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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?"
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.
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.
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.
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
The problem is, if the House of Lords debate is any indication, the possiblity of any laws whatsoever being passed is fairly minimal.
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)
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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).
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.
Yeah, that's a great idea. Guilty until proven innocent. I'll be sure to send out millions of spams claiming to be from whatever politician signs that crap into law.
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.
Huh? How easy is it to acquire new IP address space?
If there's only one country with no anti-spam laws, that country would likely lose its internet access completely.
- 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 !
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.
"Come again? Since when was a house of Lords debate an indication of anything other than the fact the members still have a pulse?"
You have never seen a house of lords debate have you, or even a lords commitee. Since reform the "sleeping" lords have all gone, all that if left is people with enough time to fully research the issues, and are not in the main whipped to any party line.
The Lords debates are of a far higher quality than the push-it-through-with-no-debate commons.