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Still No Federal Spam Law
jdedman4 writes "Declan McCullagh writes in c|net that the Congressional Republicans and Democrats are quibbling over proposed federal anti-spam legislation. The root of the disagreement is the class action, a specialized joinder rule in lawsuits which needs little or no introduction, and which is prohibited in one version of the legislation. The new anti-spam legislation in Texas, which is to take effect September 1, has a similar prohibition. (See here for an analysis of the new Texas anti-spam law.) It is certainly true that the class action joinder rule can take a relatively frivolous individual claim that an attorney would not pursue and transform it into a lucrative and dangerous claim with a potential for high recovery. However, the measure can be appropriate when large number of individuals' rights are violated by a defendant's course of conduct but the cost of vindicating those rights is too great. With spam, the latter situation seems to be the most logical, as recipients of unsolicited commercial email are harmed, but their economic damages are not severe enough to merit an individual lawsuit on their behalf. Even with relatively high statutory penalties against spammers, the cost of locating the offender and investigating its corporate structure, if any, might dissuade a plaintiff's attorney from pursuing the claim. Plus, it seems the problem with class actions in this context would be practical, not philosophical, as most spammers would be either judgment proof or out of the jurisdiction."
Just some extra time for thought and consideration isn't enough, though. What is needed is time for the "laboratories of democracy," the states, to work through the various laws that have recently been passed, and see how they work out. Does the Texas model work better or worse than what's being done in Virginia, for example? Only time and a few high-profile cases will tell, and we should wait until then before enacting something at the federal level...
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Fat chance I know, but they could model it after Germany's (or was it Denmark's) law banning companies from soliciting to you directly unless you have requested their service or purchased from them recently
The truth is that none of them work well.
Laws against spammers just makes the problem more complicated. Sure, it looks like you are doing something. Maybe you even collect a few settlements.
But the people making spam just change their methods. Maybe they start hijacking machines overseas, or using Trojans to spam from others machines.
The spam problem is huge no doubt, but the answer is not some silly anti-spam law.
The answer is a technical one. The systems we use for email were designed without any regard for trust. We live in a different world today.
Don't invest your time in trying to get laws passed to deal with a problem we ourselves created.
Lets instead try and move to trust based systems for communication. I don't have the technical expertise to provide the systems, but a lot of people who do are working on such systems right now. Let's direct our efforts to getting those systems implemented.
Oh yes. Here's an excerpt of an actual HTML mail that I received just a few seconds ago (no kidding!)
s t o<!--69mmaa1pexd-->ne <br>d he<!--6lmv9k1zkj17sx-->lp achie<!--5my15e3y59yvl-->ve
W<!--46jq8c1th8zav-->e c<!--aj9ljc101w7w3-->an conso<!--da7zq11y1s-->lidate
yo<!--fvuygn1ybyh0e3-->ur bi<!--fadm0927fjcz-->lls in<!--7c04qy2madz6k-->to
ju<!--c6vh5j2rrxgn41-->
mon<!--8abwm21wqapw-->thly pa<!--trnntizw6rn72-->yment
a<!--592r8h3ym1u-->n
t<!--eoor4v63f2-->he foll<!--m74b39gb19df-->owing:
When viewed with an email program that understand HTML, the above fragment is displayed as "We can consolidate your bills into just one monthly payment and help achieve the following:". However, notice the random characters inside the comments -- what if they were encrypted orders to detonate a bomb at some specific location?
And I'm only half kidding...
Follow your Euro bills at EBT