EU Rolls out Anti Spam Strategy

An anonymous reader was one of several who noted an article about the latest developments in the EUs War on Spam. The article is pretty realistic in pointing out that EU Legislation won't be very effective unless Asia and the US do something as well.

Comments

Sorry, but....

[Stinky Glen20]

Sadly, this is utter, utter shite.

While it is possible to forge headers, use open relays, trogan poor @Home users PCs, etc, etc then SPAM will not be defeated by legislation.

Tighten the protocols, then we have a fighting chance.

Who Decides What is Spam??

[Captain_Loser]

My job is maintaining a Web/E-mail server, and I know just what a pain it is to deal with spam. But, if the government starts to regulate "spam" how are they going to decide what is spam and what isn't? MY favorite phrase is "run your life so the government won't have to, you won't like it if they take over" that makes sense. Don't get me wrong, I despise spam, and want to get rid of it as much as the next person, but how is this going to be controlled? I think we should proceed with EXTREME caution in situations like this or things will just get worse.

what kind of opt-out?

[Draghkhar]

Unfortunately this discussion's overly simplistic. What kind of opt-out legislation is the US considering? There's 2 main kinds I can think of. The first is to opt out with each provider. That approach seems disastrous -- spammers just change their name or address, and what a miracle, they can spam you again. The second type is to opt out through a national registry, similar to the "do-not-call" registry that's been/being implemented in several states (including Massachusetts). If enough e-mail users opt out of spam (and why wouldn't they?) it could cripple the commercial viability of spam (at least in the US).

A final point: maybe the European approach is more effective, maybe not, but I don't see why legislative uniformity is necessary.... As long as all countries are effective in decreasing the incentive/legality for spammers to exist, does it matter? Silly example -- let's say large country A fined each piece of spam at $1 million, and large country B implemented the death penalty for spamming -- I think spam would decrease a lot pretty quickly. Anyway, if several competing approaches are tried on a large scale, and one is far and away a success, others will follow suit. Please don't posit US government conspiracies to protect spammers -- all the Nasdaq-100 companies hate spam (e.g., Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple). So do 99.9% of their online constituents. Those are the parties US legislators will (at least try to) protect.

To Fix This Problem...

[mgeneral]

It's going to require more than just new laws and legislation. To fix the spam problem, you need to fix the SMTP protocol. At one time it may have seemed ok to allow anonymous, unverified mail services, but today, it is unpractical. A lot can be done to diminish spam if we can improve the SMTP protocol. Source address verification and usable certificate services wouldn't take that long to implement and would drastically reduce the quantities of SPAM.

Re:Gotta start somewhere

[jason0000042]

A technological problem cannot be solved using legal methods, it must be solved technically.

People flying through the windshield when they run their car into something is a technical problem. The auto industry developed safety technology on their own, thus solving the problem technically. But seatbelts didn't save many lives until they were legislated into all cars.

People still die in auto accidents, and laws don't work completely (I'm so tired of 'click-it or ticket PSAs). But sometimes solving the technical problem isn't enough.

I think this is a case where some laws need to be involved. You can't control people's behavior with software. You can't really do it with laws either, but that *is* their problem domain.