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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 ..."
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
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Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
parser?
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.
"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 $100,000. Wait 100 days and that's a cool million.
Yeah, the spammers are outside of california's jurisdiction, but database errors and the like could make quite a few people millionaires. Scary stuff, IMHO
Two bills were proposed. One, which failed in committee was backed by many consumer advocates, including the article poster. The other, which passed, was favored by Microsoft, America Online, etc.
The bill which passed is regarded as less anti-spam than the one which was rejected. Is it? Dunno, I'd have to read the actual bills. Both appear to at least be a first step, and it should come as no surprise that the one backed by bu$ine$$ passed.
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.
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.
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."
why not install SpamAssassin or create your own filters and block addresses that frequently contain Spam?
I use server side blocking, I use procmail blocking with my own blacklist, and I have recently been playing with Squirrelmail which offers a SHITLOAD of options for fending off spam.
It's their right to send it to you, it's your right to block it.
"...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.
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).
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.
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
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?
Filtering is one thing, but that tidal wave of incoming spam still takes up valuable bandwidth. Some people, including myself, don't beleive the spammers have that right to send it to you, and want to take it a step further.
I shouldn't have to go out of my way to prevent all this shit into my inbox. Either way, they are still taking resources out of my livelyhood to make a buck. Not kosher.
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 home of the bought and paid for".
If you agree with the sentiment (as I do), then mod the parent up. If I had mod points today, I would mod it up, but this is the least I can do.
Un-news
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