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Louisiana Tries Anti-Spam Law
chompyZ writes "The legislative battle against SPAMMING heats-up as a new law became effective yesterday in Louisiana. According to KPLC, the new law requires senders of sexually explicit e-mail to include a note in the subject line, "adv-adult," to let unsuspecting internet users know ahead of time. The Olympian reports that Louisiana officials actually think this will be effective... leaves you wondering if "officials" have any clue how SPAMMERS operate..."
Now subjetcs will be
adv-adult: Enlarge your penis
Way to go, I just don't know if this way leads somewhere:)
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
Though the paragraph is somewhat pessimistic the concept is a good one. Why not try? If it works, great, if not then tweak it till it does. I hope more states try something.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
and so I don't know the law you have there, but won't it just cause spammers to move outside Louisiana?
Subject: adv-4dult
Body:
Fr33 g0at pr0n c!ick h3re!
I'm waiting to see how futile an http://donotspam.gov would be.
Hard loop..... huh?
Dynamic Designs
Most every porn type email I get can be traced back to servers in China or The Netherlands. I doubt those Cajuns will be going overseas anytime soon to prosecute.
Hmm, just got a new porn email, from Pythonvideo, up in Canada. Hope those guys have a large travel budget.
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
...but they will be breaking a law in a clear cut manner, and that will be enough to start prosecuting. Jail time is the greatest way to punish someone, you effectively rob them of freedom, which you only have a finite amount of.
I think this might be the text of the bill.
"adv-adult: Fill your prescriptions from Canada, save up to 80% !"
That would be really helpful if I not only didn't have a spam filter, but took the time to read every spam that didn't have a pornographic title.
Of course, this only applies to louisianans who send non-anonymous pornographic spam to other louisianans.
Spammers are already breaking laws; highjacking mail servers, using trojans such as 'jeem' and 'proxy-guzu' to make others send spam, etc. I doubt this law is going to be the one that finally makes them operate ethically.
Perhaps they need to also make it a crime for an individual in the state to purchase a product or service from a spammer...
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
It may be ineffective in getting spammers to stop their penis and lolita porn spams, but it does give the state a way of prosecuting spammers. Remember, going after a criminal is just a matter of technicality. After all, they got Al Capone for tax evasion of all things.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
At least spammers operating inside the U.S. will be a little nervous when they get several notifications from lawyers after it was traced back to them. Bouncing emails off of or originating from foreign mail servers may be effective for not being able to do anything at the ISP level but if they are caught in their apartment standing in a room full of penis enlargement pill cases where the law can reach them at a business level..... They'll probably wish they hadn't sold it to all those prisoners who are winking & saying "you're my little puppy now".
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
The above article has been tampered - not just a mirror.
* Require welfare recipients to immediately begin looking for work once they receive their ass cheeks and to learn how to write a resume or prepare for an interview for a minimum number of hours each week or risk losing their benefits.
Most spammers operate out of other countries these days, as do telemarketers. If you ask one the next time one is on the phone, they usually call from another time zone or Canada (if the target is American). Most spammers operate from servers in Canada or small Pacific Rim countries that would prove immune from this law anyway. Note also that most of these sexually explicit e-mails are easily recognized by anyone literate as they tend to accumulate several consonants at the end of the e-mail title that form babble instead of coherent words. I find this an example of people saber-rattling in preparation for re-election campaigns, especially given that several other meaningless "vote-for-me" laws were modified or enacted at the same time. These include:
-no more execution of the mentally retarded (already mandated by the Supreme Court)
-allows telemarketers to call you if you "are referred to them by someone you know"
-increase penalties against drunk drivers who kill or seriously injure people while driving with over a 0.2 blood alcohol level (as if attempted/ murder is not serious enough to get life in prison anyway)
-no credit card company can give out anything of value to students unless they also get a brochure
Some of the new laws make sense, but again there are enough of weird and nonsensical laws that I wonder if such would make it to the legislative table, much less get passed, if not for the election coming up in about a year's time. Until then I await the first case of a spammer getting tried under this law if he/she/it/they are operating from another state or country.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
As each state and locality implement their own variant, some requiring "ADV:" in the subject line, some requiring "ADULT:" and this one requiring "adv-adult", all a spammer will have to do is claim that he can't possibly satisfy all of the constraints. Why can't we have a header which marks spam as spam, such as "Solicited: no"? Or just require that all spam use "Precedence: bulk"?
Not that any of this will be effective... but if they have to legislate something...
"Non-prick" traffic hours, eh? At least you could have changed it both places it showed up. Poor job. C- work, tops.
Check out my webcam!
You can't mod me down! I had adv-adult in the subject line!
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
+5 Troll
Good job mods. You could have either 1.read the story and saw it was not sd'd or 2.actually read the post and noticed the alterations.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
The problem is getting spammers to honor the law. First of all, I assume (the article did not say) that the law can only affect spammers who are based in Louisiana. That will not even chip away at spammers. Even if it were nationwide, it would be very difficult to chase down even those spammers inside our borders, and impossible to affect those outside.
If it did work, it would make filtering "adult" spam very easy. And I would find it gratifying merely to see a few spammers behind bars, or at least fined out of their livelyhood, for inundating us with piles and piles of junk.
And I would figure this will lead to "state sponsored" spam... more of the " we are a non-profit organization" that always wants to not profit with my money!!!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Actualy, any law that can be used to prosecute spammer is good. It gives a lot more liability for spammers sending sexualy explicit spam.
The more laws a spammer breaks, the more time he will spend in jail... Hopefully, else the spammer will have to pay a bigger sum, which is good too.
because spam tastes horrible in gumbo.
Handy for those with a spam filter, now you can save the only interesting spam from going to dev/null.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Could someone please make an add-on for your email client to open an email 1000 times in the same window in the background? To every single email you select. Not fetch it off the server 1000 times but just keep opening every email in its own window, in the background. "Why" is because I have noticed that most spam that I am receiving is html with lots of images and the images are loading from someone's server every time I look at one. 10 people using such a feature would be 10,000 page views per spam. Obviously if more then 10 people used it we could pretty much count on heavy graphics laden spams to disappear.
http://Lenny.com
I've noticed that most of the laws in this state are generally several years behind the times unless Washington forces a law upon Baton Rouge. Many of the laws themselves make sense. Drunk driving down here is ridiculous and it's plain stupid to not allow night work esp. on major highways like I-10. Of course, some of them are already under review. Privacy advocates down here are already throwing a fit about the DNA collection program, for example. And then there's that little loophole in the DNC list...I've a feeling someone crossed some palms with silver to get that put in. And they wonder why we finish dead last in state rankings of practically everything.
(As far as stuff being forced on LA by the feds, drinking age was 18 until a couple years before I moved down here. Congress threatened to take away Fed highway money unless they changed it to 21. Shoulda come to college a couple of years sooner :-()
Most spammers operate out of other countries these days, as do telemarketers. If you ask one the next time one is on the phone, they usually call from another time zone or Canada (if the target is American).
Interesting. From email spammers, this is not news of course, but for telemarketers (something we don't have a problem with in my country, thank heavens) that means that they still must make quite a lot of money if they can afford tons of international calls. Maybe it is really cheap to call Canada->US? Usually, calling to another country is pretty expensive.
coming from the state that brings you drive-through daquiri huts. There's a law in Louisiana that says you can't have an open container of liquor in your car. Somehow having a styrofoam cup with a lid and a straw is still a closed container. It's things like this that made me move away from that God-forsaken state. :)
as 99.9% of spam i recieve is usa based and iam not a USA resident or have any buisness there i managed to block it all simply by filtering the $ sign, works great and hasnt created a false positive in 2years of using this method
This law will get precisely zero (0) significant coverage in-state. The legislature probably passed it to see if they could get some easy extra money for the budget. If push came to shove, they'd drop the issue. BTW, if you're 65 or over and are a victim, the offender must pay double. Check the notes on the law, in a link I posted earlier.
So if I send a saucy email to my girlfriend, I need to include "adv-adult" in the subject line?
And in the meantime, non-explicet Spam continues to pile up.
Good job Louisiana.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I have a knew idea that was inspired by a /. article.
Could someone please make an add on for your e-mail client to open an e-mail 1000 times in the same
window in the background? To every single e-mail you select. Not fetch it off the server 1000 times but
just keep opening every e-mail in its own window, in the background then close when done. "Why" is
because I have noticed that:
Most spam that I am receiving is HTML with lots of images and the images are loading from someone's
server every time I look at one. 10 people using such a feature would be 10,000 "IMG" downloads per/IMG
Obviously if more then 10 people used it we could pretty much count on heavy graphics laden spams to
disappear.
If you look at the HTML you can see what type of effect
this
will have.
http://Lenny.com
Just gather spam and fine the spammer's client.
That'll make the clients go away and kill the spam industry. Let'em use another means of advertising because spamming will cost them tens of tousands of dollars a copy.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Actually, many spammers operate from INSIDE the United States, they simply hire companies outside the United States to send/route the spam.
Put their adv:adult tag in and get filtered by spamgaurd and call atention to the email so sysadmins will read it.
Don't put it in and go to jail?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
>Maybe it is really cheap to call Canada->US?
:-)
It is. A local ISP in Canada is handling support calls for some US internet provider (which, I can't remember) because it works out cheaper that way. In "bulk" I believe you could get the minutes for something like 3 cents each...
In fact, I know a telemarketer that I applied for a job at (hey, I needed the money). They called to many provinces away. Yes, that is much further than calling most eastern places in the US from here.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Will the mods please READ THE ARTICLE -
This is a TROLL please mod it down!
By "decrease", of course, I mean "exponentially increase unabated just as it has been doing for the last several years".
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
If I send unsolicited porn through the USPS I can be arrested, why is email any different? You don't hear to many people screaming that not allowing porno junk mail is a violation of freedom of speech.
I read your name as "sharpey" and thought you must own a lot of markers.
The state should be allowed to report publicly on those who purchase products from spammers. How would you feel if your driver's license picture was printed in a billboard with the information "this guy bought penis elargement pills and viagra online... he has a microsoft in his pants!"
There is an AC going around accusing people of copy and pasting and chaning articles.
Its not true. Look at the article yourself!
Dammit...why can't I remember my password...anywho --
"Most spammers operate out of other countries these days, as do telemarketers."
Wasn't it just noted recently by someone that worked for one of the largest spamming companies that most DO spam directly out of the US using US computers these days? He was saying that most spammers CLAIM to send them from out of the country and to employ folks from overseas, but Overseas Open Relay was just a code name for We Paid A Lot Of Money To Our ISP to Provide Us With A Spam Account In Which They Will Claim Publicly They Never Gave Us.
I've NEVER had an overseas telemarket call. I usually ask for the number of the company to call back when its convienent and its ALWAYS a US number.
Don't let them fool you...its coming from next door regardless of what you think...
We don't HAVE TO BE JUST LIKE THE SPAMMERS (in only six months!)
Click to remove and never hear from this /. user again oulsscs tyhecfz gy pz
kephqfh jt qwuixcdkejmpki bk niomleh n
t u
isint this what MS does all the time, take a good idea, and send it out in to the world, and test it later, and then try to tweak it untill it is fixed, or they have a new product to sell us, win ME anyone?
You want to see an online community where we all live by our own code of ethics?....
Fine. Earlier today I caught some asshole trying to run his spam through my mail server. The headers also showed him forging email addresses in my own domain name.
My "own code of ethics" is to pound this guy into a bloody pulp, then pound him some more. I doubt that you'll find many people in this situation who disagree with this attitude - this jerk is trying to profit by abusing my good name! He doesn't care that his actions will result in me getting bounce messages, angry responses, and possibly even being blacklisted. Hell, that's his PLAN!
Do you really want to turn us loose on the net as vigilantes enforcing our own law? Even if I might have qualms about taking out his upstream ISP - hell taking out his entire country's net - if it's necessary to make him stop, others won't hold back.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
* Require welfare recipients to immediately begin looking for work once they receive their ass cheeks and to learn how to write a resume or prepare for an interview for a minimum number of hours each week or risk losing their benefits.
Its right there.
Let's pass a law that forces district attorneys to actually prosecute spammers that break the law.
"We Paid A Lot Of Money To Our ISP to Provide Us With A Spam Account In Which They Will Claim Publicly They Never Gave Us."
Their ISP must be CogentCo.
Ideal would be making spam stop completely. That's a pipe dream, so I'll accept things like this. I figure it'll make a few of the spamming lusers actually start tagging their own subjects. I'm waiting for them to become a bit more common, then it'll be time for a little programming.
I already have a homebrewed milter program that looks at headers to detect the lameness that's been spewed through hotmail's DAV interface. It will be a small matter to look for the Subject: line and test for the various things that different states have mandated.
After that, it's easy:
INSERT INTO quarantines (ip,ctime,reason) VALUES (whatever, NOW(), "Subject contained ADV")
Once you're quarantined your mail server gets nothing but 4xx errors from me. If I really want mail from a host, then I make an exception. Otherwise they get to queue up mail for me for days and days until it finally gives up.
Spammers already do plenty of stupid things to self-identify. Things like sending HELO as *my hostname*, or sending mail as someone at my domain, or mailing my many spam traps. This will just be one more way to identify compromised hosts.
As a law-abiding spammer, how am I supposed to send both spam complying with the Louisiana law (including "adv-adult") and the Michigan law (containing "ADV:" as the first four characters?)
It would seem to me that I have to do something like this:
Subject: ADV: enlarge your penis [adv-adult]
I hope no new state laws are introduced, these are making it really tough to stay profitable.
I wonder if it's still legal to send
Subject: ADV: adv-adultery webcams!
The 'adv' still looks nasty, but I can't think of any word that ends in 'adv'.
You posted to the wrong post moron! Try reading the f**kin' post before you reply. Or are you the asshole who posted the changed article?
The law is not restricting your online activities. The law is restricting how you use other people's servers. All it is saying is that if you are using other peoples servers to send advertising for porn, that you must tell them that is what you are doing.
Fight Spammers!
"So if I send a saucy email to my girlfriend..."
You're on Slashdot. Ergo, you DON'T have a GF.
As someone who spent a great many years living in Louisiana and following/participating in Louisiana politics, I know for a fact that the officials of the "great state of Louisiana" are quite incompetent. After all, we have the 2nd worst roads in the nation and the 2nd worst education system in the nation (thank god for Mississippi!).
Fight Spammers!
>> leaves you wondering if "officials" have any clue how SPAMMERS operate..."
Actually it leaves me wondering if you have any idea how the law operates. As silly as this legislation may at first appear, you have to realize that (mostly) nothing is illegal unless there is a LAW to make it so. Yes, spam is already illegal in many states, but creating a law where spammers must insert adv-adult in their subject line is another point where would-be prosecutors can trip spammers up with, thus increasing penalties and even prison time. Its like when a murder is really heinous, prosecutors dont just try someone for murder 1, they get them on just about every count thats feasible to the case.
Hey, they should prosecute the companies that purchase the SPAM. That way there is no way to hide. The SPAM is useless unless someone is giving up their ID.
Now, the big drawback here is that someone could go after a company that they didn't like by artificially sending SPAM that appears to be an ad for them. But, it wouldn't be hard to make the penalty for that sufficient to deter.
Slashdot, Michigan HELLO!!
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
As far as stuff being forced on LA by the feds, drinking age was 18 until a couple years before I moved down here. Congress threatened to take away Fed highway money unless they changed it to 21. Shoulda come to college a couple of years sooner :-(
:-P
That was supposed to make you actually be 18 to get into bars, as opposed to 15. Too bad it didn't work. If you look even remotely mature, you can get into bars as young as 16. So too bad for you!
So let's say you limit those in the US from sending you spam, what are you going to do when they start relaying from borked out servers abroad... Better yet what can you do. Waste taxpayer money tracking down spammers abroad... Let's see $5000 to track them, another $1000 to bring them down here to face the music, $100,000k miminum for some sort of farce trial for something you could have taken care of with spamassassin.
Boy oh boy I don't know who is dumber the politician who passed this law or the spammer I hit d on using mutt.
MoFscker
There is no wondering here, we all know they don't have a clue in the world. But whats being done about that? I don't see any huge initiatives to educate our law makers into how these things really work. So what can Slashdot do to educate these people as to how spam really works?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
In the first months after the law went into effect the percentage of spam attacks with "ADV" or ADV:Adult" in the subject line was a full 5% on average. This compared to the months before it became law, where only 1 out of 20 spam attacks contained these in the subject line.
This in the state with over 1/10th of the U.S.'s population.
Bubba Catts and Ronnie Scelson, two of the biggest spam kings around (and two of the most public), are Louisiana residents, and they do porn spam. The anti-spam crowd knows their stuff by sight and can easily provide info to the appropriate authorities. If they can get Bubba and Ronnie on spam charges and drain their bank accounts before they wimp out and move to Florida like the rest of them, maybe it would send a message to the spam community that LEOs and legislators are serious.
Oh, who am I kidding? I spent six months living in Louisiana, enough time to know that they'd screw up a one-person masturbation party.
If using Linux is about choice, how come people complain when I choose to use Windows?
Why is
"Great offer at Wal-Mart, 2 for 1 Washing powder"
more acceptable than
"Great offer at Sex-Mart, 2 for 1 Vibrators"
?
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
If this is modded +4, all of slashdot is going to need a adv-adult...
Increase penalties against drivers who refuse to submit to a blood-alcohol test following an accident that kills or seriously injures someone and against extremely drunk drivers, those with a .20 percent blood-alcohol concentration.
Shit, you mean if I KILL SOMEONE WITH MY CAR in louisiana, I don't even have to take a blood alcohol test currently? I think spam is the least of their problems.
Well, this is exactly why the process of making laws is so difficult. It'd be nice if we didn't need any laws, and people would just act nice! The reality is that people don't act nice, and powerful people beat up on or take advantage of less powerful people. In theory, laws are written to protect us from the violent or dishonest. But, it's impossible to write laws that always apply all the time, and can never be misinterpreted.
So, that's why we have both the Legislative branch (i.e., people writing the laws), and the Courts, who interpret the laws. Complain all you want, but the court system is designed to take imperfect laws and apply them in a case by case basis. Sure, there is no way, by just looking at the legislation, to tell the difference between a scum-of-the-earth spammer and a legitimate free speech case, but we have judges and juries and yes, even lawyers to try to apply some kind on intelligence to the laws and apply them in a just and fair manner.
Not sure if that makes you feel any better, but at least that's the theory...
Your Servant, B. Baggins
Right on. Some people are whining about "free speech" problems of other methods and slippery slopes. Others see a "thinning out" of advertisers and easy filtering in some kind of utopian administration of laws like this. All of it avoids the fundamental fact that no one has the right to abuse a public network with adverts in the first place, and it's positivly perverse to use push in a pull network. Span is simply anti-social and should be banned.
Louisiana more than likely sees this new law as a new revenue gnerator. They can treaten spammers and in the future sell licenses and rig the system so that's it's imposible to filter the crap out. Trust Tauzin to fix this all wrong.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I hope all 50 states adopt different laws so that your subject must contain 50 different spellings of advertisment in English, Spanish and French. Then I hope the Federal government simply outlaws the practice so that you have to go get a job.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What? Why not everyone? Speed in LA, get a ticket. Thumb you nose at that ticket, go to jail. I don't see how spammers sending email to LA that breaks this law would be any different than violating a local speed limit. Spam me, get fined. Scofflaw the fine, go to jail. Seems easy enough, even if the vast majority of spammers get away with it, punishing a few will be sweet.
The implication that spam has a place in the world, if only it anounces itself, is one I don't like. It's kind of like saying, "It's OK to screw people if only you let them know it first."
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...Spam Defense Initiative. And you thought it was an anti-missle missle, or something.
Well it's obvious this law won't keep spammers in other countries from spamming us. Not even a federal law could accomplish that. I guess it's time to buy some firewalls off of China.
...rot13?
A long time ago I read an article somewhere saying that America may pass a law that says,
:)
If any illegal internet traffic that passes through American servers, they have a right to charge people from other countries, for doing whatever etc.
If that law was passed (i dunno) then they could charge any spammer in the whole world. They could abuse this law, but I doubt it. They do abuse some laws...minors can't drink beer
Karma: -2^0.5 . Mainly due to the imbibing of dihydrogen monoxide
http://www.spamhaus.org/rokso/search.lasso?evidenc efile=1070
This concept is doomed.
Why should the spammers follow the new law - they are already breaking the law by sending the spam, so why would they abide by this new one?
As an aside, I recently received a whole set of spam messages with the following footer:
Why do some people insist on writing the word "spam" and all its derivatives in all capital letters? Those people need a clue; they don't need to shove the fucking word in my face every time I read it. KNOCK IT OFF!
The Harris Poll people, operating out of harrisinteractive.com and using 0mm.com and messagemedia.com to send their junk is part of that $10 billion drag. They are themselves unrepentant mainsleaze spammers.
Harris and their polls are pro-spam. Check out the July 17th article here in which Harris is described as attempting to interpret their data as meaning that annoyance with spam is tapering off. Every able techie should add Harris's IP ranges to firewalls and router blocklists until they shrivel up and die.
French Quarter.
Two more words:
Mardi Gras.
Need I say more?
I just filtered out all mail with a @ in it!
Works great! 100% of the spam is blocked.
Oh, wait
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
too right i want to preserve and promote my right to "freedome to ignore"
do acts of random kindness and senseless beauty
I just started using it and it's worked perfect so far.
I find it a little scary that small programs like Firebird and Thunderbird are infinitely more usable than MS products while costing infintely less. seems like some kind of conservation law is being violated.
sorry, I managed to miss the opt-in part
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I have worked with one ISP or another since '96. Naturally, I have had the "illustrious" opportunity to speak with many "end-users". The thing that allows spam to continue, is that num nuts, like most AOL users, keep buying into this crap. I think that a campaign that exposes, illustrates and informs the "newbie" crowd to what spam really is and its fraudulent nature, would make a difference. The spammers would stop all this if they werent making any income. Some of the major spammers use their own T1 and so on. These connections are by no means cheap. If they werent making an income, they wouldnt be able to pay for the lines. If they didnt have the lines, then they would be reduced in their effectiveness. Eventually, once the head was cut off, the rest would wither. Its getting down to the source of the problem. Setting laws are great. And I earnestly wish them the best of luck, but thats only putting a band-aid on the problem. There are still those morons who believe that they can actually get rich from the investments of the Nigerian government, and who can get rich with a pyramid scheme. If they are educated (if not browbeaten), they will stop sending these **insert vulgar adjective here** money to keep their operations going. Just my $.02.
I guess the correct word is snailmail not "sendmail"...
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
99% of my spam is american. And I don't live there. There is the occasional british message (about all the spare IT/C++ jobs in london, once a week or so) german message (once a month from Helga) or chinese message (once every three months in gibberish) but the rest is written in USian.
..is:
1. Your ISP will fine you for using the word 'penis' in an email to a friend without the appropriate header.
2. Your ISP will fine you for sending a joke to 10 friends (unsolicited? - yes. bulk? - yes.)
3. The law remains impotent 'cos the spammer is in a different country or can be PROVED to be so.
Think 1. and 2. are daft? Well, your credit card company and bank fine you for transiently exceeding their limits, even though they want you to do so so they can charge you interest.
The law is a step in the wrong direction - namely limiting what U.S. citizens can do on the Internet, whilst making no difference to the whole.
As a geek who understands how spammers operate and grew up in Louisiana, let me be the first to say...
I'm sorry. I'm so very, very sorry.
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
...but at least a third, and sometimes even half, of my spam already has [spam] in the subject line. Some of these people, at least, think what they are doing is lawful and legitimate.
Yes, I know that. But the law dosn't say anything about 'unsolicited' mail or 'spam'.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
is un-needed 47USC sec 227, clearly states;
The law does not require that the message be send via a tellephone line, meerly that the recieving machine be capable of recieving via a tellephone line.
thus anyone who has sent an ''unsolicited advertisement'' (meaning any material advertising the commercial availability or quality of any property, goods, or services which is transmitted to any person without that person's prior express invitation or permission. to a machine that is capable of being a fax machine, but not necessarily used as a fax machine, is in violation of the federal law and subject to a fine of USD$500.00 or three times that amount if the violation is willfull( that's per incident too).
see the junk fax law for the law verbatim.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Hmmm, you make it sound like you caught him in the act stealing apples from your garden. I assume you mean you found evidence in a log file. And I assume you mean a gender-neutral version of 'he' - because you didn't actually 'catch' anybody and so we can't be sure of the gender either.
The headers also showed him forging email addresses in my own domain name.
Hmmm. That's the next thing I'd try when the 'FROM:' part of the SMTP protocol doesn't accept a mail from any old name. SOP. I hope that doesn't work either on your mail server. Spam relies on open relays on the 'net and I don't understand why anyone would run an open SMTP relay. Your server should respond only to a restricted set of IP locations only. Nothing else is acceptable. If you are using your SMTP server to handle your outgoing mails rather than the ISP you connect with because you can't be bothered to change SMTP server settings when you connnect with different ISPs, that's not very cool. Find a different solution.
He doesn't care that his actions will result in me getting bounce messages, angry responses, and possibly even being blacklisted.
If you are running an open relay on the 'net you deserve to be blacklisted, in fact you should be blacklisted ASAP. If you aren't, you shouldn't be worried. Just stay away from your various server log files if you find they raise your bile so badly.
Hell, that's his PLAN!
No it isn't. That would remove the juicy open relay. When you get blacklisted, the relay's gone. That doesn't help the spammer. Also: it isn't _her_ plan either...
This may seem to be a good move actually as there is a new marketing push to use solicitied email by Fortune 500ers but; the fact is that some people like getting mail and some do not. Providing the means to sort it all out in the mail box should be the responsibility of the service provider or originator and not the consumer? I think not. Louisiana is pushing away new buisiness with this frivolous law.
But most of us anarchists _are_ everyday normal decent people, who get along with our neighbors and try to make the world a better place and have a good time. You've just got a really limited view of "normal" is all....
And the Internet's big enough that "wow, like really cool" gets 864000 Google(tm) hits, so yes, you're probably just not looking at the right web sites or IRC private chat boards or whatever.
P.S. so does your band have a web site?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Spam is much more like shouting "Big Sale On Viagra" in a crowded theater, which is a bit annoying if one person does it once, and makes it not worth going to the theater if too many people do it too often.
If people aren't civil enough to refrain from doing it on their own, then theaters will either start limiting who can see their movies, or stick to movies where nobody minds not being able to hear and make everybody stand all the time so they don't go yelling "Down in Front" at the spammers all the time and make the tallest people stand in the back unless they want to pay extra for front-row standing-room-only space, which still sucks but maybe they'll still get some business instead of everybody but the spammers leaving.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
http://fz.os.us.eu.org/ i didn't want to seem like i was advertising...
You have a very nifty perspective on anarchy. I like it =)
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
But spam is just bits you don't want. So are the Ping of Death, and 30 million validated copies of the Monty Python Spam Song .mp3, and if somebody thinks it's ok for them to send you bits you don't want, they shouldn't mind if you send them bits _they_ don't want. Unfortunately, retribution while it's happening is _more_ susceptible to forging and spoofing, not less. The classic spammer "Joe Job" is to send out their spam impersonating somebody who's gotten in their way lately, so they get the flames and the spammer only gets the people who really want their Nigerian Viagra.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
National Laws don't keep foreigners from initiating spam - the US doesn't have jurisdiction over all those Nigerian spammers, even though their scams are clearly fraudulent as well as annoyingly frequent.
National laws don't usually keep nation's subjects from bouncing spam off of hijacked foreign computers, or renting time on foreign hosting center services, so even though all that mail you get from Korean servers is mostly sent by American spammers, laws don't have much effect.
Becoming non-national is trivially easy, so even if national laws _do_ magically become tougher and longer and harder overnight, all a spammer has to do is spend $100 to open a corporation anywhere in the world, which is just another setup cost along with the $25 for a disposable dialup account. So you're not getting Korean-relay spam from Joe Florida Trailer-Trash,
- you're getting Korean-Relay spam from the Able Baker Charlie corporation in Nigeria,
- which hires the Cayman Delta Echo Fulfillment corporation to deliver Fake Viagra for them,
- and CDEF hires Joe to provide local mailing services for them at an amaing profit margin.
- Joe's not spamming you - it's those nasty lawless Nigerians. Joe's just a worker-boy filling actual orders.
- And if your National Laws have enough jurisdictional flexibility somehow manages to charge Severe Penalties to ABC Corp, the most Effective Enforcement can do is rip up their corporate charter papers and try to confiscate the minimal amount of money floating in their Panamanian bank account.
- We're shocked, SHOCKED to find SPAMMING in NIGERIA!
- Then a new corporation, Global Oscar Able Tango Seesaw Corp, goes and hires CDEF to fulfill some more Fake Viagra orders.
and somehow Joe Florida Trailer-Trash keeps getting hired by random foreign companies to ship Fake Viagra to people.Joe probably doesn't even need two foreign corporations - he can probably use a single disposable Delaware corporation, though having an extra corporate cutout helps delay things, and going foreign helps delay things, and all of the steps hide the fact that he's really the only real stockholder, and if it's useful, it's easy enough to structure things so that the corporation doesn't really make any money, because it has a lot of expenses like renting a house for its contractor to ship Fake Viagra from.
The fact that most small spammers aren't bright enough to set up a Delaware corporation, much less a Panamanian corporation, isn't a problem - most small spammers aren't very bright anyway, and the big spammers can run a "legitimate" side business in setting up disposable corporations, as well as selling "bulletproof internet access" and "complete software packages" and lists of "9 billion validated opt-in email addresses".
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The only times I've seen anti-spam laws help anything have been by accident - a few years ago there was that failed attempt to pass an anti-spam bill in the US Senate, and spammers got in the habit of footnoting their mail with phrases about "According to Senate Bill S.1618, this email is Not Spam",, which were blatant lies but very unique strings that were easy pickings for a spam filter.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
so... what's your point?