FTC Chief Bashes Anti-Spam Bills

teutonic_leech writes "According to an MSNBC report FTC chairman Tim Muris has indicated that the antispam laws being considered by Congress 'just won't work and may even be counterproductive - some of the proposed laws could be harmful, or at best useless.' He further concluded that 'In the end, legislation cannot do much to solve the spam problem, because it can only make a limited contribution to the crucial problems of anonymity and cost shifting.'" Other spam bits: an anti-spam service has a funny interview with one of their users, and reader der.hans submits a story and some pretty pictures discussing the quantity of Sobig.f virus emails.

Comments

spam is becoming a problem like pollution

[stonebeat.org]

spam is becoming a problem like pollution.... we can not get rid of it, so we will just have to live with it :( http://www.xml-dev.com

Re:The guy's right

[kindbud]

Contrary to what some people say, the existing technical SMTP protocols are perfectly adequate for spam-free email: you just need a virtual email network using smtp, to which anonymous users are not admitted.

But there is no mechanism in the SMTP protocol to do that. You have to add something on to it. Now it isn't SMTP, it's anonymized SMTP on a virtual network, for which there is no RFC. Your solution is just as ad-hoc as any others.

The key point is anonymity. If you can send email anonymously, you can send spam, legally or illegally.

And you can send non-spam anonymously. Anonymity is worth preserving, even if it means some people can't make as much money as they'd hoped. Let's not throw the baby out with the bnath water. This is the freakin Bush administration's (Homeland security, TIA, etc.) FTC chairman we're talking about here, and he wants to call anonymity the problem, and ignore the fraudulent business activity. Doesn't that make you just a little suspicious?