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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."
It's not a bad thing that there is no federal anti-spam law. I would rather see some thought and consideration put into this than a law that is badly written and allows spammers to get around it. Or worse, a law that allows Ashcroft and Poindexter to get even further into my computer. No, Congress, take your time and do it right.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Lets forward it to all our friends, and tell them they have to forward it all their friends.......
Omnis amans amens
We just need to connect the word "spammer" with "terrorist" a little more firmly in the Congressional mind.
Despite popular opinion, a US law will only stop domestic spam, and the weaknesses of punishing the actual company hiring the spammer have been made clear before e.g. Hiring someone to spam your competitors product.
Why not continue working on more effective spam traps and stop legislating morality.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
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
What I would not mind seeing, however, is a system of torts that would allow users to take on spammers the same way that people get to take on telemarketers and junk mailers who do the same things. There are all sorts of scams, frauds, blackmails, etc... that come over the phone and through our postal system. Currently, US law provides for people to be able to sue up to $5,000 for teleblackmail and telefraud scams. Although this number is pitifully small, there does seem to be some interest in raising the bar a little.
We don't need a law banning spam. It would just be circumvented somehow anyway. What we need is a weapon for the people to fight back against the spammers with, a law that allows us to take them to court for practices already illegal that they have carried over into the digital domain.
IAALS.
Educate the sysadmins who are presumably inadvertently allowing spammers to use their SMTP servers. Educate the users about spam filters. The last thing we need is the incompetent government getting their grubby hands on yet another piece of technology they don't understand.
Spam should be protected as Freedom of Speech (Freedom of Expression in Canada). How else would I have learned about how unsatisfying I am with my small penis? Oh, let me also tell you about the great deal I got on herbal Viagra! And I'm not "seek of spam", thankyouverymuch! If people would quit bitching and actually responded to some of this informative mail they'd be MAKING MONEY FAST! In fact my contact in Nigeria, DR. FRED MBOGO assures me that I'll have millions more in just a few days as I sent my banking details to him!
Laugh away, cretins, spam made me what I am today!
Trolling is a art,
I am truly shocked at the level of clulessness that lawmakers show with regard to spam. Or maybe it's not so much cluelessness, but rather shrewd cunning in being able to pass what amount to pro-spam bills under the guise of anti-spam measures.
First of all, the "opt-in" vs "opt-out" debate was cute and everything in 1997 when we didn't get more than a handful of spam, but it's embarrassing that anyone is seriously maintaining that there's a need for debate on this issue. Opt-out roughly translates to "anyone can spam the living hell out of you and get off scott-free." The notion that it should be OK to send ANYTHING unsolicited, regardless of its advertised removal procedure is simply ridiculous. Imagine if just a fraction of every business (in the US alone) that wanted your attention sent you an email - email would instantly become useless. But on top of that, rule 1 of spammers is that spammers lie, and hence the burden of trust must NOT be on the end user to trust that the spammer will do what they're supposed to with those removal requests. Sure he'll remove you, from list 12499-B, but add you to lists 12499-C through -Q. Hey, it's a "functioning opt-out procedure", whaddya whining about? Only someone that is either clueless or is backed by advertising money would advocate something as idiotic as "opt out" as federal policy.
Next is the notion that it's okay as long as you put some token in the subject or promise not to fake headers. Here's where I make some bad joke that ends with "...and which one picks up the $100 bill first? The man-hating dyke, because Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Spammers That Give A Shit About Not Forging Headers are all FIGMENTS OF YOUR IMAGINATION." But seriously, this [Adv] subject line stuff is a joke. First of all, it's a bad way to filter spam because you have to accept the entire message in the DATA section before you can reject it, as opposed to rejecting it based on blacklists or other details of the "RCPT TO " phase. In other words it still costs your mail server bandwidth, time, and space. Additionally, this whole "put a tag so we can block it" makes the implicit statement that EVERYONE wants to block this unsolicited swill... which pretty much means that no marketer that wants to play by the rules is ever going to spend the time, effort, or money to send out email that's been self-immolated in such a way, and no spammer is going to give two shits about what he is or isn't supposed to be doing, otherise he wouldn't be a spammer. Therefore, adding "[Adv]" is a completely worthless idea, a conclusion that most clueful people made, about, oh, 5 years ago.
On top of that, I would really like to see any of these US lawmakers do something about the anonymous proxies strewn about Korea, China, Argentina, Brazil, Nigeria, and a handfull of other third world places. "Forcing" spammers to not forge headers is like "forcing" a mugger not to stick a knife in your gut and rob you when you stroll down a dark back-alley street with a huge wad of cash bulging out of your pocket.
What other inane things have congress-critters proposed? A national do-not-email list? Oh that's rich. Did the idea that it could be abused ever once cross their mind? Don't even get me started on this "prior business relationship" loophole either. It's not so much a loophole as a gigantic gaping gash. They've been playing that game for years already: "At some point in time you visited some web site of some affiliate of ours, and therefore this is a previous business relationship." Uh-huh. Riiiight.
Here's the point of this rant. I'm glad they can at least recognise the need for action but their attempts to do anything about it are so pathetically awful that I'm GLAD no such laws have passed. In my opinion, the best way to effectively combat spam is to force ISPs to enforce their own AUP's/TOS's. Spammers pay good money for so-called