Slashdot Mirror
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.
Where is the part about executions? I bet Teaxs spammer laws would have spammer executions.
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.
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
Debra Bowen, which was killed yesterday ...
Man, this spam war is getting serious.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
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.
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)
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
Show that to a couple of senators with the tagline "... of taxpayers money"
--LordKaT
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.
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."
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
"...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
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.
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
Why else can't we mark those " msn member services " as spam?!!!
"When a ball dreams, it dreams it's a frisbee"
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.
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
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...
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
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.
http://www.assembly.ca.gov/acs/newcomframeset.asp? committee=129
Voted For:
Assemblymen Paul Koretz, D-West Hollywood
Assemblymember.Koretz@assembly.ca.gov
Mark Leno, D-San Francisco;
Assemblymember.leno@assembly.ca.gov
Joe Nation, D-San Rafael;
Joe.Nation@asm.ca.gov
Juan Vargas, D-Chula Vista;
Assemblymember.Vargas@assembly.ca.gov
Leland Yee, D-San Francisco;
Assemblymember.yee@assembly.ca.gov
Voted against:
Assemblymen Greg Aghazarian, R-Turlock
Assemblymember.aghazarian@assembly.ca.gov
Bill Maze, R-Visalia
Assemblymember.maze@assembly.ca.gov
Voted against by abstaining:
Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana
Assemblymember.Correa@assembly.ca.gov
Rudy Bermudez, D-Bellflower
Assemblymember.bermudez@assembly.ca.gov
Ellen Corbett, D-San Leandro
Assemblymember.Corbett@assembly.ca.gov
Shirley Horton, R-San Diego
Assemblymember.Shirley.Horton@assembly.ca.gov
Abel Maldonado, R-San Luis Obispo
Assemblymember.maldonado@assembly.ca.gov
Mark Wyland, R-Vista
Assemblymember.Wyland@assembly.ca.gov
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
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.