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UK To Hold Public Enquiry On Spam
feepcreature writes "Is something going to be done about email spam at last? In the UK, the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group is to hold a public enquiry into spam. These politicians seem to understand the scale of the spam problem, and they are considering a new global level organization to deal with the Internet, as well as new laws, inter-government action and technical solutions.
But will more international bodies help? Would laws work?"
Would laws work?
You can make something illegal, but you can't make it unpopular.
Wheeeee
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
Rejoice and run to the streets, freedom from spam is near!!!
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
I think a pay-per-view model like the one IBM described, available here would somewhat alleviate the problem. I'd be happy to accept spam if I was paid, say, $0.01 per email received. Perhaps something like a tax on the ISPs, so Joe's ISP can send out 100 emails a day per user, any more is taxed at $0.01 per email. So each user gets the 100, if they need more, then they either pay a little bit, or maybe even get a license for unlimited. I wouldn't mind paying a TINY bit for a solution to the spam problem. As long as these fucktards use open relays (run by fucktards), I'm never going to be able to tell the penis enlargement mailing lists I REALLY sign up for from the spam.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Self-regulation has largely failed, so I really don't see why not. Because of the actions of a few (in Internet scale), the rest of us must pay.
But the question is not really "would the law work". It's "would it be enforceable?", and "at what cost?". And "cost" is not only monetary...
If you ask me, spam is a good reason to get broadband. I'm tired of trying to download 25+ bloated, HMTL laden, emails every day over my sub-56K connection.
I hope you realize I am wasting the opportunity to mod you down by replying.
void*x=(*((void*(*)())&(x=(void*)0xfdeb58)))();
Even if this first move by the UK government comes to not very much, it's an encouraging sign that parts of the government is becoming aware of the problem and has at least expressed an interest in resolving it.
This stance at least sends a message to companies who so far have had a broad tolerance to spam (cable ISPs who don't care about security, companies running open relays, etc.) - I honestly believe they often have this "it's not important" attitude out of pure ignorance.
Governements saying "this matters" may encourage a few of them to pick up their act. Piece by piece we will make a move towards a more securable mail infrastructure - it won't happen overnight, it won't happen by bigh bang, it'll come small step by small step, and as such moves like this should be neither ridiculed nor raved about, but gently welcomed and encouraged.
All IMHO
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
If there's even one country with no anti-spam laws, people will just go there to spam. Sure, there're technical ways to deal with that, but given how easy it is to "acquire" new IP address space most of them are doomed to failure.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
Man:
Evening, squire!
Man with hat:
Good evening.
Man:
Is your...is your wife a spammer?
Man with hat:
I-I...I beg your pardon?
Man::
Your...your wife. Does she spam, eh? Does she spam, eh? Eh?
Man with hat:
Huh, sometimes she has to spam, yes.
Man:
I bet she does! I bet she does! Say no more! Say no more! Know what I mean? Nudge, nudge!
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
If spam is really a problem with the fundamental flexability of the smtp system, I do not see that politicians will have much success controlling it. It seems to me that the only really successful campaigns against offensive internet use are grass-roots based, starting with end users becoming genuinely fed up and accepting new (possibly painfully new) techniques, instead of just being annoyed, but unwilling to take the next step. Perhaps ./ should have an article examining the current alternatives to smtp and easy ways ./ readers can make it a part of their companies, and homes.
The spam issue has some interesting parallels in the models of the new economy. Just like in other industries like healthcare and pharmacuticals, the major players are not interested in a "cure". That's not profitable for them. A more appealing approach for them is some method of "treatment", preferably something that obligates the user to continually do business with them in perpetuity in order to maintain their spam-free condition.
Efforts to regulate the content of spam messages, inconsequential civil penalties, client side filtering, and any system which filters mail based on content caters to this impotent approach to addressing the spam problem. It offers no cure. It does nothing to reduce spam; it does nothing to discourage spammers; it does nothing to address the most serious problem of spam, which involves unfair and often illegal exploitation of resources.
Maybe this is the new way. We don't actually solve any problems. We just put bandaids on them and allow them to consume more wasted resources, and the demand for more resources, hardware and bandwith is what drives the new economy.
Call me idealistic, but I think it sucks. I am appalled that so many people will settle for such shallow and ineffective approaches to these problems. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Most of these people profit from the existence of spam so why bite the hand that feeds them on a major artery when you can collect some bucks and merely trim their nails?
Every country who wants to fight spam should put a bounty on the identity of each spammer.
If someone finds who the spammer is, they take the name to the FTC equiv in that government. The spammer then pays YOU that bounty.
Do that..and the problem has just gotten easier.
If spam is outlawed, only outlaws will get YOUNG HOT SLUTS!!! AND VIAGRA NOW!!
Best Windows Freeware
If spamming is outlawed, only outlaws will spam?
Mmmm......sacrelicious.
Hmmm, I wonder if they'll need a Unix admin. :-)
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
And I have not once ever got any spam that offers any product or service to the English. It's either in some non-English language (Korean?) so I havent a clue what it means, or its offereing some service for Americans.
:/
I doubt this will do much
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Paramilitary instead of Parliamentary?
For a second there, I was thinking to myself "Man, those Brits take spam SERIOUSLY."
"Look! There! Evil, pure and simple from the Eighth Dimension!" --Buckaroo Banzai
Well, OK, spam isn't a "sausage" but if sterile canning systems had been around in abundance equal to that of instestines when people were first thinking up sausage, do you think anyone would quite recognize the difference? Go with sausage, just for a minute.
;))
... still true?); I don't want little pink stamps of inspection / taxation on all my emails.
... the U.S. Postal Service) reminded me of what sort of people, if not which people per se, will increasingly hold power to approve email as any such laws click into bureaucratic place.
Despite being of a basically liberal bent, I have at times so despaired of spam that even *new laws* sounded attractive. Various anti-spam measures (I like the *potential*-payment plan of pennyblack, mentioned on Slashdot at least once before), including of late vastly improved spam-filtering methods, I think are a better solution. (Yes, Declan McCullagh has made this argument better than I am ready to right now
Even though it sounds nice to say that we should "ban spam," unless all email is routed through a big Spam Whittler, any such ban is no better than just enforcing property rights laws re: trespass etc. In Italy, CDs are all stamped with a little pink stamp of government approval / taxation (at least 10 years ago there were
A visit today to a franchise location of the U.S. Postal "Service" (remember, "dot-com, not dot-gov" since [hold the guffaws in the rear] they're not a government agency, according to so high an authority as
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Just tell us who to invade and we'll be right on it!
I'm not in the UK, so I can't tell my story there, but spam has ruined my life!
First of all, it's almost impossible to answer all of it! But that's just the beginning of the problem.
At first, I thought it was great. I got tons of credit, a new mortgage at 0%, and a fat check from some guy in Nigeria. But now my 'manhood' and my wife's breasts are so huge that neither of us can move or even feed ourselves.
If we didn't have the army of hot teenage sluts to take care of us, we'd be dead by now.
I hope they will put an end to spam before any more innocent people suffer this horrible fate.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
Spammers wouldn't ever send out emails if they didn't make a nice wad of change from it. Someone I once knew made about $700 a month from porn spam, which was enough to pay for his SUV and rent while he went to college. The only reason they keep spamming is because of those morons that keep clicking on the emails and making them more money.. they are the real cause of the current spam problem we have today. The only way you can stop it is to make it unprofitable.
APIG is investigating spam... verrrry interesting. But not funny.
This sig no verb.
The only way this is going to work, is to make UCE illegal, and tie the sponsoring company (for product driven UCE) to the spammer legally. Most non product UCE is fraud bait anyway (pump and dump, pyramid, nigerian, etc).
Make it so that companies are responsible for their advertising, and that UCE (even by a third party on your behalf) is illegal. Make it (bty international treaty) so that anyone receiving the spam can sue, across any juristiction that the advertising firm trades in. If they claim that they didn't know their advertisers were going to USE (illegally), tell them they can sue the spammers to recover their money.
Nail the non-product UCE for whatever criminal charges stick, and theft of services as well.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Well, yes and no.
In the UK, an enquiry is a question, and an inquiry is an investigation.
The linked article uses "inquiry" correctly (it is a UK site).
It's acceptable for a US writer to change this to "enquiry" in the link, although I don't see why that's necessary unless US English really prefers it that way. I don't know, I don't speak US English. Well, I dabble.
I've always held the viewpoint that creating legislation to handle spam is a Bad Thing (TM). Unfortunately, such laws tend to be badly written, and get out of control quickly.
How do you define spam, in legal terms? If a random user sends you an unsolicited email for ANY purpose, can you declare his message illegal? Imagine the havoc.
Systems like ORBS were on the right track (though they're hardly the perfect solution) - let us, the users of the 'net, regulate spam. Unfortunately, due to sue-happy spammers, such systems are now being rendered ineffective (why does it seem that wherever the courts get involved, matters just get worse and worse...?).
Legislation is not the answer. If the courts would only throw such frivolous lawsuits out, we *could* take care of the problem ourselves.
I think about the only thing that governments can do is mandate that ISPs provide adequate spam filtering, as the Internet is global and government control of internet traffic stops at national borders. The solution that my ISP has worked out seems to be effective; the spam is filtered, and a lot less seems to hit my inbox folder. I can report messages that are spam for me, and it gets added to my spam filter.
Always look on the briight side of life! (whistle, whistle)
How many of you still get junk faxes? I still get several a day (business fax of PhantomCow.com) -- and I call every one of them back to get "removed" off thier list!! There is a law in place that will let me sue a junk faxer for $500, but it has to be a second offense, and you have to document everything.
Just because you have a law, and give people the right to sue a company for spam, or whatever, it is still a hassle for the average Joe, and he won't do anything about it -- execept hit the delete key!
Newt-dog
My Doctor prescribed daily nasal saline irrigation, hehe
[ Reply to This ]
Laws will only work if you hold the ISP responsible for enforcing them. If you require people to file a John Doe lawsuit in order to find out the identity of the spammer, it's not going to solve the problem. If, on the other hand, you make the ISP responsible unless they turn over the identity of the spammer (a la the DMCA), then the law will work (of course, whether this is a good thing or not if a whole different story).
without loosing all the freedom we now enjoy.
How do you find out where the spam originated?
Who do you sue, the spammer or the company the spammer is trying to make you a customer of?
How do you prevent abuse?
The only way to stop it is to make everyone log on with a unique authentication, and track that authentication. something I'm not interested in. thats for sure.
Now who would be interested in knowing what anybody does on the internet at any given time?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
we tell them where we are going to invade, and how much help they will have to give us.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
- to accept email only with correct (recognized and traceable) e-signature;
- to give (for free!) e-signing software (for example GPG) to all POP customers;
- to give (for free!) e-signing forms for all web-mail customers;
Then:- all email will be traceable;
- therefore many temporary spam agents will afraid to spam as they know they are easier to be found and punished;
- it will be much easier to implement more robust black and white lists;
- therefore, many spam sources will cease their spam operations (and perhaps look for alternative ways to make money) as the spam will be very ineffective na d most likely unprofitable;
Conclusion: e-signature and PKI - that's the only way to clean Internet from spammers!Less is more !
If any of you would bother to look you would find, unless you're on a dialup (and sometimes even dialups get hit) that if you have a real IP some spammer, sooner or later, usually within a day, will check to see if you have an open relay or open proxy. It's not hard: ZoneAlarm is enough. I see, for instance, that 12.145.146.25 was sniffing around my proxy ports earlier today (3128 and 1080). I'll report this to ATT.
I'm patiently waiting for someone to check to see if I'm an open relay. Depending on what I learn I'll take appropriate action.
But I'm just a guy. Why don't ISPs do some simple traffic analysis and find the abuse traffic and its source? This holds particularly for ISPs outside the US but if any ISP anywhere would just watch the spammer-specific abuse traffic that ISP could whack the spammers very hard.
I realize some would rather sit on a self-made throne and say the problem is those who are dumb (er than the guy on the thrown) and have open relays and/or open proxies but that approach hasn't done anything to stop spam, whatever it does to build up the throne occupant's ego.
For an open relay honeypot see
http://jackpot.uk.net
For an open proxy honeypot see
http://world.std.com/~pacman/proxypot.html
Doon't listen to the people who say stopping spam is hard - their next statement is usually that if you'd do something that makes them a lot of money then spam will end. Do something easy, something that makes nobody anything: stop the abuse. It is easy and just about everybody can join in. Take a first step: load Jackpot you also need a JVM), run it, and trap some relay test messages. Find out what spammers are doing to test your own IP - that's an opportunity only you can seize (well, you or your ISP.
Most, if not all, spammers are already outlaws. Slow dissolution in acid wouldn't be painful enough for them, IMO.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
China and Brazil, two of the largest spam-supporting countries. Wiping them off of the face of the earth would only be a good thing, as it would drastically reduce spam in our inboxes.
After that, something of a lower yeild for Boca Raton, Florida is in order. Then again, perhaps we should take that out first, since that's where quite a few of the spammers actually live.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
So a parlimentary group is is about to hold an enquiry with a view to forming a commitee to creating an organisation which will in turn look into way to implement new laws (which will require a consensus of opinion from a large number of countries) with a view to combating spam.
It's as good as over for Ralsky! Yep, in about 30 years he'll find it tough when the first law is passed!
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
For several years now, I've been pushing for an international treaty to provide a unified legal front to fight spam. Such a treaty could simply be modelled along the same lines as the the Berne Convention, providing a basic, consistent legislative platform common to all member nations.
If the Berne Convention can work for copyright issues, why can't a similar vehicle work for spam?
The biggest problem spamfighters have right now is that there is no inter-jurisdictional authority to chase and prosecute spammers. A convention would provide this much-needed ability to enforce anti-spam laws across borders.
We are just going to have to develop true AI, train it to the maturity level of a 12yr old. Now we have a perfect spam detection unit. All we have to do is show it peeks of pr0n for every spam detected and it will work day and night!
Any time governments regulate speech, it's risking censorship. Any time governments regulate technology they don't understand, they're even more likely to cause collateral damage than when they're regulating things they _do_ understand, and they've done a spectacularly bad job of that over the years. While your "at what cost" partially implies that that could be a problem, you're really not going far enough.
I agree that "would it be enforceable?" is an important question, or really a bunch of important questions, and I suspect that, to the extent that the regulations could potentially do something useful, the answer is "no". To the extent that regulations cause collateral damage, the answer is unfortunately "yes", though they would probably be enforced selectively, worsening the damage.
But "would the law work?" really is one of the critical questions - if it doesn't work, which it won't, you've still got the collateral damage, and you've still got the spam.
My own preference is to relax any restrictions on computer cracking when it's being used to stop spam. That's not harmless - Joe Job impersonations can be used to cover up crackers' activity - but it's at least emotionally satisfying :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
As far as American-oriented products go, most of the spammers are perfectly happy to sell their porn or blue-pills-purporting-to-be-Viagra to anybody in the world as long as they get a working credit card number. The credit card and mortgage loan offers may not do you any good, but they're not really any good for us. And the Nigerians will be perfectly happy to use UK bank accounts to deliver the ill-gotten gains of their dear departed father General Abacha.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Yup. the obvious method for them to stop spam is to remove the spice, reconstitute it into the original pigs, and let it fly away, and that'll work just about as well as anything else that they'll propose.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The main effect of these anti-spam laws will be to make pink contracts invalid and unenforcable, as well as help prevent mozilla being forced to remove baysean filtering because of lawsuits. If a spammer wishes to sue his/her ISP for terminating their service in violation of a pink contract, they have to rely on the courts. If a spammer wishes to sue earthlink or mozilla to stop anti-spam technology, they also have to use the court system. As any contract involving illegal activities is not enforcable, anti-spam laws will help considerably with pink contract spammers. Of course, spammers who use throwaway accounts won't be affected, though credit card fraud laws might help with those who use stolen credit cards.
I dislike spam a lot, but you have to love it spam when spam occurs so spam often everywhere. I spam counted no fewer spam than 15 references to spam in the spam article.
I can just hear it start: "Spam, spam, spam, spam..."
(Anyone who didn't get that needs to watch more Monty Python. They coined the term.)
I predict that pretty soon email in its present state will be unreliable to the point of being totally worthless because of all the measures folks will resort to doing in order to stop spam.
The only way we'll stop spam, and kiddie pr0n and all the other crap that pollutes the net is if we start imposing national laws on our own locales of the net. This might be easier than you'd imagine. Most nations have only a very few choke points that connects them to the rest of the world. China's already gone a long way towards this (hey I don't like their politics but you gotta admit they've been pretty effective). ISTR Hong Kong was completely isolated from the 'net for a while, around about the time of the Chinese takeover, all 'net connections were severed on a New Years Eve while the authorities cracked down on warez and virus merchants. Obviously the US and (to an extent) Canada are different cases. It'd be next to impossible for these countries to cut themselves off from the rest of the world, but then I don't think they'd want to. The 'net is a great asset to merkin commercialism and most spam these days can trace its origins back to North America. So I think we'll see nation states controlling what crosses their borders.
Yeah, but we're not worried because if anyone tries to use the cameras etc for any kind of wrongdoing, we'll just make it illegal! :)
You missed this gem from the FTC then? http://news.com.com/2100-1028-1015517.html?tag=nl
They spam because they make money out of it. Who do they make money out of? The supplier of the product that they are selling. In order to make that money, the spam must contain a link to the supplier. Hence the supplier is traceable. The solution is to go after the supplier of the product - they are the ones responsible for the spam.
There are a lot of "interesting" questions though...
What exactly is spam? bulk mail? automated mail? commercial mail? any or all of these? something else altogether? Perhaps as useful: what is not SPAM? It would be A Bad Thing to restrict legitimate bulk mailing, like mailing lists and so forth.
Who should be targeted?
What sort of penalties are appropriate? Can we extradite and imprison Mr Ralsky, or confiscate his assets? What about Johnny Clueless who wanted to tell his community about his new shop?
What are the risks and potential disadvantages?
Should technical measures be focussed on preventing SPAM, or making it easier to identify spammers?
Should it be made harder to sue blacklist maintainers, and those who use blacklists to protect their service? Should there be obligations on blacklists to correct mistakes or recognise that problems have been fixed?
Perhaps that's enough to be getting on with.
What does the assembled wisdom of Slashdot think?
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
But, just as ass regulation, it would need global acceptance, meaning it would probably have to be accepted as a UN resolution.
Yes, and we all know that everyone obeys the UN and its resolutions. Nice notion but I don't think a UN resolution will be of much practical help.
By the way, "ass regulation"???
After all, it's legislation that determines what courts decide -- even whether they throw out cases or not.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
COCK
-- - MC Knuth