally stupid
Spam--come on if the christian coalition (caps left off on purpose) want spam stopped so their children do not have to see t&a they should filter their email better and stop having their children sign up for the sex mailing list in the first place.
As for spam in general. laws will not help but will just serve to allow lawyers, RIAA and others loop holes to screw over the internet. When it is time to err it needs to be in favor of the freedom of speech-take care of spam yourself with a good filter, deal with it the same as you do your mail box with postal mail-->the argument about spam being free is BS it has to be written and (maybe spell checked) and then has to be sent, it is just cheaper than postal mail. The government need to stop trying to legislate everything and let us live our lives freely.
How long before some of the christians realise that the bill does nothing to combat the exchange of pornographic materials between consenting adults?
Most Christians aren't that naive. They know that kinky and perverted things go on between consenting adults every day. That doesn't mean that they want to see it. And if someone doesn't want to look at porno, why should you assault their conscience with it? Just like you wouldn't go to Egypt and start throwing sausage at every Muslim you saw.
Doesn't freedom of religion grant them the freedom to go on blocking the crud coming at them as long as they are not impinging on the rights of others?
People say that spam is a social problem, not a technical one. However, it is a technical problem, moreso than a social one, and that is why laws such as this one are not going to work: You can't sue someone until you identify them. The reason that spam is such a problem in the first place is because a large percentage of spammers (or, more likely, the spammers' mass mailing programs) go through great lengths to disguise the origin of the message. Obviously, if the message had a reliable source address, it would be much easier to track down and stop spammers, since they would have a finite number of source addresses to work with. Yes, it would create pandemonium for ISPs, but if ISPs responded (by threatening them with a $1000 per message lawsuit) to complaints about spamming quickly, it would not be a problem for long. Of course, this wouldn't work as well overseas, since there would be no such law, but so long as a new system that prevents email spoofing is implemented worldwide, the problem would still be largely under control.
The problem is actually replacing SMTP with something more reliable. It's like trying to implement IPv6... it's not going to happen in a day.
..or derivatives thereof.
Back in 1999, I posted this message to NANAE, about getting spammed by a Jerry Falwell-backed ISP. Well, it has been a long time since 1999, and now I get a lot of messages from various CC-related organisations, most of whom are telling me to vote for various RNC initiatives.
Curious.
Dont you think it's a greater violation of rights having spyware and adware on your system than just recieving unsolicited e-mail? I think spam is just a nuisance while spy/adware actually affects performance of your hardware, not to mention the fact that its broadcasting your private information to the world allowing you to recieve a large portion of spam (mmm...large portion of spam).It's like me parking my car on your lawn then setting up cameras looking into each of your windows. Unfortnately everyone that recieves spam is aware of it, unlike spy/adware. And hence, public is clamoring for spam to stop. Dont get me wrong I love charging the chumps that install i-mesh/kazaa/realplayer/etc. money for removing the crap that makes there brand new Dell run like a 486, but if your talking rights violations that takes the cake. I say that all of you not already using a spy/ad bot removal program should run one ...youd be surpised what youll find.
PS. Dont forget the growing number of spam coming through windows own messenger service.
The problem I have is with the effectiveness of the technical solutions to date and the likelihood that they'll become much more effective in the medium-term future unless they're accompanied by legislation.
It seems to me that the ongoing technology race between spam-blockers and spammers has been instrumental in accelerating the adoption by spammers of increasingly objectionable subterfuges for delivering of their unwanted material and obscuring its origins. The result has been that users of the Internet are incurring measurable additional costs for dealing with the sh*t and that despite this many people find that enough gets through to make the going through their email an activity, as the Economist observed in a recent article on the topic, about as alluring and attractive as sorting through raw garbage.
To put it simply, the technological solutions deployed so far have not worked. Sorry, but I think it's high time for the 'Net community to get its collective head around this unpalatable fact.
OK, laws currently on the statute books have not been noticably effective, either, despite their obvious applicability to much of the spam that's swilling around. Admittedly, the nature of many of the 'products' and 'services' being peddled in this way undoubtedly discourages dissatisfied customers from seeking redress by way of formal law enforcement. And unwilling recipients of the nastier types of material may also be understandably wary of requesting law enforcement involvement. That's a sociological problem in itself, of course, and while technical measures like providing means for forwarding anonymous tip-offs will help, what's really needed is for people to be able to feel confident they can report such stuff to the local police without coming under automatic suspicion themselves of being part of the problem. Intelligently-drafted legislation does have a role in promoting such a consensus.
So I guess I have to put up and then shut up. Here are a few guidelines for legislation which I think could help shift the balance between profit and risk for spamming. Al Capone, remember, was eventually nabbed for tax violations.