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?

Comments

Heavy handed is about the norm...

[Endareth]

Any time the government down here does anything 'net related it's heavy handed, overkill, and generally not thought out. This is about par for the course really. At least this time they do seem to be aiming in at least generally the right direction!

Re:Heavy handed is about the norm...

[Martin Blank]

This may be one of those rare cases where it's better to lock it down and then open up a few holes for legit stuff to squeak through. Sort of a firewall approach.

Re:Heavy handed is about the norm...

[Snoopy77]

I love it when Sen. Alston tries to come off as knowledgable about 'net stuff'. He has so obviously just asked his speechwriters what the latest buzzwords are and how they can be strung together to form a cohesive sentence.

Re:Heavy handed is about the norm...

[kgbspy]

I always find it amusing that "our" government calls itself "Liberal", but is practically conservative enough to closely resemble a U.S. administration (except, perhaps, without all the sex scandals). Alston really needs to buy himself a clue - how he can justify his station really is beyond me (perhaps they should start calling him "The Australian Information Minister"...)

I can't see that this is going to have a great deal of immediate impact; based on my own experiences receiving spam, and that of friends, scarce little comes from within Australia, most of it seems to source from the States or Asia (well... now that the New Zealand guy is out of the way, anyway). I did receive spam from Russia today - completely in cyrillic. Sure, I'd love to buy what you're selling, if only I could read it...

As much as I'd like to credit Mr Howard's 'initiative' and 'forward planning' in this instance as an attempt to cut the spam problem off at the pass, as it were, I can't help but feel that this is just a poorly thought out knee-jerk reaction to something that needs considerably more thought than this technologically ill-informed administration is willing to put into it.

Still, proof's in the pudding, as they say. If they can stem the source of spamming in this country before it grows out of control, as it has done elsewhere, good on 'em. I just can't see it happening.

Re:Heavy handed is about the norm...

[akadruid]

Kinda like free speech?

No seriously, your problem here is that the holes will be opened in the same heavy handed and ill-informed fashion as the inital screen was created.

Making the whole idea more worthless than not having it, given the false confidence argument.

The real problem we have here is this: People have false expectations from the idea of email. What I mean is, email is by it's nature, open and unlimited. Anyone can send emails to anyone else. It's a bit like walking down a busy road in London, and expecting people not to offer you leaflets. Sure you cannot refuse them, and in some cases make them less likely to give it to you (i find an evil stare helps!), this is like deleting or blocking spam.

To prevent spam at all, the only way is not to walk down that street. Given that your office is at the end, that doesn't work. So instead, don't expect every email to be useful, or relevant, or requested. Sure, you can stay off the main streets (keep your email off Usenet), keep your head down (Use Thunderbird instead of outlook, maybe get a filter like SpamAssassin or whatever), and refuse those leaflets (hit the delete button for 'Work From Home Now! afkasf').

That's just my take on the issue - it's an overblown problem. No-one ever died from too much spam, it's just a modern day hassle, so taking a philosophical approach will help you deal with it, like it does with traffic jams, house prices and fitness club leaflets.

Re:Heavy handed is about the norm...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Heavy handed is about the norm...

[pixelpusher220]

What I mean is, email is by it's nature, open and unlimited

What is needed is a gauranteed way to determine who sent the email. This is indeed possible...if a bit of a fundamental change. A method to 'classify' email would be a nice 'feature' too, but that's a different holy war ;-)

It's a bit like walking down a busy road in London, and expecting people not to offer you leaflets.

Really? it's generally about the frequency, once or twice people can deal with. Every day, 40 or 50 times, i.e. every few steps, and there wouldn't be room to walk on the sidewalk.

Refusing the leaflets isn't a good analogy...since the equivalent is they put them in your pocket before you can give them that 'evil stare'.

Re:Heavy handed is about the norm...

[daffmeister]

It's a bit like walking down a busy road in London, and expecting people not to offer you leaflets.

As usual, the analogy is poor. If the leaflet-givers were offering you penis enlargement and viagra, along with legitimate messages from friends and business associates, and you had to take the leaflets before you could determine which it was, and they charged you a penny for each one, and they gave a couple of hard-core ones to your nine year old daughter, then I think the analogy would be more accurate.

Simpsons

[CGP314]

"Equally, it is the one that will allow us, in the long term, to get back to the people who are spamming and tap them on the shoulder."

Give them the boot!

Re:Simpsons

[parityerror]

Maybe they could impose penalties such as publishing names, emails, and ip addresses on slashdot. We'll fix 'em up....

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

It's only spam

[evil_roy]

"Banning list-generation software seems a bit heavy-handed, doesn't it?"

Of course it does, but all rational thought seems to disappear when the issue is spam.I hate it, you hate it, we all hate it. But it is clear that many people who are quite tolerant of copyright abuses, IP theft, piracy , porn as free speech etc etc etc become quite intolerant when the topic at hand is spam. The rights that are held so precious are there to be trampled over for convenience sake.

The way to fight spam is to build clever tools, come up with a technical fix. New laws are the last thing we need. I have seen Aussie net laws lambasted all over the web, but as soon as one of these stupid laws is aimed at spam a lot of people seem to think it is a good idea. It is not. When similar laws were proposed to ban porn and bomb making sites many were outraged. The same sentiments should apply.

Re:It's only spam

[Zachary Kessin]

Part of the reason spam is different from most free speech issues is that spam imposes a cost on people other than the speaker. If you want to promote whatever your cause is you can go buy ads in the paper or whatever and its fine as you are paying the bills.

But if you spam me you (not you peronally) take up my resources that are not yours to dispose of. If my ISP has to buy a bigger mail server to deal with the spam that is real money they have to spend on your spam. If you want to put porn up on your website as long as you pay for the bandwidth etc I don't see a problem as such.

Re:It's only spam

[TheOldFart]

>> The way to fight spam is to build clever tools

An ICBM comes to mind...

Re:It's only spam

[scottme]

In western societies, we pride ourselves on being democracies, and in democracies, the will of the people is supposed to prevail, though of course the rights of minorities need to be respected.

For me, the key point about spam is that no-one wants to receive it.

Sure there are plenty of misguided individuals who are financially motivated to think it's in their personal interest for other people to have to be on the receiving end of it, and will therefore cynically maintain that they are in favour of it. But I have never met anyone who could honestly say they would willing endure being sold to via cold-call, unsolicited sales pitches for products they mostly have less than zero interest in. And I've had that discussion with plenty of people.

That universal distaste for it is what makes spam so reprehensible, and that is why I am totally in favour of all legal and technical measures to curtail it to the maximum extent. It wastes more and more of everyone's time and money (it's wasting my time right now, writing this!), and the sooner we are rid of it, the better.

Re:It's only spam

[dbirchall]

Clever tools? Spam's been an issue since 1997 at least. That's a half-dozen years. Clever tools are all well and good, and believe me, quite a few minds of reasonable skill have been doing that sort of thing all along. But it takes more than that.

A clever tool is worse than useless if, for example, it's running on your desktop. By the time the tool gets around to nuking the spam, it (the spam) has already wasted resources across the Internet.

Take the Bayesian logic and drop it into backbone routers, and we can talk. :)

Of course, the further the tools get from end-users, the more non-zero (if still miniscule) the odds become that they're going to nuke from orbit something that someone, somewhere actually wanted to get.

Oh, and "list-generation" software? I think the people who're concerned about it think that the term refers to things like LISTSERV, Majordomo, and MailMan. It doesn't. Those are list management programs.

Want an example of list generation? Take a "Baby Names" book in your language of choice. Type in all the names. Then have your software send your message to each of those names. At, say, AOL, MSN, Yahoo... and anything else large. That's a speedy way to generate a list. :)

Re:It's only spam

[Anonymous Coward]

That simply isn't true. If nobody wanted to receive it, then nobody would buy anything sold via email, and spammers would go out of business.

The fact that they are not going out of business, and in fact seem to be thriving, means that some people like spam, (or at least are willing to buy from it) even if you personally don't happen to believe it.

As soon as people truly don't want it, it will disappear. That simple.

Re:It's only spam

[coolhelperguy]

Yes, but when you consider that "all I'm doing" when I send spam (Wait, Wait! I don't! Hypothetical Situation!) is sending signals across the wire to my ISP, who then has to (knowingly?) forward it to your ISP which then has to accept the spam, and then it gets sent to you, who again has to accept the spam, consider there are many places it could have been blocked, and wasn't. Unfourtanetly, I don't see anything wrong with that.

Sidenote, I'm not sure, but I'm beginnning to wonder if the (US Only, Maybe Canada) regulation (FCC) requirement of "This device must accept any interference recieved, including interference that may cause undesired operation" (Part 15 (2) FCC Rules) would allow this of it's own right.

Re:It's only spam

[pixelpusher220]

If nobody wanted to receive it, then nobody would buy anything sold via email, and spammers would go out of business.

Spammers do go out of business all the time. The people actually making money are the ones selling the lists and mass sending services. The people who actually 'sell' via the channels are the ones going out of business.

Reference the California Gold Rush days...the only ones who got rich were the people selling shovels.

The moral here is that as long as people 'think' they can make money via spam, someone else will sell them the ability to send it. Kinda like the script kiddies...no real skill, just following the instructions.

The real problem is the conveyor of the message...which makes shooting the messenger in this case quite reasonable ;-)

Re:It's only spam

[Macka]

The way to fight spam is to build clever tools, come up with a technical fix. New laws are the last thing we need.

Sorry but you're wrong. No single law is going to fix the problem, and technical solutions on their own won't either. Spammers will always find ways around them. The fix when it eventually comes will be a suite of technical changes combined with a suite of changes to international law. Only in combination will they pack the punch needed to stop this abuse. I welcome this new law and hope that other countries follow their lead asap!

But...

[ChrisHanel]

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.

Heavy Handed ?

[SirFlakey]

I agree - When viewed on the angle of banning software in itself - That sort of thing sets those tiny little alarm bells ringing in the back of the cavernous space dubbed, somewhat grandiously, "my brain".

But for the life of me I cannot see anything positive "email harvesting or list-generating software" could be used for. But maybe that is just me.

precedents

[znaps]

I'm not sure how this is a precedent since spamming is illegal right now in Austria and Italy, and I'm sure some other countries too. But it is good news - hopefully the rest of the world isn't too far behind.

Re:precedents

[ControlFreal]

It's not just illegal in Italy, it's illegal in the European Union as a whole: on May 20, 2002, the European parliament voted for a common point-of-view on spam and other forms of electronic privacy intrusion.

Then, on August 1 2003, the EU Directive 2002/58/EC came into effect, effectively granting member states until October 1 2003 to adjust their national laws to fit the EU directive.

The Dutch "Wet Bescherming Persoonsgegevens" (law for the protection of person-related data) now has an article 13 that reads:

Artikel 13

Ongewenste communicatie

1. Het gebruik van automatische oproepsystemen zonder menselijke tussenkomst (automatische oproepapparaten), fax of e-mail met het oog op direct marketing kan alleen worden toegestaan met betrekking tot abonnees die daarin vooraf hebben toegestemd.

Roughly translated:

Article 13

Unwanted communication

The use of automatic paging devices without human intervention (automatic paging devices), fax or e-mail, aimed at direct marketing, can only be allowed with respect to subscribers that have given prior permission.

There you go: opt-in. A "do-not-call" list, that recently raised questions in the US, has been in effect for years now in the Netherlands. As far as e-mail is concerned, Dutch internet providers actually defend their customers and sue Dutch spam-perpetrators. If anybody has related stories from other EU member states, please do list them here.

Now, to put my previous remarks in perspective, it might seem that I'm being overly EU-zealous here. However, it is by no means my intention to adopt an attitude like that. But think about it: this legislation works: the only Dutch bulk email that I recieve comes from a site at which I have a free e-mail account; when obtaining that account, I actually did opt-in. And it's only about one message per week. So, without the intention of adopting an EU-superiority attitude, I'm just asking a plain and sincere question:

What, if any, is the big problem with disallowing companies in the US to send unsollicited bulk e-mail to customers?

Can anyone give a decent overview of interests at stake here, and (if any) US regulations on the subject?

List Generation Software has no valid use

[Jailbrekr]

So tell me, if banning List Generation Software is a bit heavy handed, then please explain its lawful use?

Oh? Do I hear silence? Of course I do. there is NO legitimate reason for list generation software, or email harvesters. If you develop a drug where its only use is to incapacitate a person, you ban its possession and manufacture. The same goes for list generation software.

Re:List Generation Software has no valid use

[StaffordBeerIsMyHero]

It is heavy handed banning something outright just because its primary use is antisocial. You don't need to think of a secondary use a priori for this to be the case. A secondary use may pop out of nowhere next week, and it'll be too late because the heavy-handed law has been passed when no-one thought it was too much.

Drugs are different, but ironically drug law is one of the most heavy-handed pieces of legislature there is.

Re:List Generation Software has no valid use

[Abm0raz]

List generation software is not always evil. I have written software to web-scrape VERY specific sites. Some examples:

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.

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 ;). I told him 'no' because I didn't feel right about contributing to spam anyways.

-Ab

T3 Direct, Wayne Mansfield

[a.koepke]

I wonder if this will work at slowing down Wayne Mansfield's spamming operations. Even after the very much public law suit with Joe McNicol he is still churning out the crap. The latest ones are going under the name of BusinessGrow - yondefa@yahoo.com.au.

Its rather nice that he uses the same phrase in each spam email "Business Seminars Australia - since 1987", guess what procmail is setup to look out for...

Make up your MINDS, people!

[mcrbids]

Banning list-generation software seems a bit heavy-handed, doesn't it?

Which is it going to be?!?

On one hand, we decry any attempt to regulate the Internet for any reason (see this article just earlier today!) unless it's XYZ...

This is why true democracy always fails... Everybody will vote only for themselves, but the end result is that everybody votes *against* everybody else.

So we have slowly eroding personal liberties, along with a gradually growing, now almost all-encompassing quasi-socialistic govornment. (here in the US)

Sometimes altruism pays. Is it so terrible to BAN email harvesters and their accompanying list generators? How about google? They've certainly made notes on some of my recent activity...

Most any slashdotter will agree that a line needs to be drawn, even if it's just ABM. (Anything But Microsoft)

It takes a level head to realize the idea of valid compromise towards drawing lines that will function well in society.

valid uses

[CoffeeCrusader]

Yeah, it might be that there's no valid use for list-generating software, but the problem's the spam, not the software. Anybody who knows a bit about programming can write a new list-generating software. Thus you can't ban the software, as you can be sure that there'll be a site who offers the same banned software for download. The only way is to punish them for actually using it, not for having it. 'cause software ought to be free and not regulated away because someone could misuse it. just like a kitchen knife could be used for cutting bread as well as for killing someone

For your information

[broothal]

I'd like to point out the Danish anti-spam law which has been effective for about a year now. It's very very effective. The ombudsman has created a webpage where you can report spam. If he receives "enough" complaints about the same spammer, he sues them for you. Yes - that's correct. All you have to do is send in the evidence. Of course, this only works if the recipient has a clue, otherwise they'd spend way too much time researching dead ends. But our ombudsman is pretty cool, and he already sued danish big time spammer Fonn. The result you ask? The spammer had to pay $15 for each piece of spam. Needless to say, they haven't been spamming since.

this is better than it sounds

[haitch]

In Australia there are a couple of things to note:

1. Almost all retail broadband accounts are volume capped and charged at ludicrously high rates if you go over the cap. This adds impetuous to the government to do something about spam due to the public knowing that they are paying for this stuff directly (even if technically it would make a very small percentage of their bill).

2. The Australian legal system isn't too corrupted yet and it is very unlikely that the DPP would use this law against anyone unless the list gathered (by software or otherwise) was actually used for sending spam. If you are a conspiracy theorist - the government will get you anyway, there are plenty of other laws for them to use. This helps the government get at all areas of the problem and no excuses like: "sorry judge, I don't send the spam I just collect the address's and my mate in is actually sending the spam".

Re:Australia rules

[Pseudonym]

Is it just me, or does Australia simply rule?

It's just you.

Seriously, Australia as a nation seems to have gotten most things right. The notable exception is the complete stupidity in the way we manage and legislate technology-related stuff, but that's just Senator Alston being his usual self.

Misleading Term: 'List Generation Software'

[samj]

According to the NOIE media release, they aim to ban 'the distribution and use of e-mail 'harvesting' or list-generating software'. I read this as any software which trawls web sites etc. for addresses. While this in itself will make little difference to the educated few, it should curtail their ability to sell 'harvesting' as a service, and is thus a GoodThing[tm].

NOIE Media Release

[samj]

Australian Government to ban spam

The Australian Government will move to ban electronic junk mail (spam) and enforce this ban through the Australian Communications Authority (ACA) in legislation that will be introduced to Parliament later this year, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Richard Alston, announced today.

Senator Alston said that Cabinet had yesterday agreed to anti-spam legislation including fines, along with a raft of other measures aimed at reducing the influx of spam into Australian e-mail inboxes.

Spam is a menace to home and business e-mail users and is a major scourge of productivity. Spam e-mails are the mosquitoes of the Internet - numerous, annoying and often carrying nasty viruses.

Australia will soon be applying a large dose of 'spam repellent' and sending a strong message to spammers that indiscriminate and unsolicited bulk e-mailing will not be tolerated. The adoption of an opt-in regime will make Australia world's-best practice on spam and put Australia in a strong position to participate in international efforts.

The Australian Government is committed to taking a strong stand against spam and has moved quickly to respond to the report by the National Office for the Information Economy The spam problem and how it can be countered released in April this year. This report provided a blueprint to take action against the problem to provide the maximum possible protection against spam.

While the report made it clear that there is no silver bullet against spam, there are many roles that all parties can play in a multi-layered approach. The anti-spam measures that the Australian Government will introduce include:

* National legislation, to be enforced by the ACA, banning the sending of commercial electronic messaging without the prior consent of end-users unless there is an existing customer-business relationship (an opt-in regime);

* Civil sanctions for unlawful conduct including financial penalties, an infringement notice scheme and the ability to seek enforceable undertakings and injunctions;

* The requirement for all commercial electronic messaging to contain accurate details of the sender's name and physical addresses and a functional 'unsubscribe' facility to enable people to opt-out;

* Banning the distribution and use of e-mail 'harvesting' or list-generating software, and

* Working together with international organisations to develop global guidelines and cooperative mechanisms to combat the global spam problem.

The Government will work closely with industry to ensure that Australia has a workable regime without harming legitimate business practices. The regime will seek to protect businesses which undertake legitimate e-mail direct marketing in line with the requirements of the Privacy Act. There will be a 120-day sunrise period without penalties from the enactment of the legislation for businesses to ensure their marketing practices are in line with the legislation.

Stakeholders including the Internet Industry Association (IIA), the Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA), small business associations and other not-for-profit organisations will be consulted on the details of the legislation.

The Government will also work with industry to develop relevant codes of practice to be registered with the ACA, building on initiatives such as the IIA's 'No Spam' campaign, which since April has enabled consumers to access anti-spamming technology for a free month's trial.

The measures announced today establish a framework for Australia to begin the important task of eradicating spam. The package will be accompanied by an education campaign to raise awareness of the nature of spam and anti-spam measures and to inform individuals and business of their rights and responsibilities when it comes to spam.

Leg

Re:Australia rules

[hype7]

Is it just me, or does Australia simply rule? It seems that they make a sensible thing after a sensible thing, seem to be enthusiastic on the Linux front, and generally kick ass? Will Australia be a leading ICT power after a while? US is, well, US and EU seems to be very slow in it's movement.

And as far as spammers go, I wouldn't blink an eye if they were thrown into a pound-me-in-the-ass prison in Siberia. They abuse the "freedom of speech" to make soem easy profit while harrassing general populace, while the freedom of speech that matters is generally not a problem unless you search for such information.

Watch out son, you just laid out a very big troll bait. You might not be able to handle what you're about to hook!

I'm an Aussie, and despite the oncoming wave of complaints about the Government and Telstra, it is a great place to live, and pretty-well IT minded. No, we're not South Korea, but broadband take up has just started accelerating at quite a pace, we've got an excellent mobile and landline network and all the capitals have cable in one form or another.

Every day I am reminded about how fortunate we are that our government by and large is not in the pockets of big corporations. This article on Wired really opened my eyes yesterday. The very thought of a Bank over here selling your details is unfathomable; good legislation is partly responsible, but I don't imagine many people would do it even if that wasn't in place. That a state is having to fight for this level of privacy (and having difficulty doing it) just floors me.

And the "do not call" register that the US has had to set up. My god, is it really that bad over there?

-- james

List Generation Test

[Ignis Flatus]

1. If your browser
2. can display
3. this list,
4. then you will
5. be breaking
6. the law
7. in Australia.

I don't believe it!

[vandan]

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.

Re:I don't believe it!

[nathanh]

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!

And didn't he justify it by saying that nobody from Australia would use the overseas gambling sites because... drum roll please... nobody would want to pay the long-distance phone calls.

Alston, the world's biggest luddite, and he's minister for communications. It's like a cruel joke.

Bye, bye grep...

[flakac]

Banning list-generation software seems a bit heavy-handed, doesn't it...

Yep... don't know how our Australian friends are going to get by without grep.

Re: But no..

[Suppafly]

This could lead to the same kind of subnet-blocking that Something Awful [somethingawful.com] 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.


No, you just felt like bringing up the somethingawful problem, it has nothing to do with this story at all. Banning the sending of spam and banning the harvesting of emails could in no way 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.


Nice try at being insightful though.

My script would be banned ?

[Animaether]

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).
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 ;) ), but could its very existence be illegal in Australia ?

Re:My script would be banned ?

[yalla]

Who knows? As Andrew allready pointed out in in his posting, nobody knows the exact text yet. It still has to show up in the parliament.

Alex.

Re:stupid stupid laws

[vandan]

Clearly no-one is going to fine you for doing that.
You will only get in trouble if you have been caught using list-generating software for the purpose of spamming.

"List generating" - wait for the bill

[lpontiac]

Let's keep in mind there is probably an entire section in draft legislation, which was reduced to a few sentences in a press release, which the media reduced to the phrase "list generation software."

We won't know what this actually means until the bill appears before parliament.

One concern is that a sufficiently vague definition could cause legal concerns with software that has legitimate uses - for instance, something like SELECT DISTINCT sender_address FROM usenet_posts; on a database like Google Groups could generate a list of email addresses, how should things be phrased to make sure Google Groups is in the clear?

Australian spammers

[Zog The Undeniable]

Naturally, this will only directly impact local Australian spammers, but they're also hoping this will set a precedent for the International community.

Precisely. When was the last time you had any spam from Down Under? As far as "the international community" is concerned, I don't think we can really class the spamming scum, who obfuscate their identities and operate across multiple countries, as a community. All in all, not even close, and definitely no cigar :-(

Re:Australian spammers

[hkmwbz]

Actually, Australia is the home of a few sleezeballs in the porn industry who, at least three years ago, were a big part of the International porn industry:

Quote: "Australian Porn Mafia" is a term used by many pornographers to refer to their "mates" in Brisbane, Queensland, who control a disproportionate amount of the planet's internet porn trade.

So they are big in porn, and they are spammers and scammers. This means that the porn spam you are receiving could well be from one of them. In other words, after this, Australia will not be a safe haven for spammers. In fact, this could lead to good things, such as bringing these sleazeballs out of business. Fine, do porn all you want, but spam me and you are on my hate list.

Re:Simple solution to Spam Control

[LordLucless]

That stops the user from having to see it, but not the bandwidth cost of having downloaded it. Also, with white lists, theres the problem of initial contact. Sometimes people, for valid reason, want to contact you without having done so before. Example? Many freelance editors advertise their services online. They can't setup a white list, or they won't get any clients. So with white lists, the user only delays the necessity of sorting through the spam; they need to identify the false positives and undo them.

Spam repellant

[Flingles]

Wouldn't it be possible to regulate emails? For example- ISPx monitors subject lines of incoming mail, if more than 50 are the same, it is checked if it is spam. Spam gone. When ordinary word scripts to block certain words are added, this would prolly be the unspammable ISP. Any reasons why this wouldn't work?

Re:Spam repellant

[Bruce J L]

50 emails the same.. 1. Email lists / groups that people actually did sign up for 2. Autoresponder / vacation replies.. They might not be at the same time but thier may be 50 of them 3. Order Replies from business.. Your CDW Order #232423xx not much is going to change in the subject line.. Just how much processor usage do you want to use? Just some quick ideas on why isps can just monitor emails.

Re:Spam repellant

[yalla]

I agree. When i'm at work where there is no spam-filter i sometimes just delete my project-managers emails 'cause his subject lines look like spam. It's not on purpose, but it looks so... Well, spamish.

If i can't decide by the subject line what's spam and what's real, how should a spamfilter do?

Can you imagine the rage of people, when some projectmanager's email gets filtered and you loose profit?

Alex.

Re:Heavy Handed?

[inaeldi]

What else, apart from sending spam or selling the list to someone else who'll send spam, would such a list be used for?

Funny how slashdotters then go to say that P2P software shouldn't be banned because it has legitimate uses, when we all know that almost everyone uses it to pirate music.

Not flamebaiting, just being cynical.

Re:Australia rules

[CurlyG]

J F Christ, are you living in an alternate universe or have those rose-coloured glasses just fused to your face?

We are pathetic bitches. Yeah, it's a lovely country (as long as you're white, conservative and middle-class), but we have zero power in the world, zero say over our own future, and a "leader" who is hell bent on greasing up and bending over in front of the good old U! S! A! for a free trade agreement that will surely net us the kind of wonderful benefits that most of South America has been lucky enough to experience over the last decade or so.

Dominate? You are kidding yourself. We manufacture jack shit. Despite having the tattered remenants of an exellent education system we have a business community that would have rejected every major technological advance in history as being too risky to invest in. We are going absolutely nowhere except towards our inevitable inclusion into the growing list of US vassal states.

Re:My idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's say you don't want to listen to a particular radio station. So you change the channel. Then after a little bit of enjoying the new station, the one you changed from kicks back on. You think, weird, and change it back. But this keeps happening.

Then you go buy another radio cause this one isn't working correctly. But dammit if it doesn't happen again with the new radio. Some how some radio station aquired technology to change your channels.

I guess your response would be to not listen to the radio then???

It might be a little less troublesome if they didn't use fake return email addresses, steal other's mta's, subject lines that try to deceive,... If they were just legitimate business people and not immoral crooks, they wouldn't have to resort to such deception.

Re:Heavy Handed?

[ColaMan]

That's not spam, because we're contacting genuine potential customers.

You do realise that spam is termed 'U.C.E.' as in Unsolicited commercial email?

The phrase "but I'm just contacting genuine potential customers" is the mainstay of every spammers excuse list.

I do applaud your sales guy for snail-mailing things out - it's likely to have more credibility anyway compared to having your message slotted in between v1argara and peni5 enlargement offers.

Re:Heavy Handed?

[tdelaney]

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 ...

Re:Australia rules

[LordLucless]

Everything you say points to the current state of affairs. My point is that Australia is still growing. We don't have much of a say in the world yet, but we will. We have decidedly more control over our future than the American public; we don't have stupid rules about lobyists being able to bribe politicians to pass laws for them. If our politicians want to get into power, they've got to make the Australian public as a whole (not just the subset who choose to vote, as in America) happy. No matter who our leader is, we're still going to have to kow-tow to the US for the moment. American favour is too valuable, and enmity too costly.

No, Australia doesn't manufacture much. But the industrial age is over, and the information age just beginning. I don't know about the "tattered remnants" you mention; the Australian education system is one of the best in the world. Many Australian graduates are asked to work overseas, not just heading over there to look for jobs, but being actively recruited. I know that in at least two fields (teaching and nursing), Australian's can earn massive salaries (compared to the earnings back home) in places like the UK.

Tha largest technological advance Australia has had the opportunity to participate in has been the internet. Australia, despite being encumbered by a government-sponsored telecommunications monopoly, has a very high rate of broadband penetration. For a country with such a low population density, our infrastructure is remarkable. Many Australian Universities (Wollongong, Melbourne, UTS) were working on the internet in its infancy.

Australia continues to make innovations in other areas. It was an Australian research group who managed to teleport, not just a single photon as had been done previously, but an entire laser beam. Australia is a world leader in medical research. I really can't see your argument about Australia being backwards technologically.

As too becoming a US vassal state, well, maybe. But there hasn't been a nation on earth who have lasted forever, and when the inevitable decay hits the US, someone's going to pick up the pieces and become the next world power. It could very well be Australia. It may not be, but then, it could be, too.

Re:Australia rules

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell are you talking about? Zero power? Indonesia might be interested to hear about that - I guess they actually have negative power then, since we just walked in and took over East Timor. Not to mention PNG, who are next. It might be news to the Solomon Islands too - considering we waltzed in there a few weeks ago and took over their whole fricking government. Whose soldiers were first into Iraq? Whose apples do the japs pay $10 each to eat? Who has the largest Law Of The Sea claim on earth? Who runs the whole fucking south pacific? Sure we're a smaller fish than the US. But for christ's sake, we're 20m people. We punch well above our weight.

And as for not making anything here - why would we? We just buy it all from China, at a price we couldn't match even if it were 10 times what it is. Why? We have a fair minimum wage. Sucks doesn't it? That's why there's almost no crime? Do you like walking through Sydney CBD at 3am? Think you can do that in NYC?

Business community rejecting risky technical investments? Shit, you're right. We missed out on that whole dot com thing. God damn it.

Vassal state? You're the one living in an alternate reality. Where the hell is your evidence for that one? The fact we helped in Iraq? Well look here pal, I wanted us to help, and if there's one thing I'm not it's a "vassal" of the USA.

Your opinion smacks of someone who has never been outside of Australia. Here we don't like bullshit, don't like spin, do things by the basics. Go live somewhere else for a while and you might come to appreciate that a bit more.

hk

Won't help.

[penginkun]

You can pass all the anti-spam legislation you like, but the vermin will dig even deeper into the woodwork to make it harder to find them.

The only way there's ever going to be any progress in the fight against spam is by making any egregious violation punishable by summary execution.

No, I'm not kidding. If every nation had such a law and actually enforced it things would improve instantly. Kill just ONE spammer and watch it all start to fade.

Of course it'll never happen, but a man can dream, can't he? A man can dream.

Re:Sounds Great! But Did They Actually Pay...?

[Anonymous Coward]

They paid, although I would say that calling them a "big time spammer" is a bit exaggerating. I believe they were found guilty for about 150-200 mails, so the fine, although big, was payable.

Alston is deluded.

[Dnigh]

I have been hearing about this for most of the day.

I had a chuckle to myself when I heard Alston's response the suggestion that these measures would have no effect because most of the spam comes from overseas. He beleives that by implementing these strong arm policies we are setting an example to the international community, and slowly other countries will follow in suit.

Countries that are spam-friendly are not going to care what the hell australia does. So we are getting these insane policies for no real reason.

1c e-mail postage stamp

[Anonymous Coward]

The only way spamming will significantly reduce, is when each e-mail has to be paid for. Say 1c postage for sending an e-mail. I would have no problem paying the $10 for the 1000 e-mails I send a year. A spammer would need to pay this amount every millisecond of sending spam.

How to implement this world-wide is another question.

Re:1c e-mail postage stamp

[thogard]

Why does this get moded up every time it comes up? If you want this, go get your self an X.400 email address and you won't have spam problems and you'll get to pay per message too.

At $.01 per message for leagal messages means that any message will be legal if its paid for.

I've worked for compaines that have dumped $10,000,000 on some ad campaigns. At your rate thats a billion messages.

Besides who gets the money? There is no way to get it to the small ISP and the only other choice is some govt funded scam or slush fund.

Re:Australia rules

[sholden]

What rubbish. I live in Sydney - a city FULL of whites, asians, blacks, you name it. All living in relative harmony. My girlfriend is asian, I'm white. It's an awful myth that Australia is somehow racist.

It really isn't a myth. I also happen to live in Sydney. I also happen to be white (and my family tree goes back to the first fleet). I happen to be married to an Iranian.

Australia has gotten more tolerant of Asians in the last 20 years. Jump back to the "Asians arebuying all of Australia" idiocy and it wasn't so good. Instead of Asians, currently it's the Middle Easterners who bear the brunt of Australia's reasonably famous intolerance. Those who are muslim get treated like terorists. Those who are male and young are assumed to be planning to rape the white women.

Did you somehow miss the whole Lebanese gangs paranioa recently...

On the surface Australia seems fine and dandy, but the racism quickly shows itself whenever the surface is scratched by some event.

Many Australians are not rascist, many Australians are reasonable and tolerant. The closer you are to the city (in Sydney anyway) the better it gets. But step out of the city and things deteriorate.

And maybe you shouldn't assume that everyone else in the country shares your personal mindset about the general shitness of everything in the world everywhere.

Maybe you should stop assigning your interpretations onto other people. I made no such assumption. I stated my opinion. You don't have to agree with it.

A valid use of list generators

[Quizo69]

http://home.earthlink.net/~tm120176050/fec.html

This list generator is a fake email creator to generate huge lists of non-existent emails, which it turns into a HTML file. You then put this HTML file online among your other pages, so that spam harvesters pick them up and pollute their own database with thousands of useless emails. If everyone had one page with a thousand bogus email links then spammers would find their job much harder.

Oh, and of course you can add the real emails of company individuals you hate, of course, or spammers themselves etc, or Darl McBride ;)

Under the proposed legislation this program would be illegal in Australia....

Quizo69

list generating software

[u05]

I can think of many good and essential uses for list generating software

-scientific data result generation.

-list of open ports on a computer for security analysis.

-list of most popular products from your on-line store front for re-ordering and evaluation.

-compiler/assembler output is a list of errors in your code hence a compiler is list-generating software.

-list of journey routes and times generated through point and click maps.

-security auditing software recording logon times and users.

-lists generated by search engines. be it online or by database search.

The law bans all of this legitimate and essential software and i think i could go on all day thinking of situations this software is needed.

Yes it would.

[quinkin]

Yes it would (at least I think so, the wording was a bit vague).

Australia has a grand tradition of the big stick that is used with "discretion".

As an example - in the state of Queensland it is currently an offense to possess and/or distribute information pertaining to the production or consumption of drugs. This applies across the board - consider the following text.

Production:

• 1. Plant cannabis seed.
  1. Add water, sun, and compost.
  1. Harvest.

Consumption:

• 1. Eat, smoke, make a tea, rub it in your armpits, etc.

Technically, merely by having this in your internet cache, in Queensland, you could face fines up to AU$50k and/or 2 years in gaol (jail for our American friends).

The standard response from the government when asked to justify these seemingly draconian laws is: "Well, they would only be used in appropriate circumstances".

It makes you think... who decides what's appropriate??

Q.

Re:Heavy Handed?

[Rogerborg]

I accept that sending UCE is "almost essential" for promoting your services.

Given that, I hope that you go out of business and burn in hell, not necessarily in that order.

Unsolicited. Commercial. Email.

Hitting spammers where it hurts

[Frodrick]

The proposed law will ban sending commercial emails without the recipient's prior consent

Perhaps the law could also prohibit businesses paying someone to send unsolicited email - and hold them accountable for the behaviour of the person they hire to send their (solicited) commercial emails.

It seems to me that this would have two effects: 1) It would make unsolicited email unprofitable, and 2) It would force businesses to keep their emailers on a short leash.

I suppose there must be something wrong with that idea or it would have been suggested long ago...

Spam is not exactly "Free" speech. . .

[Salgak1]

You miss an important point: E-mail may be free as in speech, but NOT free as in Beer. Spam, and the infrastructure required to carry it, IS a cost to ISPs, and is passed to users in higher access fees. Not to mention admin costs, spam filter costs, abuse desk costs, etc. With postal mail or leafleting, the costs of distribution are paid by the sender. With the cost of sending a individual email being virtually nothing, spam has become our "Tragedy of the Commons", much as commercial and wildly off-topic posts are destroying large parts of USENET as venues for efficient communication.

The REAL problem with spam, is that it is, in effect, theft of service from the ISP that it originated at, and any intervening ISP as well. And we won't even get started on falsified headers, misleading topics, etc. . .

And, if spam WAS such an ethical and wanted product, then WHY do the spammers rely so much on disposable accounts, exploiting open relays, and other disreputable tactics. . .

Re:Heavy Handed?

[Deusy]

You do realise that spam is termed 'U.C.E.' as in Unsolicited commercial email?

The phrase "but I'm just contacting genuine potential customers" is the mainstay of every spammers excuse list.

Ok, I'm not a complete idiot and do realise that in the strictest definition of UCC (Unsoliciteds Commercial Correspondence), this would be considered UCC.

However, I do not liken UCC to spam. Spam is sent to random people or organisations with no particular bias or particular knowledge of them. It targets anybody and everybody in the hope that somewhere in that supergroup there is a tiny subgroup who will respond - usually out of ignorance.

It's a slightly different kettle of fish.

We are providing a service that keeps an economy afloat and is vital to a large number of companies, even some that don't know it. Our UCC is targetted at specific entities and never sent to those who it would not apply to. On the other hand, most spam mail is trivial crap and unexclusive in it's targetting. There is a market and reason for our UCC, whereas spam is just annoying and only takes advantage of the ignorant.

Patching the law

[t_allardyce]

Im sure viruses, hacking, even port scanning are banned in most countries and/or ISP policies. That doesnt mean people don't get hacked or get the virus! Anyone who cares enough will use protection - firewalls, anti-virus, properly set-up systems. Banning spam or any of the software thats used to create it means nothing. People will still get spam, maybe not as much but they will still get it and they will still need filters. It just ads another layer of legislation to the internet which is essentially just a hack, so you have to balance it out - if people are still going to get spam and always will even if the whole world bans it, then they might as well just use filters, is it worth reducing it abit by adding more laws?

Governments are acting like Microsoft, their laws are full of massive holes so every month they issue more hot-fixes, thats not the way to do it.

Re:Heavy Handed?

[tybalt44]

Let me give you my own take on this.

I'm a lawyer... someone who consumes a lot of specialized services. As a result, my inbox gets flooded every day with emails "promoting the slightly obscure services that we provide". It's irritating, it's annoying, and because my e-mail is listed in Martindale-Hubbell, I'm going to continue receiving this crap.

Now snail mail... I have less of a problem with that, particularly since I have someone who can winnow out the garbage, and it costs you a few pennies to send - limiting the potential abuse. But yes, if you were to be bulk e-mailing it would be spam as surely as the sun came up this morning. The fact that you target which particular people to annoy doesn't make me any happier with it.

P.S. I know exactly what credit insurance is, meat. Not only is it "almost essential" for sh*t, but if you think that your business is somehow different or special from the 1000s of other service businesses out there, you are very sadly mistaken. How would your statements be any different if you worked for a pants-pressing service rather than a credit insurer?

If your customers aren't even aware of what credit insurance is, my suggestion is that you guys start paying for articles and advertising in the trade journals.

Re:all spam != spam

[schon]

There's two kinds of spam

No, there is only one kind. The second kind isn't spam.

Spam is defined as "unsolicited bulk email". Note the first word there - unsolicited. If you have a relationship with the sender, then it's not unsolicited, and therefore not spam.

I'm getting a weekly email from a radio station I sent my CD to, saying what their playlist is. Did I ask for it? No.

But you did ask for it, albeit indirectly. You initiated the relationship with them, so it's not unsolicited.

we've solved the problem

[swell]

My homeowners association agrees unanimously that spam and porn are WRONG. We have passed strong legislation that will stop them dead.

Additionally we have made it illegal for meteors to come within 100 miles of our planet.

You may thank us at your leisure.

Prior consent

[M-G]

IIRC, the problem with this was covered on /. a while back. Someone set up a harvestable address, and then waited for the spam to arrive, most of it claiming that the recipient had agreed via some partner to receive their 'valuable offers'.

So these spammers all either believe that they have a list of opt-in addresses, or are convincing their clients they do. (And the clients are frequently legitimate businesses.)

Given the ease with which a spammer will claim that you opted-in to their mailings, and the ease with which they could claim that you had agreed to those terms, won't all spam simply be labelled as opt-in after a law like this is passed?

SPAM - We're missing the mark.

[mbottrell]

I do believe the way we tackle SPAM and Email in general is outdated.

SMTP based on RFC821 relies soley on the principle of:

1. User sends mail to target sender.
2. Mail goes to their SMTP server
3. Mail 'finally' arrives at the recievers SMTP server.

The problem with this is that there is no verifcation from the end-user that the mail is legit.

A much better solution would be based on user verification.

This in theory would work on the principle that the we are creatures of habit.

We all recieve legit Email from a small trusted group. Anything not based on the trusted group is potentially unwanted mail.

A verified Email transport would work like such:

1. Reciever builds a list of trusted Email senders.
2. The trusted list is uploaded to the recievers SMTP server.
3. A mail sender sends an email.
4. The senders SMTP server sends a message envelope to the recievers SMTP server. (contains just the senders smtp address).
5. The message is stored on the Senders SMTP server awaiting verification from the remote end.
6. The Recieving SMTP server checks the envelope against the user 'whitelist'.
7. If the sender is on the recievers whitelist - the RECIEVERS SMTP server confirms that this is legit.
8. Senders SMTP message delivers the message to the Remote SMTP server.
9. If the Email is NOT on the whitelist, the SMTP server sends a WAIT for further instructions message to the Sending SMTP server.
10. The user then can review the 'envelopes' and decide whether to recieve/remove the offending email.
11. If removed - the Recievers SMTP server sends a message back to the remote Senders SMTP server to say not to send.
12. If a response is never recieved by the Sending SMTP - the message is deleted after 30 days.

This has some added benefits:

• Legit mail recieves a higher priority. :)
• SPAM is not Blindly Sent but is only initiated at the 'Recievers request'.
• Network Traffic is cut considerably.
• The cost of storage of the SPAM is held at the remote end (SPAMMERS ISP).
• The Spammers ISP could legitimately then charge the SPAMMER for 'unsent' Mail storage. :)

This is only a thought -- and would need to round out the idea - however it seems feasable that this is possible.

Interested in others comments.

Most Spam filtering software already includes 'WhiteLists/BlackLists'.
Moving this into the SMTP transport at the server end seems the next logical and automated approach.

MB.

Spam is NOT about free speech; not at all.

[CrystalFalcon]

You're missing the point. I've seen this "Free Speech" argument on BBSes, in Usenet, and I've lost track of god knows where.

Free speech means you have the right to say whatever you want. Period. You have the right to utter any words you like, using your vocal chords.

Free speech does NOT, repeat NOT, mean you have the right to demand of someone else to relay or amplify your own speech. To illustrate this point, imagine somebody going in to the local TV station and demanding that they broadcast his opinion, and accusing them adamantly of denying him the right to free speech when they politely escort him out of the building.

Relaying messages cost money, whether if it's on television or on electronic mail systems.

Spammers know this and knowingly try to get the cost of their huge volume messaging on somebody else's tab.

That is not free speech, that is fraud.

Nice idea, but...

[chriskenrick]

I'm certainly behind this idea, providing they get the wording of the legislation right.

However, given the Australian government's track record on these matters, I'm not confident it will make that much difference in practice. Take Internet censorship as an example. Similar concept, the legislation gives them the power to take down Australian hosted sites. Result - dismal failure