Slashdot Mirror
Australia To Fast-Track Anti-Spam Bill
Crypto Gnome writes "News Interactive is reporting that anti-spam legislation is being fast-forwarded by the Australian Federal Government. The proposed law will ban sending commercial emails without the recipient's prior consent and ban the use of email harvesting or list-generating software. Naturally, this will only directly impact local Australian spammers, but they're also hoping this will set a precedent for the International community." Banning list-generation software seems a bit heavy-handed, doesn't it?
This could lead to the same kind of subnet-blocking that Something Awful was the victim of... all of their email being blocked by anyone using really nasty spam filters that had worse manners than the spammers in the first place.
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This must be the first useful thing which that stupid goat, Dick Alston, has ever done. It must have been drafted by someone else and simply rubber stamped by him.
For those with short memories, Alston is the one who banned internet gambling and porn, thereby sending any Australian companies involved in the above overseas. Of course Australians have no trouble engaging in internet gambling or downloading porn - just not from Australian servers now. Well done Alston!
I'm curious though, this bill bucks the liberal government's current trend of screwing the individual. Maybe they're just trying to distract us from ever-increasing public transport & medical costs.
For a fraternity that had limited membership rules according to major. Get them a list of all students in that subset of majors to compare people who signed up with interest against. It's counter productive when you are trying to get someone to join your organization to be over-intrusive when first meeting.
For my boss, a list of all houses for sale in a 30 mile radius from all 22 local realtors. The houses had to fit certain specs and be in a certain price range. This included contact info of the realtor.
For the company I work for. I wrote a robot that scans specific job postings for projects available to bid on. It compiles them from many sites and updates them daily to an inter database, which then generates webpages for our Sales Staff to llok at and figure which ones are best for us to bid on. Once again, contact info is grabbed
Again, for my company. A bot to scour resume sites based on inputable criteria so that HR can find potential new hires more easily.
For my company yet again. contact info for the owners, engineers, contacts, managers, etc ... of every (available) mall, shop, radio/TV/Emergancy radio tower, telephone company, utility, etc. We are contracted out to provide PEMA (Pennsylvania Emergency Management Association) a database for use in case of emergancy. The list generation software helped populate the data, and helps scrub the database and keep it up to date.
For my company again. Phase I/II 911 geodatabases. I write software that scours local tax records for changes when people move, as well as phone carrier's records so that when you dial 911, they already have directions to where you are and emergancy crews automatically dispatched. These databases can shave anywhere from 45 seconds to 3 minutes off of response time ... which can mean life or death.
For a man in Palm Springs, CA. He wanted to track down people he graduated with for their 25th class reunion. His school had since closed and I wrote software to scrape classmates.com (after he paid for a membership) for the contacts he wanted so they could be put in a spreadsheet that was more easily readable and printable than the website.
;). I told him 'no' because I didn't feel right about contributing to spam anyways.
These are just some of the very legitamate uses for list generating software.
I don't have much of a problem with targetted lists, either, but I don't generate them myself. The man from Palm Springs offered me $2000 to get him the contact info from every Real Estate Agent in Cali. He was teh top seller for 6 years straight ('91-'96) for a real estate firm in CA and retired young a very rich man. He wanted to offer his consulting services to agents there now. I find this a gray area for spamming, but refused the job on principle. He *WAS* targetting his email towards people that could actually use his services (unlike me getting mortgage offers when I don't own a house or my girlfriend getting penis enlargement spam, regardless of how much I may or may not need it
-Ab
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I made a script as a proof-of-concept that will download Slashdot pages and finds e-mail addresses, un-obfuscating where appropriate, and displays them on the screen (doesn't even bother storing them).
;) ), but could its very existence be illegal in Australia ?
This just to show that it can be done in the scripting language of choice, and that the Slashdot obfuscation techniques commonly used are hardly a deterrent.
I have no intention to release the script ( heck, I only just got my internet restored - I can do without a Slashdot mob pounding at my sites
No - that is indeed spam. It is unsolicited. It is also sent to a group.
...
Spammers use exactly the same justification - that every person who receives their email is a "genuine potential customer".
The amount of paper junk mail I get at home is ridiculous. There are idiots who drive along the street *every day* in a van and put more in. Worse - they get their *kids* to put it in the mailbox, teaching the next generation how to spam.
Well, here's a tip for spammers and spammees. *Anything* may be attached to a reply-paid envelope in Australia, and the person who paid is liable for the entire amount. That's why I keep a good heap of bricks and rocks around at home. I take all the reply-paid cards, tape them to a brick and put it in the post
I tell you what, though - if so many people were handing out leaflets on Oxford Street that it was physically impossible for pedestrians or traffic to move, then the police would come and move them along. Just like the way that there's too many spammers, so the cops are being called in to get rid of them. Sure, it impedes their "free speech" rights, but no-one really cares about people's "free speech" right to jam up my mailbox with unsolicited commercial email.