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Anti-Spam Bill Killed In California
Craig Newmark (craigslist) writes "In California, we had a pretty good antispam bill proposed by Sen. Debra Bowen, which was killed yesterday.
A pro-spammer bill, backed by the big media sites including Microsoft, passed through committee.
Here's a quick round up.
We're considering a big feedback campaign, based on conversation with staffers on what works for them, since they want to hear from constituents, as opposed to spam.
More to come ..."
the spammers and send them to Hormel to be converted to canned meat.
:-)
I'm sure Hormel wouldn't object; it'd be sweet revenge
Poor chap - we need all the anti-spam campaigners we can get.
It seems that the sentence ..."seek actual damages, or may elect to recover liquidated damages of $1,000 for each unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisement ... $1 million per incident, whichever is less."
..."seek actual damages, or may elect to recover ( liquidated damages of $1,000 for each unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisement OR $1 million per incident, whichever is less.) "
.."(seek actual damages OR may elect to recover (liquidated damages of $1,000 for each unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisement OR $1 million per incident)) whichever is less."
Should be parsed as
But it can also be parsed as
Disclaimer: IANAP.
Technology is still the best hope for killing spam. Laws may provide a few amusing high profile instances for public display, but they can't stop a threat that so easily straddles jurisdictions.
I thought Micro$oft was supposed to be against spam...
:)
Oh, I get it - they are against *everybody elses* spam.
hahahaha
-----------
Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
Didn't Microsoft just recently step up it's Anti-spam efforts as pointed out in this previous story
Maybe they're "selling weapons to both sides" by backing a pro-spamming bill so they can have stronger reasons to step up their anti-spam behaviour?
In C++, friends can touch each others private parts.
Spammers and Telemarketers alike have eluded capture. Consolidated in the lowest point in California, Death Valley, these Trolls continue to plot their evil plan for domination of all aspects of communication. Oh PowerPuff girls, where are you when we need you?
Where is the part about executions? I bet Teaxs spammer laws would have spammer executions.
I dont think the government is the best way to fight spam. It's a start though.
An anti-SPAM bill? I'll admit their product is a bit tasteless, but do we really need federal protection against shoulder meat?
The only good thing is it basically gives each spammer one "freebie" - surely a court won't believe they KEEP "inadvertently" sending spam. Will they?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
The story title on Slashdot: "Anti-Spam Bill Killed In California" The google link: "Consumer-Backed Anti-Spam Bill Passes" on almost every link. Am I missing something?
Where would this bill have any jurisdiction? A national bill really seems to be the only way to deal effectively with the problem, even though it's a step in the right direction. This doesn't affect the huge amounts of spam coming from Asian countries either.
Arrrrgh, the top link from the link to the roundup is to the slashdot story that links to the roundup that links to the ....
I mean who the hell wants to deal with spam, beside the spammers of course... and from prior /. stories I was under the assumption that they were slowly, slowly having issues making money due to better spam blocking techniques and people fixing their open relays.
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
I'm sorry, maybe I haven't gotten to the article that this person read saying that MS was pro-spam, but near as I can tell, there were two different anti-SPAM bills, and the one that was consumer-backed was shot down, while the industry-backed on moved on. Near as I can tell though, the industry-backed bill is still ANTI-SPAM.
Karma: Non-existant. Due mostly to the fact that you smell funny and nobody likes you.
Some where there is a small group of Vikings who are very pleased...
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
"According to an Assembly analysis, the spammer could be fined $1,000 per unwanted e-mail or $1 million per incident, whichever was less, plus actual damages to the recipient. An incident is defined in the bill as "a single transmission of substantially similar content."
Spam would go from annoying menance to lawyer-feeding-frenzy.
Example: Most people get like 10 spams a day. That's $10,000. Wait 10 days and that's $100,000. Wait 100 days and that's a cool million.
Yeah, the spammers are outside of california's jurisdiction, but database errors and the like could make quite a few people millionaires. Scary stuff, IMHO
Spammers and their likes flock and moves to Silicon Valley. A few local business men proposed that the welcome-sign is changed to "Welcome to Spam Valley" but suggestion was turned down due to the recent issue with "Spam" as a trademark.
Debra Bowen, which was killed yesterday ...
Man, this spam war is getting serious.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
...if we save ourselves before they get the chance.
Those old geezers like the good deals they're getting on viagra
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Microsoft was supposed to be against spam. (See slashdot article regarding Microsoft stepping up anti-spam efforts)
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
The summary is misleading. If you read one of the articles, you'll see that the measure that was passed was not in support of spam - it, too, was an anti-spam measure. It just wasn't quite as strict as the Bowen measure.
Furthermore, I don't know that I'd go so far as to call it "pro-spammer"; it still calls for fines to be levied. It just appears more "pro-spammer" than the consumer-backed bill.
The news link doesn't mention this, but Senator Bowen's bill was actually written by Greg Maddox of Spam Prevention Early Warning System (SPEWS) fame
It's odd that this would come up right now, but I've got a friend in the California state senate (he's a page), and apparently there's rumor that this bill may have been killed because some topless photos of Senator Debra Bowen have been floating around on the internet. It's ironic that the spam bill would be killed because of free porn spam.
Consensual sex is boring.
..we should forward all of our spam to the reps who voted agains the bill?
Eschew Obfuscation
Pro-spammers like Microsoft have lots of money and motivation. Anti-spam folks always have either one or the other, if any, but almost never both. Every now and again a rogue politician will take up arms against spam, but he or she always faces the 5 or 6 six politicians that either don't care, or are paid not to care by spammers and their interests.
"Debra Bowen, which was killed yesterday ..."
That's a bit misleading, wouldn't you say?
As of 10/06/03, I hate COBOL developers.
Step 1: Help shoot down anti-spam legislature.
... Right?
Step 2: Advertise that since spam is out of control, you're going to do everything in your power to help stop it, both in preventing spam from hitting your users and telling the government it needs to be stopped.
Step 3: Profit
I got nothing.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Dear Debra Bowen,
I would much rather you worry about cutting the grotesque amount of pork you and your Spend-o-crat buddies helped pile on during the tech boom than ineffective Spam legislation. We can't afford it, and until you guys figure that out, we won't have a budget. Thanks for your work on the Energy committee making the energy crisis even worse too.
Hugs and Kisses,
A pissed off California resident
America is once again getting fucked in the ass by big business. "It's bad unless it's OUR spam." That's Microsoft's take on it. If you think abuot this logically, you will realize that this all goes back to the problem of corporations being given the same "rights" as individuals. Corporations need to be accountable to the consumer. NOT the shareholders, NOT the CEOs, NOT the suits. Every time I see this kind of thing, it makes me feel that America has been so subverted by the corporate propaganda that things will never get better.
It's time to wake up people! Corporations DON'T care about your well being or mine. They only care about profit. If they have to poison the water, brainwash the public and abuse technology, that' just fine to them. But it's NOT fine to us. Do you honestly like bending over and lubing up everytime a corporation does this to you? Apparently a lot of Americans do. Fucking WAKE UP PEOPLE!!!!!! Don't you see what they've done to this country?! It's no longer "America, home of the free and the brave", it's now "America of the bought and paid for".
He contended that groups like Givens' that supported Bowen's bill and opposed his were being "silly and just don't like the fact that their bill, however constructed, didn't move forward."
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
...so he could carry out his anti-recall campaign. Doubleplus bad. Now his goons will send out tons of spam to people, trying to deluge their email boxes with INGSOC messages, "Big Brother Davis is always watching...wait, wrong story.
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/news/070203_nw_anti_spa m_bill.html
"But a judge could triple the fines if he or she found that the ad was sent intentionally."
a spammer with an established business does it by accident sometimes?
its sorta like pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger, can i shoot a spammer and possibly prove the results was not intentional?
Let me see your wallet.....uh huh....10...20... $32.00. Just as I suspected.
Give it up. It takes money to take money and you don't have what it takes.
What do I see? The post I just made at /.
That's pretty good considering the story only had 20 comments when I followed the link... Google News is really up-to-date.
May I suggest this alternate Google News link with a "-slashdot".
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
Fags.
Show that to a couple of senators with the tagline "... of taxpayers money"
--LordKaT
find the ones who voted against it and flood 'em with spam!
The bill that passed wasnt a pro-spam bill. It was a different anti-spam bill.
An anti-spam bill passed, just not that idiotic one that you wanted - you know, the one that would have clogged the legal system with every leech in the universe suing for 500 bucks for every e-mail they recieve.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Of course Microsoft supports the weaker bill. They are a spammer (sorry, "opt-in email marketer") themselves. Not as dirty as the others, but by no means clean.
sulli
RTFJ.
Why does the goverment have to get into every freaking use or misuse of the internet?
.ru , and all the other domains, and serving warrants on them?
Ok, say CA passed a law and allowed ppl to sue a spammer for say a million dollars, ok, so are you going to Korea, China,
"Wait wait" will be the protests, you can go after the big spammers like aaa,bbbb & cccc!!
yeah sure, dont you think they'd just use servers outside CA and perhaps the US to do what they've been doing ???
Trying to explain a email message header to a court of law may be one thing but getting the actual spammer may be a whole different game to play.
Ofcourse "my server was hacked and was being used for spam" will always be an option.
So whats the answer?
technology, even Windows machines have pretty good free Bayesian filter softwares available,(atleast for OE, & Outlook) and they are pretty effective, Popfile , SpamBayes are a couple which come to mind.
They will stop most of your spam, and a couple of weeks of "training" will catch most of 'em.
These softwares are not complicated to use, and are available through click and point interface no messy config files.
Ofcourse in the brighter side of this planet where free software reigns , there are too many spam filters available, server side, and client side. Pick one and forget the rest of the laws.
whew....
-- everyones not everybody and neither is everybody like everyone.
It was definitely pro-spammer, and ultimately pro-spam, in the sense that this is the best-case scenario for them. There is no way that the legislature could have completely nuked the bill, they would have been burned at the stake. So what did they do?
Reduce the penalties significantly
Provide loopholes for "inadvertent" sending.
So how do I prove that something wasn't inadvertent? Legally, I believe the burden is on the prosecution, and the bill allows for cases to potentially be tossed if the sending was inadvertent, or the penalties at least greatly reduced.
So bottom line is, if this thing gets passed, I want to see if it has any real effect upon spam or spammers. We shall see.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Make a site like the Boycott RIAA site and related but identify each legislator, where they stand on the position, and where they voted.
If they used a tactic such as leaving the room when voting time came, to prevent a quorum, or to avoid going on record for the vote, identify that if it is known. Or if not known, list "present" or "absent" votes/non-votes.
You need to get a record of where the legislator stands. Do they support spammers like aol, microsoft, and the other dregs of spamming? Or do they support a spam free in box? Do they support opt in? Or industry's favored opt out? Do they support the federal do not call list? Or can they be quoted as saying that there are better ways of accomplishing the same goal, adopting the marketing companies tactics by avoiding being in opposition of a law that the vast majority of the public favors?
Find out what their voting record is. Find out what their positions are. Then find out what they actually do, do they back up their positions with votes in favor of their positions, or are they looking for cover?
Find out the info. Then out them. Make a site that can be used by voters to make an informed choice on where their legislator stands on the issues.
Then let us know where the site is.
Daylight is the best antiseptic for this infestation.
Consumer-backed anti-spam bill; industry measure passes
... weaknesses in who it covers and how the penalties are meted out."
By STEVE LAWRENCE
Associated Press Writer
SACRAMENTO --
An Assembly committee has rejected a consumer-backed bill that would ban unsolicited e-mail ads but approved a rival measure supported by Microsoft and other computer industry companies.
Both sides argued Tuesday that their bill was the stronger one.
Both measures, one by Sen. Debra Bowen, D-Marina del Rey, and the other by Sen. Kevin Murray, D-Culver City, would prohibit the sending of unsolicited e-mail advertisements, which are commonly called spam. But they differ in the details.
A spokesman for Microsoft, Sean Sundwall, described the Murray bill as "probably the strongest anti-spam bill in America."
But Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group that supports the Bowen bill, said the Murray bill had "significant loopholes,
Sundwall said the Murray bill would provide higher potential financial penalties for spammers than the Bowen bill and make it easier for recipients to cut off e-mails from companies they had been doing business with.
According to an Assembly analysis, the spammer could be fined $1,000 per unwanted e-mail or $1 million per incident, whichever was less, plus actual damages to the recipient. An incident is defined in the bill as "a single transmission of substantially similar content."
But Givens complained the bill would allow a judge to reduce the penalties to actual damages and $100 per e-mail or $100,000 per incident, whichever was less, if the advertiser had taken "due care" to prevent the transmission of unsolicited ads.
"That gets back to the vagueness of the term due care," she said. "If the defendant can show that it established and implemented procedures reasonably designed to prevent spam it can get off the hook."
Bowen's bill would allow a spam recipient or an e-mail service provider to sue for actual damages or $500 per violation, whichever was greater, up to a maximum of $200,000 per day of violations. But a judge could triple the fines if he or she found that the ad was sent intentionally.
The bill would also allow a judge to throw out a suit before a trial if he or she determined that the transmission was inadvertent.
Murray denied that his bill was an industry measure.
"This is a bill I introduced without any conversations with any of them and in the course of pursuing the bill we took some amendments that made them not oppose the bill," he said. "Many of those amendments were taken in the Bowen bill as well.
"So I would not say it's backed by them. They have come to believe it's a significant work product. They bear the burden of much of the spam because it ends up on their servers."
He contended that groups like Givens' that supported Bowen's bill and opposed his were being "silly and just don't like the fact that their bill, however constructed, didn't move forward."
Bowen contended that Microsoft backs the Murray bill because it wants to be in a position to charge spammers to send ads over its system and to continue to sell anti-spam blockers to their customers.
"They leave themselves the maximum flexibility to be able to set up economic arrangements that can become profit centers in the future," she said.
Murray's bill was approved 13-0 by the Assembly Business and Professions Committee. Bowen's bill failed on a 5-2 vote, two short of the bare majority needed for approval. She said she would seek a second vote.
The FCC authorized a nationwide "do not call" registry to prevent unwanted phone solicitations. Why not also enforce a "do not spam" registry to prevent unwanted email solicitations?
You of course mean "Who's Bill?", short for "Who is Bill?" "Whose Bill" indicates you're wondering which slave-owner Bill belongs to.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Working for a great cause.. He will be missed and remembered by all.. Rest in peace.
Slashdot.. Land of nerds, trolls, and FlameBait..
...I wouldn't have spent that extra year in college. And don't think about that too hard, or blood will shoot from your ears.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
last i heard, ms was starting to outsource just like every other big corp.
:) go pink USA!
http://slashdot.org/~k0fcc/journal/38129
so, what American OS do you suggest?
perhaps we should start looking to the MacOSX,
BSD was started in the US, Apple last i heard was American. but then i don't really follow Apple News. i like my communist linux
Why the $? I dont get it... they like money? They want money..? And this is different from any other corporation, how?
Or maybe the $ represents the billions that the Gates Foundation gives to charities and 3rd world nations every year?
Is everyone seriously so impatient to solve the spam problem that they are willing to enact badly worded, overbroad legislation? Give the congress the power to regulate some aspects of the Internet, and that power will quickly expand into other areas. Do we actually want to go down that nightmare path?
Q: "Mr. Senator, how do you plan to pay for the execution of these new spam laws?"
A: "I plan to tax the Internet."
Of course, his reports leave out a lot of things, like young children having adds for bodypart enlargements, or graphic emails of beastialty in their inbox... certainly don't see that too often with Directmail.
But this guy is just one example of those who do lobby for spam mail... misguided though they may be.
A link to the audio stream is here
Insert witty
Slashdot for the last couple days has been nothing but lawsuits. Fuck this shit.
"...and make it easier for recipients to cut off e-mails from companies they had been doing business with."
I have more problem getting rid of spam from companies that I've *never* done business with. Businesses that I've bought from occasionally send out offers, but they're always very good about removing me if I ask.
It's not the legitimate businesses that are the problem, it's the spam kings sending out offers of huge manhood and low rate loans with "remove me" links that point to overflowing Yahoo accounts.
I use and love Mandrake because it is an excellent product. Boycotting Mandrakesoft will do nothing to change French policy.
:)
Mandrake Linux was developed by people worldwide, including Americans. Boycotting that would hurt everybody.
If the French product is superior, which in this case it is (versus your beloved Micro$oft), we are supposed to buy the inferior product just because it is American? That isn't patriotic, that is stupid.
Red Hat is an American corporation, yet you don't mention them. Since Red Hat was also developed by people worldwide (including French people), are we also supposed to boycott them?
God bless the U.S.A., German cars, and French operating systems
You, sir, are an idiot.
You wrote:
"Dear fellow patriots: It is with great urgency and sincerity that I bring to your attention the Mandrake Boycott.
You may not be aware that Mandrake Linux is a French product. Indeed, you would never know because of their shallow attempts to conceal this fact."
____________________
Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
... open relays to start with. Thats the largest problem. Shut them off and it will stop a large amount a spam.
I agree with some of the statements that the second bill does not go far enough. It should be crime to forge any email headers and there should be mandatory jail time for anyone who forges a mail header.
And lastly the bills should allow consumer to sue those companies advertised in the spam. Make it too expensive for the companies to use that avenue and they will stop hiring these damn spammers.
"Your having a bad day when the voices in your head put you on hold"
They are creating software to block the spam, and can therefore charge you an arm and a leg to buy their product to block the spam. It's kind of like promoting guns/ammo then selling bullet proof gear.
Bubs: Oops, I dropped a quarter for each one.
You got Spam!
What I want to know with all of these spam penalty ideas, is how do you bill them? Does the state send one big bill at the end of the year? At taxtime? What if the spammer is in a foreign country? Does this only apply to spammers located in California?? etc. etc.
If we can track them down to bill them, why not just beat the living s out of them then?
--D
p.s. Craigslist fricking rocks! I just wish more people in Sacramento knew about it (and knew how to use computers actually).
Um, I'm pretty sure you've been trolled.
You would have to do more than that.
You also have to have every machine in every nation you do business with have perfect security also.
How many stories have we all read on spammers using compromised machines to do their spamming form?
A US congressman friend of mine recently asked me what I thought about anti-spam legislation. I told him it is a waste of time. Legislation can't stop spam, deny lists wont stop spam, and firewalls wont stop spam.
The only way to stop spam is to scrap SMTP and build a new trust based system from the ground up. The protocol is broken and can't be fixed.
Isn't the next logical step to ask Bill to kill spammers?
Ceci n'est pas une signature
If more people used it then it would be bogged down and it would suck, information overload.
Dammit! Now that I think of it, you're probably right.
You've gotta love Slahdot.
hahahahaha!
Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
You may not be aware that Mandrake Linux is a French product. [...]
One quick way to tell an idiot from a patriot is that the latter doesn't automatically assume you'll feel the same way they do about a particular issue just because you happen to be a patriot.
Of course, I use Debian, but I wish Mandrake well. Viva la Mandrake!
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
this is a joke right...? I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic. French stuff is the best. Lacoste apparel rules. French wine is the best. Perrier is the best. Peuguot rocks. Michelin rocks. VIVE LA FRANCE! =P
Very, very interesting, if not duplicitous.
That said, I think we have a civic duty to uncover the email addresses of the politicians who passed this bill, and subscribe them to many, many mailing lists for every topic under the sun. Perhaps they will feel differently about spam when they get more of it.
Added to which, you once again come up against jurisdictional issues when gathering evidence from these nations.
What we really need is a law which lets you go after not only the spammer, but the company who hired him. Start going after the companies behind this and you will dry up demand for the services of spammers. If they are an overseas company, then revoke their right to do buisiness with anyone living in the United States or whichever country the law is enacted in.
That is what is needed, to put pressure on these clowns who are hiring the spammers in the first place.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Hello! Spam isn't a problem anymore.
Thanks to Paul Graham, we now have per-person statistical filters that catch 99.9% of spam, with a little bit of training and that are impossible to get around (what get's around one person's filter is caught by most others' filters).
Unless you are living in the craptacular world of web mail or hotmail, you can use this new fangled program called Mozilla 1.4, and filter spam out nearly perfectly. Or you can keep bitching and have your representation introduce even more legislature in the country home to 70% of the world's lawyers.
In conclusion: stop crying, get off your arse and take ten minutes to install bayesian filters.
This article from the paper in Senator Bowen's district covers it pretty well. Senator Bowen has been a strong consumer advocate and has introduced many similar bills in the past. Her most notable work was trying to enact stiff penalties for junk faxes. That bill was also killed by the spam/fax lobby.
Since Bowen is the senator from my district, I cannot vote against the other corrupt politicians who killed this.
yeah, you're funny, too! About as funny as hemorhoids, so, let's see, that would make you...
Back to work, microsoftie!
It's an interesting development, the issue of spam and the internet. Spam is certainly one of the causes of the story I heard on the radio about "people leaving the internet in droves" since it obviously decreases the usefulness of email. It also is obnoxious. These 2 things make the internet a very mixed experience for Joe and Jane Hicksville. Ironically, it is also a large consumer of network bandwidth... which, working for a large networking monolith is good for my employment. I'm personally comfortable with using a spamfilter, but on a larger scale, as many have said before, it is a major obstacle. And on a seperate level entirely, there is far too little consumer protection associated with spam driven marketing campaigns to make them ever really legitimate. Your advertising, but how much truth need there be in your advertising? If it's such a legitimate business tool (or so they claim) then why aren't they associated with more legitimate business practices?
What if we start forwarding all our spam to our congressman, Every day?
The earliest I can find on the net was 25 years ago (1978) as the first recorded, but wasn't called spam. It wasn't callecd spam until 1993 the first to be called spam happend on usenet. I'm pretty sure that when somone today speaks of spam (or 10 years ago, when it was first coined) they were an are referring to usenet, and later to email spam, not any rinky-dink BBS.
check out Brad Templeton's site for a bit of history: http://www.templetons.com/brad/spamterm.html
Its obvious that a legal solution to spam will not happen anytime soon. Instead, I personally take matters into my own hands: I registered my domain and found an inexpensive webhost ($10/mo can get you a truly decent webhost.) From there its easy to create all the email accounts you need, as well as install anti-spam software.
Alternatively one can just set up a *nix box off a DSL line and run your own mailserver with whatever anti-spam tools you choose. It saves you the $10/mo and its a little more work, but you do have complete control of the box. Doing this, my spam has fallen to almost nothing.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
But passing a "State Bill" will have no effect on the high traffic of spam. Since, IMHO, spammers are outside of the US and find some dumbass IT guy that leave Port 25 wide open for relay use, and Spammers use that server (instead of their own) to send their spam mail. How are you going to stop that!?!?!? There are many many dumbasses out there!!!
The only true way to stop spam is to have international laws. That allows countries to send there own force to weed out the bad guys, or at least hold the Governments responsible. If the UN had any balls , this could be a reality!!! Have them setup a task force, just for this reason. To stop Spam........if Spam bothers you...Me thinks it's funny.....
It's left blank because I have nothing to say to you punks!
The problem with most anti-spam bills is that they are overbroad. That might be the case here.
The problem is, the bill targets the spam-senders, who are acting pretty much anonymously and out of jurisdiction.
Why not simply target the spam-originators?
I mean, for every "Click here for crap" or something, there's a guy who expects to get *paid.*
Why target the middlemen, when you can go after the moneymen? Why target the supplier when you can target the demand?
"A pro-spammer bill, backed by the big media sites including Microsoft, passed through committee."
from abc7news: "According to an Assembly analysis, the spammer could be fined $1,000 per unwanted e-mail or $1 million per incident, whichever was less, plus actual damages to the recipient. An incident is defined in the bill as "a single transmission of substantially similar content." But Givens complained the bill would allow a judge to reduce the penalties to actual damages and $100 per e-mail or $100,000 per incident, whichever was less, if the advertiser had taken "due care" to prevent the transmission of unsolicited ads. ", under the bill that passed. Doesn't sound very pro-spammer to me even under the reduced penalty.
Vote for Pedro
The usual suspects. 'Nuff said.
To quote Bugs Bunny, "You know, of course, this means war."
Why else can't we mark those " msn member services " as spam?!!!
"When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee"
Damn our US government sucks. This is so typical. Whenever there is possible legislation that would actually benefit the poeople, there are some dirty lobbiest to hand out money and even dirtier politicians to collect it.
Will the US government ever wake up? Will the politicians stop their corruption? What steps do we need to take to restore our deomocracy so that it is not run by big corporate America and all their paid for votes from their paid for politicians?
I think We the People need to think about using our constitutional rights to use force and bear arms against the government to restructure it to a functioning body again. OK, who is with me?
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
that Microsoft was evil, this was it.
They ARE evil incarnate.
I hear Bill G. is building a dark tower in Redmond... I think the working code name is Barad-Dur......
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
Not a couple weeks ago against 10 ISP's for sending spam! What a crock!
What's becoming clear is that Microsoft has a strategy to control spam, not eliminate it. You'll find that the legislation that Microsoft supports typically: 1) legalizes spam, 2) mandates opt-out, and 3) places power of enforcement in the hands of service providers rather than individuals.
One essential element of any good anti-spam law would be the right to private action: the spam victim gets to go to court and collect damages directly. This is one of the things that has made the junk fax law so effective. This is precisely what Microsoft does not want to happen.
Although the Microsoft supported laws aren't killing private action outright, they tend to make it useless. For instance, the trick they pulled in Texas was to allow ISPs to collect $25,000 or $10/spam, whichever is more, but individuals get $25,000 or $10/spam whichever is less. So, under the new (Microsoft-endorsed) Texas spam law, you could drag a spammer into small claims court and not even collect enough to cover your filing fees.
I believe Microsoft's intention is to chase away the rogue spammers, and then turn the corporate spammers into a revenue stream. So instead of 100 messages/day sellng us viagra or pr0n, we'll get 100 messages/day selling us insurance or aluminum siding. Oh yeah! That's so much better.
The root cause here seems to be the almighty buck, pound, peso, krugerrand, etc. Spammers are in business because someone pays them to send spam.
Can we create legislature that makes it illegal to hire someone to send spam for you? You know, the same way it's illegal to hire someone to beat up your good-for-nothing neighbor. While the spammers are hard to backtrace, the product offerings have to be traceable, otherwise they wouldn't be selling anything.
The downside of this suggestion is that it's easy to frame a company by sending out spam in their name.
Unless its something like 100% accurate and doesn't leave a spam folder I still have to cull through to check for mislabeled emails.
Bayesian filtering gets a lot of attention and I'm guessing mainly because its such a technical solution, but really its just another hack.
So far I've had the best luck with an old fashioned challenge-response type system (ala bluebottle.com) and while its not as sexy sounding as Bayesian filtering, its saving me the sheer frustration of having to weed through other peoples crap advertisements or worrying about dropped emails (except of course automated emails, which I have to use a more spam friendly account for).
Quack, quack.
Looks like you were correct. You were modded down. Seems like this isn't a safe subject to discuss. I still don't understand why though. I've brought it up a few times myself (not that I really care about either side of the argument) and each time was modded down. It doesn't make any sense. To me, it just seems that both parties are acting like vengeful geeks in the truest sense of the word.
Un-news
Try this as an email spawn feature to get your
message accross to these politicians:
#define ever (;;;)
for (ever)
{
email_recalcitrant_politicians
}
This is just psuedo-code, it won't actually compile.
'your lawn' was supposed to be written as 'their lawn'
Microsft just started a big lawsuit against other spammers, saying that spammers where using large amounts of bandwidth and space on hotmail servers. why would they back pro spam legislator
Makes no sense to me
At least Missouri does and I imagine most others do as well. So if you did forward your spam it might not get there.
The problem is half of our reps and senators don't even use a computer. Their assistants do but they don't. In Missouri at least, some of the ones that do use a computer see "just hit delete" as the perfect solution.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
The fundamental problem with spam is that it's resource abuse. Filtering only increases the resources used.
By putting legislation into effect most spammers would move their operations offshore. The simple solution is to block those companies. To most of us it's not a big deal as we don't do business with companies outside the US. But it does hurt international business for those who do and it shifts our problem onto someone else.
I can only imagine the Good Guy sys admins overseas pissed off because their customers can't get email to American companies after having their entire country blacklisted.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
I guess we will have to hunt them down and kill them now.
I would love to agree with you, and maybe I'm just too damned cynical, but I see some kind of crappy defense where they say that they actually had an opt-in list they meant to send that to, or that they didn't know their list wasn't opt-in, or some tripe like that.
And see Your Honor? Not a single spam has ever been sent from my account before. Nevermind that the account is two days old.
My thought is that between spammers using a different account for each spam sending and claiming they clicked the wrong button in their spam software, they should have a built-in, strong defense. Combine that with the technical inadequacy of judges, and you have a situation in which spamming won't be curtailed that much.
Maybe you're right, and I'm not giving the legal system enough credit, but when I bet on its stupidity, it hasn't let me down yet.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
So I'm reading the news.com summary, which is a bit biased, but basically shows the slashbot title as being grossly misleading. California is still debating an anti-spam bill, and will probably pass one.
It just won't be the one written by Senator Bowen.
From reading the articles it is unclear if this is a bad thing or not. Bowen sounds hysterical, and the Murray complaints against her bill are not very specific.
Need more info. Or am I just supposed to be outraged like a good little slashbot?
Notice that as of this writing the Google "roundup" referenced in the story has the story itself as the second link... the consequences of this to "PageRank" are now mindboggling...
there once was a country where stealing was permitted. Sounds odd, but its true.
Well the ruler thought this was wrong, but could not overule an existing tradition.
What nhe did was require thives to carry a 'registration card' of sorts.
The catch is, the registration card was a 500 pound piece of granet. The penelty for stealing without a license? death.
So allow spam in general, but forbid it being sent to politician, charities and children. Put the responsibilty to know who there sending it to on the spammer. The penelty for violating this is $1,000,000 per offense.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Last week I saw a Charlie Rose episode where he discusses spam with a Cnet editor, FTC commissioner, AOL VP and a Microsoft Attorney. The stance of all those involved were against spam and wanted to do something to reduce it. It's a interesting discussion and I suggest you try and catch it if it's on again.
http://www.charlierose.com/thisweek.shtm
"He who has the money has the power". What burns me is that there are pro-spammers in the legislature. These people are supposed to be representitive of the people that voted them into office. How many constituents do you think support spam? What kind of crap was ridered on that bill that made it unpaletable to the reps that voted against it?
I'm so confused, conflicted, and concerned. The Democrats own California government, body and soul, and yet the legislature keeps selling out to business. Yesterday it was the shootdown of financial privacy legislation, now this. The only way the pubic is going to get anything useful passed is the initiative process. Or maybe even elect a few more Republicans, just to see if they might do a better job.
On the other hand, it is not a meaningful impediment to suing real spammers. All it means is that you have to prove "more likely than not" that it wasn't a mistake. This isn't "beyond a reasonable doubt" we're talking about.
Who do you think the jury will believe?
Microsoft offering solutions to the spam problem is to Microsoft offering an OS that don't require rebooting every 2 hours.
:-)
;-)
One might consider using a method employed by Sneakemail which creates dynamic email addresses. Make a bunch of them.. have one for friends and family, and use seperate addresses for newsletters, or advertisements (you actually want.) If spam comes through one of them, then just delete that address so that spammers only see that big "No address" error pop up.
But then again that doesn't stop spammers from spamming anyways, nor does it tell the blackhat ISPs to stop harboring the scum. In which case, I'd stick with using blacklists to block the idiots.
No, I am not part of the high and mightly Lumber Cartel (tinlc). I am not one of their secret agents involved in their super-secret black ops projects.
!@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
All we have to do is find all the email addresses of pro-spam legislators and sign them up for every source of spam we can find. That'll change their minds quickly.
Based on the email I get, 99% of all MSN (and AOL, etc.) customers are spammers. Maybe my sampling method is flawed, but it bears examining.
Johnny
You are one funny guy ever consider a career as a writer?
Diplomacy is the art of saying "Nice doggie" until you can find a rock. Will Rogers
http://www.sen.ca.gov/ftp/sen/committee/STANDING/B USINESS/_home1/PROFILE.HTM
Members:
Senator Liz Figueroa (Chair)
Senator Samuel Aanestad (Vice-Chair)
Senator James Brulte
Senator Gilbert Cedillo
Senator Michael Machado
Senator Kevin Murray
Senator Edward Vincent
As much as I hate getting spam, I'll deal with
it. It's bad enough RIAA is paying off legislators
right-n-left to get their agenda accomplished.
You proponents of this spam bill will be the
first ones to complain in 5 years when there
is a federal "surf tax" and "virutal sales tax"
and "State IntraNet Gateway Surcharge" etc. etc.
These friggin politicians are seething with frothy
gums at the potential for taxing your internet
activities to death.
This is where it will start. Get a friggin spam
filter and shut your cake-hole before I have
another tax form to fill out every year.
So what ? Is this News for Nerds ?
Next they will tell us that "Antivirus Bob stole horses in Texas", that "Passphrase Jack lynched niggers in Arizona" , or that "Firewall Jim sold bootleg whiskey in Kansas".
This is not 1880 anymore !
Quote from fark.com:
"Just finished deleting another dose of SPAM from my inbox - enlarge this, reduce that, free diploma, fix credit, blahblahblah... ad nauseum. I realize that SPAM (as well as telemarketing calls and junk mail) is such an epedimic because it actually works. Someone, somewhere, must be making money off it. I often wonder what type of person buys into the spammers spiel. My guess is that it is the same people that bought into the tobacco company's spiel. I mean, if you can sell someone a CARCINOGEN!, surely you can sell them anything. Sending penis cream SPAM to a smoker must be like money in the bank.
So, the next time you get fed up with the amount of SPAM in you inbox, march down to the nearest designated smoking area and kick a smoker in the nuts. You'll feel much better, because, truly, smokers are to blame for SPAM."
The only way to stop spam is to scrap SMTP and build a new trust based system from the ground up. The protocol is broken and can't be fixed.
If you weren't already at 5, I would have modded you up. Wish I could mod you higher. This is exactly correct, and it makes me a little crazy to see all the continual wasted effort to plug holes in the dike even as new ones steadily emerge.
Please make sure your congresscritter really understands that, and convinces all his/her congresscritter friends the same way. We need to get moving on the alternative, whatever it's going to be. (Tripoli?)
-- http://frobnosticate.com
I can't believe that Anti-Spam Bill was killed in California. I was just talking to him the other day! The world will surely miss Bill and his anti-spam efforts.
Anti-spam is a deprecation of those rights.
A lot of trolls who are favored by moderators here will respond about how they hope I get spam highlighting it with mention of vulgar ads, and they will be modded up. It is unfair, but I understand how far to the left the general readership here is and how popular it is to ridicule statements that are perceived to favor Big Corporations.(TM) This is in spite of the fact that were the law to take place and I wanted to advertise my machine shop, my activities would be criminalized for simply advertising.
Read the constitution. Nothing in the constitution says that my rights to advertise my product is in any way subordinate to a politician making a political statement or to a newspaper publishing an editorial. Advertising products is every bit as important as political speech, and I submit to the readership here it is in fact far more important.
Dawn of the Dead
That's what I use with my private mailbox: all unsigned email is answered with sugestion to sign email with a recognized key. So, all unsigned email belongs to black-lists.
Some of them answer with signing their messages with some key. The filter is checking if the public key is in my white keyring (then I see email), if not - they are checked against public key-servers and if there is a key there then they are marked "grey". When I read "grey" messages I can save the key in a "white-list" keyring or drop the message to the "black-list" folder where the key will be picked up and stored in the "black-list" keyring.
It's about two years as I implemented it on my home mail server and since then I don't read any spam. I don't have any problems with my friends either.
I am not telling to install mail-servers at every home, but it's not a big deal for ISPs to implement the same service on their mail servers. No need to wipe out SMTP. No need even to re-write any internet software - just use what we already have, but do it smart :)
Less is more !
I'd actually like to hear more of this, one would think this would make legislators more likely to vote against the bill, lest they find their daughters in porn spam pics dumped into their e-mails.
Tech Public Policy stuff
And you have a problem with this because?
Do you fear getting tied up in small claims court by working anti-spam legislation?
Do you call yourself a "Direct Marketer"?
Tech Public Policy stuff
FUNNY CUZ IT BASHES MICRO$OFT!!!
hahahahahahahaha!!!
Mod up, mod up!
http://www.stopissa.org
People are right when they say technology will provide much better answers than law.
However, address harvesters attack our site and spam people, and this pisses me off. We've taken some measures to prevent this, with some luck.
Every coupla days or so, I get a spam report, though, that I can do something about. As a result, I've shut down around 165 spammers to this date, and it really helps to cite the existing California law.
I really could use a law which better defines spam, and which would allow me to go to small claims court and nail some more spammers, bigger game.
Also, I'm really disappointed to see legislators vote on something they know is wrong.
Well, let's see. The more you tend to the right side of the political spectrum, the more you're pro-business, while the more you tend to the left the more you're pro-individual.
The Republican party is to the right of the Democratic party, so in a relative sense, you're correct. However, anyone who is substantially left of center will consider both parties to be a bit conservative. The Republicans are about an inch to the right of the "center", with the Democrats an inch to the left, while the "center" itself has been shifting further and further to the right in recent years.
Call me a radical, but Democrats on the whole seem extremely conservative, considering.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
This is all nonsense. It's time for email to work on a challenge-response basis. I send an email to a user on your server; your server sends me back a weird non-scannable fucked up looking psychedelic "type in the code that you see in this picture" .png image. I type in the code and my client sends it back to your server. Your server now knows that this was not send from a stinking spambot. So maybe it IS unsolicited - but am I going to send a million messages every day?
OK so maybe not strict enough. Wish i could remember the link, but combine this with an email "grey list" and suddenly the spammers are crippled to the point where it isn't worthwhile anymore.