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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 ..."
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.
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.
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
You also have to have every machine in every nation you do business with have perfect security also.
Good point, but my solution was designed for... me. I've given up on the spam war. Now, I only care about my personal inbox. I blacklist IP blocks willy-knilly (but not so many that it would make sense to move to a white-list. Yet.). I've NEVER received anything important via email from anyone I didn't already know.
Job offers? They phone me.
Emergency? They page me.
Going out for a beer? They IM me, or they knock on my damn door.
Business? They send it to me via our secure LotusNotes server (yea, yea... IBM is VERY different on the inside than it looks from the outside. We use OS/2 Warp on critical servers too.) Or they email me normally (I know them: they're not blacklisted).
Pleasure? Any girl who propositions me over email (unsolicited, mind you) is probably not very high on my ladder to begin with.
Email is not a way to receive messages from strangers anymore: the spammers have ruined that. Email will likely become a white-list based messaging system and nothing more. It's a pity, but we've already crossed the bridge, and there's nothing left to do but to burn it behind us.
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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.