UK Makes Spamming a Fineable Offense

woodhouse writes "The BBC has an article about the new UK anti-spamming law which comes into force later this year. Under the new law, spammers can be fined up to 5000 pounds in a magistrates court, or an unlimited amount in the crown court. Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce of the new law."

Comments

spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the law won't work

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Morosoph]

The BBC article sais:

Under the new law, companies will have to get permission from an individual before they can send them an e-mail or text message.

Whereas Spamhaus say:

From 11 December it will be legal to send spam to the millions of hapless employees of British businesses (as long as each spammer gives each employee the opportunity to 'opt-out' of his individual spam campaign).

So which is right?

I'd assume that it is Spamhaus. Shame the BBC can't get their stories straight :-(

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[I8TheWorm]

Mod this one up +5 Informative.

Interesting. I'm looking forward to seeing how the spammers abuse the law, and how (hopefully) they strengthen the law in the future.

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[rokzy]

both.

one refers to people ("private individuals").

the other refers to businesses.

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Jonny Royale]

Perhaps it's the difference between "individual" and "employee of British buisness", you can't get spammed on your personal e-mail accounts, but your buisness account is fair game....Although, how are they going to tell the difference?

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[zaphodbblx]

Yep Unenfoceable and ball-less but the MP's in parlament can thump their chest and say how theyr'e doing their job. I guess they have gotten clues from us over here in america

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Morosoph]

I stand corrected. The next line of the BBC article states:

But the regulations do not cover business e-mail addresses, despite some calls for a blanket ban on spam.

I'm glad to be protected as a private individual, mind, but "employees are not individuals" seems incoherent, somehow.

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Frymaster]

I'm looking forward to seeing how the spammers abuse the law, and how (hopefully) they strengthen the law in the future.

and keep strengthening and strengthening the law. why are we so eager to expand government control over an unfettered means of communication? because spam is "inconvenient"?

this is the thin edge of the wedge that gets the state to control what goes in your inbox.

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Penguinshit]

This may be a clumsy attempt to factor in targeted email marketing campaigns. For instance, say I work at a company selling compu-widgets and I want to send an email blast out to people who dropped by my tradeshow booth 6 months ago and/or people who subscribe to CompuWidget Magazine (who are demographically proven to be consumers of my product). The mail blast, per design, is only sent to their business email addresses because that is the context and venue in which I wish to engage the recipient.

Doing this is, technically, spam. But it also isn't spam in that I'm not offering penis enlargements, impossible mortgage rates, questionable knock-off drugs or soliciting assistance in moving large sums of money from African banks.

It is also merely an extension of what companies did prior to wide adoption of email - snail mail campaigns based upon the exact same criteria. I feel, both as a potential sender and recipient of this type of campaign, that this business tool needs to be protected from being lumped into the same category as the other annoying spam which has absolutely no legitimate business usage.

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[I8TheWorm]

Because technology has yet to come up with a solution maybe?

Technology is great, but abused technology doesn't seem to be able to fight for itself. How many people in the world actually like spam? The rest of us have been complaining for years about it. Spamblockers kind of work, but they don't completely solve the problem.

Spam is a pretty specific term. From Mail-Abuse An electronic message is "spam" IF: (1) the recipient's personal identity and context are irrelevant because the message is equally applicable to many other potential recipients; AND (2) the recipient has not verifiably granted deliberate, explicit, and still-revocable permission for it to be sent; AND (3) the transmission and reception of the message appears to the recipient to give a disproportionate benefit to the sender.

How would this let the state control what goes in your inbox? Only unwanted messages. If something unsolicited yet important did make it to my inbox, I would probably treat it like the rest of the messages I get from unknown sources.. delete it. And I think most people do just the same.

The bottom line is technology by itself seems to be helpless against it. Maybe laws will thwart some of the 120+ spam e-mails I get every day, allowing me to be more productive in my work.

Now, regarding the loonies that think it should be a jailable offense...

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[alext]

It's just a protocol, HTTP for humans if you like.

If you read Jane Austen, you'll notice that in 1800 it was considered unacceptably rude to attempt to communicate with someone without being introduced. For better or worse, polite society did not quite extend into the internet age ;-)

The government is only having to step in because the net has failed to support the kind of trust relationships that would allow it to be self-regulating, so it has set a baseline.

Expect to see more legislation of this type as long as the net continues to be an anarchy.

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Jaysyn]

All I can say is .... go Italy!!!

Jaysyn

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Anonymous Coward]

>> ... MP's in parlament [sic] ...

Its kind of a pet peeve of mine when someone says that.

I mean, its kind of implied. Member of parliament in parliament!

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Jaysyn]

It is in Italy.

Jaysyn

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[I8TheWorm]

I saw that in another post earlier, and it gave me the chills. I don't know what Italy's justice system is like, so I can't really comment on their penalty. But here in the US, "hackers" get stiffer penalties than first time rapists. Which is a more heinous crime? I would hope that if such laws were enacted here, that assigning jail time wouldn't go along with it. A spammer sitting next to a murderer? Come on.

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[wideBlueSkies]

>>and keep strengthening and strengthening the law. why are we so eager to expand government control over an unfettered means of communication? because spam is "inconvenient"?

In a word. Yes.

wbs.

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Reziac]

Exactly -- and in a similar vein, I don't have a problem with companies that send only one or two small messages (even if shotgunned to the whole world); then if I don't respond, I never hear from them again.

Funny thing, those "once and never again" sorta-spams tend to be for REAL companies selling a REAL product, not scams or bogus crap.

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[punkki]

Huh? Spam = unsolicited bulk/commercial e-mail I don't care what you're pushing. If I didn't give permission, you're spamming. Snail mail is a totally different animal than e-mail. Snail mail costs the sender real money, thus they pay attention to who they're sending to. A computer parts dealer in South-East Asia will not start sending snail mail ads to Espoo, Finland. They do send them via e-mail.

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Gero2]

I think these are two completely different cases: >> dropped by my tradeshow booth 6 months ago and/or Those people have already shown interest in your merchandise, otherwise you wouldn't get their email addresses. That is why business cards exist in the first place, so that isn't spam at all. >> people who subscribe to CompuWidget Magazine Of course CompuWidget magazine must allow you do decline this kind of offers, or make it public that your info can be used for this ... otherwise how would you get thier subscriber lists in the first place? Like spammers get it? I think the only way to really separate what is and isn't spam, is in the question 'How did you get target email addresses?'.

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Anonymous Coward]

unless it's a formal conference for the discussion of public affairs

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Penguinshit]

Actually, they are not different. Magazines, etc., have been selling their subscriber lists LONG before email was invented. Companies routinely purchase such lists grouped according to the demographic required. These lists often cost many thousands of dollars. This allows a legitimate business to send offers to people who are likely to be receptive (whether via snailmail or email).

Spammers, on the other hand, purchase a CD of millions of addresses culled from God knows where to indiscriminately blast out crap messages without regard to demographic. This is why people like my wife sometimes receive offers to enlarge her penis.

See the difference?

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[JuggleGeek]

I don't think you understand what spam is.

Sending email to people who stopped by your trade booth and gave you their email address isn't spam. They gave you their info, and presumably they wouldn't have given you that info if they did not expect or want to receive your information.

If you give your email address to a company so that they can send you info on, as you say, "penis enlargements, impossible mortgage rates, questionable knock-off drugs or soliciting assistance in moving large sums of money from African banks" then it is not spam when they email you - you signed up.

If they send the same information (whether the garbage about penises and such, or the stuff from the company who had a booth at the trade show) to people who did not ask to be emailed, then it's spam. Spam isn't dependant on the product being legitmate, spam is dependant on whether the sender has permission.

You, like the DMA, want the definition of spam to be "Junk email that other people send - my junk email isn't spam". Sorry, but that isn't how it's been defined.

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[JuggleGeek]

WHich is right? Both. I don't know why moderators move junk posts like yours to "interesting". The only thing that is interesting about your post is that it is evidence that you haven't read the fucking article.

The quote below if from the BBC article.

Under the new law, companies will have to get permission from an individual before they can send them an e-mail or text message.

But the regulations do not cover business e-mail addresses, despite some calls for a blanket ban on spam.

The anti-spam group, Spamhaus, has criticised the law for excluding work addresses.

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Penguinshit]

Actually, please go back to how "spam" got its nickname. It was incessant and annoying, much like the Vikings singing in the Monty Python skit.

Prior to Spam being labeled as such, companies were doing targeted mass-mailing (both snail and, for the few forward-thinkers, via email at the time). No one complained about that because it was not filling up mailboxes with repetitive banal missives from people who could not be reached. I, myself, received quite a few of those in the early days (mostly in the form of whitepapers, many of which were actually somewhat informative). I never had a problem receiving something from Sun regarding a new product offering because, as a demographic targetted by them, I was actually likely to be interested in that offering. Some I was, some I wasn't; but it was never annoying or repetitive.

Again, the large difference between the two (and what separates true spam from a "targeted email campaign") is that one uses a relatively small set of addresses highly likely to be receptive to a single offering, and the other uses a list of addresses without any qualification for multiple hits of random crap.

Unfortunately, because of the new breed of unscrupulous miscreants, that previously-valuable method of reaching potential customers is now gone. The reaction to any unsolicited email is now so hostile as to be actually counter-productive (because some, like you, are so overly-sensitive due to the actions of little more than email-borne vandalism).

Some large companies (names you'll recognize) do continue to use this, but are *extremely* careful to scrub their lists (giving multiple Opt-Out opportunities and making damned sure those requests are honored).

It would be nice if this tool hadn't been spoiled by immature morons.

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[JuggleGeek]

Again, the large difference between the two (and what separates true spam from a "targeted email campaign") is that one uses a relatively small set of addresses highly likely to be receptive to a single offering, and the other uses a list of addresses without any qualification for multiple hits of random crap.

Bull shit. True spam is unsolicited bulk email. If it is solicited (such as the trade show booth example which you brought up and claim is spam) then it isn't spam. Even if the product is something stupid like penis enlargements or MMF, if you asked for it, it is not spam.

And if you did not ask for it, and some legitimate marketer (such as yourself) decides to force it on you anyway, then it is spam. Even if it is for a legitmate product, sent by an otherwise (outside of the spamming) legitimate company.

The most common definitions are UCE and UBE. Unsolicited Commercial Email or Unsolicited Bulk Email. A few people use UPE - Unsolicted Promotional Email. All, of course, go back to the fact that it's unsolicited, because that is a major key.

There is another term worth understanding, though not so sommon in use. Consorscience.

consorscience - (L. _consortium_, partnership, + _scientia_, knowledge) n.
1. The act of sharing information known to be relevant, specific, and of mutual interest to all persons participating, and/or strongly and reasonably believed to be desirable to each recipient based on a common purpose of intimacy or shared activities or pastimes, such that a mutually enjoyable dialogue is likely to ensue between participants.
2. A state of sharing such information.

consorscient - n.
1. One who participates in consorscience. adj.
2. Engaging in consorscience.
3. Having the qualities of mutually interesting information and common purpose inherent in consorscience.

consorscienate - v.
1. to engage or participate in consorscience.

If the mail is consorscient, then the receiver isn't likely to complain, regardless of whether it was solicited - or even if it was bulk. However, it the mail isn't consorscient, if the mail is bulk, and if the mail wasn't solicited, then I see little to defend the "It's not spam" arguement. Just because the marketer hopes that billions of people will want information his great Get Rich Quick program (whether it's legitimate or not) doesn't mean that the sender isn't sending spam when he sends it.

It would be nice if this tool hadn't been spoiled by immature morons.

Morons like you, who claims that emails sent to addresses gathered at a trade show booth are spam, but email sent to people who never asked for it isn't spam, all based on "I, the marketer, thought they would be interested!" You and the DMA want to use the "My unsolicited email isn't spam - it's a legitimate offer" defense.

But making up BS doesn't change the fact that it's spam. You think that you should get to decide. I think that each of the people you email should get to decide for themselves. And if they outvote you, their votes mean more than yours, the poor "legitimate" marketers.

Pay for your own advertising and you can decide. Force me to pay for it, and I get to decide. And so do the other million people you forced your ad on.

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Penguinshit]

If you'll calm down and think a second about it (and actually READ my last message) you'll see that you suffer from the typical knee-jerk reaction I spoke about.

There is a large difference between an unsolicited email and what has been come to be known as "spam". However, you seem to keep wanting to mix up the two (even going so far as to whip out your dusty Websters Collegiate in an attempt to make a point).

First off, I did not claim that email to addresses gathered at a tradeshow booth are spam, while other unsolicited messages are not. Rather, I claimed the opposite (with a careful qualifier which will be, again, further discussed below).

Second off, this technique (targeted mailing based on demographics) has been used long before the integrated circuit (let alone personal computers and the Internet) existed. What has come to be known as spam uses no demographic qualification whatsoever and exhibits other behavior which should become clear below.

Third, I have no affiliation with or even personal respect for the DMA. I detest them as much as you do. However, I'm going to try not to respond to your repeated trolling tactics other than to give you this warning: Stop your bullshit, junior, or this conversation ends.

Now then...

Let me re-use the example of Sun Microsystems. Years ago I used to receive messages from them on the order of about once per quarter due to my job overseeing a large network of Sun systems and my subscriptions (through work) to periodicals which they published and in which they also advertised. The messages came only to my work address, as that address was demographically qualified to be interested in Sun-related hardware/software. Most of the time I was not interested (but did help to keep me informed about what the company was up to). It was seldom, and non-intrusive. At any time I could have contacted them and the mails would cease (Incidentally, I did do some work for them in the early 90s helping to streamline this process - this was my first big PERL project).

The messages I could consider "consorscient" by your definitions given because they were not irritating and irrelevant and there was a high likelihood I would be responsive to the particular offer. Again, by my purchases and periodical subscriptions I was proven to be a real potential customer and understood that I was likely to receive such offerings (go look up "demographic" in your dictionary and then consider how many publishers sell their subscription lists on a routine basis).

However, in recent years, an explosion of utter bullshit has occurred in which unscrupulous types have destroyed an otherwise legitimate form of marketing. These people do not demographically qualify their mailing lists (other than some checking to determine if each address is "live"). They generally do not offer useful or interesting products. They send message after message after message after message. And there is no way to contact them to request a cessation of messages (and the few that do have an "Opt-Out" link only use that to further qualify a "live" email addy).

After a little while of this, the general email-receiving public grew tired of the irritation of clogged mailboxes and the term "spam" came into common usage. It was then used to describe *any* unsolicited email, even those that were previously never regarded with hostility (do you start to see a pattern here?).

So basically, if the explosion of irritating and mailbox-polluting spam had not occurred, no one would be whining about the occasional message regarding a product in which the recipient was very likely to be interested (and we would not be having this conversation).

What's needed is a way to clean house and not injure the legitimate marketers. This is not an easy solution both due to the scumbags who will abuse the system and the folks like you who are so oversensitized to any unsolicited messages that you're willing to stoke the fires and start the witch-hunt.

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Morosoph]

Me neither. I read the articles too fast; I aknowledge this in my reply to rokzy.

Still, It's funny how employees don't count as individuals!

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[JuggleGeek]

There is a large difference between an unsolicited email and what has been come to be known as "spam".

Only to people like you who claim that their unsolicited emails are not spam. Your definitions and the DMA's are pretty much the same - and pretty much different from everyone elses definition.

First off, I did not claim that email to addresses gathered at a tradeshow booth are spam, while other unsolicited messages are not.

Actually, you did. In this message. Your exact words were "Doing this is, technically, spam." You can't seem to understand that messgaes sent to addresses collected at your tradeshow booth are solicited, yet you argue that unsolicted emails are not spam. Very illogical.

this technique (targeted mailing based on demographics) has been used long before the integrated circuit (let alone personal computers and the Internet) existed.

Yes, but the advertiser had to pay the costs of those ads. When you send the email equivilant, you are forcing your advertising costs on other people, and there is little if any incentive to limit your mailings to people who might actually be interested. The cost for sending an extra million emails is negligible, because the costs are carried by the recipients. My mailbox gets flooded because you've decided that I'm part of your "demographic group". No thanks. Pay for your own advertising and leave me out of it unless I ask to hear from you.

What if you add me to your list and I don't want to be there? How do I know which marketers will remove me, which won't, and which will sell off my address after I "opt out" as a known good address? How many "legitimate businesses" do I have to tell "No"? And six months or a year later, when companies I've already opted out from decide to start a new campaign, what keeps them from adding me to their new list?

There are thousands of legitimate businesses which would consider me a possible customer. Grocery stores, restraunts, auto manufacturers, computer and software companies, bookstores, musicstores, and many many more. I don't want their mail over and over. I don't want to spend an hour every day playing opt out.

Some "demographic groups" are quite large. I'm sure the penis enlargement and viagra spammers could argue that most people would like to have a better sex life so they are targetting their group - essentialy everyone. But my mailbox is still full of junk I don't want. I'm interested in computers and software, but I don't want every computer or software company out there emailing me. There are some that I do want to hear from - and I opt in to their lists. That makes it my choice, as it should be. The thousands of marketers out there shouldn't get to choose for me.

In your example of Sun Microsystems, can you show any reason why people who want those emails would not be able to opt in? And email sent to a current customer, which appears to be the situation in you example with Sun, is generally not considered spam.

Third, I have no affiliation with or even personal respect for the DMA. I detest them as much as you do.

Perhaps, but your definition of spam and their definition of spam seem to be the same. I drive a car, but if I haven't done business with GM (giving them my email address as part of that transaction) and I haven't asked them to email me, (by joining a mailing list on their website, for instance) then they shouldn't email me. Saying I'm part of their "demographic group" of people who drive cars doesn't change that. The fact that they are a legitimate company doesn't change that. It's still my mailbox, and I should have control over it.

However, I'm going to try not to respond to your repeated trolling tactics other than to give you this warning: Stop your bullshit, junior, or this conversation ends.

My bullshit? You think you should have the right to decide what goes into my

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Penguinshit]

(sigh)

You have a complete inability to separate.

You call me a spammer, but I have never sent an unsolicited message to anyone, so I am going to let that (repeated) insult go for the moment.

there is little if any incentive to limit your mailings to people who might actually be interested. The cost for sending an extra million emails is negligible, because the costs are carried by the recipients. My mailbox gets flooded because you've decided that I'm part of your "demographic group". No thanks. Pay for your own advertising and leave me out of it unless I ask to hear from you.

What I'm attempting to do is clear up how things USED to be versus how they are now (after the abuses from unscrupulous morons). You either aren't experienced enough or clever enough to see the difference. You certainly have no real comprehension of the idea of demographics and how they are used in the legitimate advertising world.

The incentive legitimate marketers have in carefully trimming their contact lists is to not piss off people or waste time on those who have absolutely no use for the particular product. A legit business also doesn't send message after message after message after message, clogging up an email box with multiple messages regarding the same offering. I believe we can agree that is a particularly onerous facet of the spam we both hate.

There are thousands of legitimate businesses which would consider me a possible customer. Grocery stores, restraunts, auto manufacturers, computer and software companies, bookstores, musicstores, and many many more. I don't want their mail over and over. I don't want to spend an hour every day playing opt out.

It's called opt in, and it works. I use it myself, both as a recipient, and as a marketing tool. Great for retention, much harder to use for getting new customers. It doesn't hurt legitimate marketers a bit. It does hurt spammers who want to sign people up without those people giving permission.

That's the point. Legit businesses do not send email over and over and over. It's a one-hit-and-out. "Opt-in" is an idea that has failed (who's definition of "Opt-in" do you use?). It has already been abused to the point of ridicule. I get a shitload of mail from people who claim I "Opted in" when I clearly know I haven't. Bzzzt. Next suggestion.

I'm not trying to decide what goes into your mailbox. I'm trying to get you to realize that I am not a spammer and am not advocating what is really spam (as apart from what used to be the occasional unsolicited-yet-interesting contact). However, you continue (even in your last message) to sling bullshit calling someone a spammer without even a shred of evidence that said person engages in bulk email.

But apparently before you bought your first dialup modem, people like me were indeed receiving what could be considered spam today and not complaining because it was seldom and often interesting (whether or not I actually followed up and transacted business predicated upon that offering).

So, when I said "is technically spam" I was trying to take into account irrational folks such as yourself who have exactly your attitude. If I visit a website and someone gathers my information and then sends me multiple unsolicited messages, is that spam? According to your take on my tradeshow booth example, no. I say yes. That's what I meant by "technically spam". What's the difference between walking into a tradeshow booth or "walking into" a website?

You really seem incapable of separating the multiple-hit, massively-bulked "penis enlargers" from the single-hit, seldom-sent, carefully targeted legitimate businesses.

I really am sorry that you have no clear vision. However, your "kill 'em all" approach is the other edge to the same sword. Balance is necessary here, but you seem to have none, nor a capacity to embrace any.

That's too bad, and that is what is going to prevent a real solution t

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[JuggleGeek]

You call me a spammer, but I have never sent an unsolicited message to anyone, so I am going to let that (repeated) insult go for the moment

You have argued that marketers should be able to send unsolicited advertising to email addresses when they have no permission to do so. That is spam. The fact that you are arguing in favor of spam makes you sound like a spammer. (Which is not to say that you are a spammer. I have no idea who you are.) You don't believe you are arguing in favor of spam because you believe that unsolicited email from "legitimate businesses" isn't spam, but it doesn't change the facts.

The incentive legitimate marketers have in carefully trimming their contact lists is to not piss off people or waste time on those who have absolutely no use for the particular product.

Legitimate marketers have overused telemarketing to the point the goverment has now created a Do Not Call list and passed laws forcing marketers to honor it. The term "junk mail" came about because so many "legitimate" offers come in the mail that people consider those offers junk. Both have much higher costs to the marketer than email. Yet you expect me to believe that email marketers will control themselves and it won't be a burdon - if we could just get the pesky scam artists out of the way. Sorry, history doesn't support your argument.

A legit business also doesn't send message after message after message after message, clogging up an email box with multiple messages regarding the same offering. I believe we can agree that is a particularly onerous facet of the spam we both hate.

We can agree that having your inbox filled with repeated offers on the same product is a major pain. It's the primary reason so many people are upset about spam. Where we disagree is your belief that I should have to put up with a billion "one time" offers without complaining. There are a lot of legitimate businesses out there, but they shouldn't email me unless I ask them to. If just one-tenth of 1% of the legitimate businesses in the US sends me one email a year, I'll have to dig through a whole bunch of crap I don't want.

Legit businesses do not send email over and over and over. It's a one-hit-and-out. "Opt-in" is an idea that has failed (who's definition of "Opt-in" do you use?). It has already been abused to the point of ridicule. I get a shitload of mail from people who claim I "Opted in" when I clearly know I haven't. Bzzzt. Next suggestion.

Nonsense. Many legitimate businesses send emails once a month, or once a week - some send them once a day. They send them to customers who want those emails. They don't sign people up unless the people request it. Those people opt in, and on well run lists, those people follow a confirmation step (marketers like to call it "double opt in") to verify that they want to be on the list. Opt in works fine. Your claim that opt in has failed is just as dishonest as the spammers claims that their spam is sent to an opt in list. Opt in lists work very well - and the spam you get where people claim you opted in but didn't is still spam, not mail you requested. Yes, spammers lie. They'll claim a list is opt in. That doesn't mean that real opt in lists don't work - just that they believe that lying to people is good marketing. Those same spams that claim to be sent to opt in lists also tend to use forged headers, misleading subject lines, and fake return addresses. Those are more lies, just like their opt in claim.

Slashdot sends me an email every day, to inform me of new discussions on the website. They email me when someone replies to one of my articles. I suspect they email you essentially the same way. I receive mail from the NYTimes daily, and Reuters , and others, all because I signed up.

It's opt in. It's permission based. It isn't spam. And it works quite well.

I'm trying to get you to realize that I am not a spammer and am not advocating what is really spam (

Re:spamhaus rebutts this claim

[Penguinshit]

You don't believe you are arguing in favor of spam because you believe that unsolicited email from "legitimate businesses" isn't spam, but it doesn't change the facts.

These unsolicited messages were never considered "spam" prior to the last few years which saw a deluge of useless and annoying crap. Indeed, it took that deluge to create the meaning of "spam" which irks Hormel to no end. While the volume was extremely low (SiNR, anyone?) most folks didn't really mind. Now that the volume has skyrocketed, folks are (understandably) upset. But does that mean the folks sending unsolicited messages were sending spam? Perhaps.. should they be villified for it in the same manner as the "penis enlarger" folks? I think not.

Legitimate marketers have overused telemarketing to the point the goverment has now created a Do Not Call list and passed laws forcing marketers to honor it. The term "junk mail" came about because so many "legitimate" offers come in the mail that people consider those offers junk. Both have much higher costs to the marketer than email. Yet you expect me to believe that email marketers will control themselves and it won't be a burdon - if we could just get the pesky scam artists out of the way. Sorry, history doesn't support your argument.

With respect to the telemarketers, much of the outrage caused by them was not that they merely called, but that they called at unacceptable hours and a few did not honor requests to "remove me from your list". There were also the few that preyed upon elderly folks, scamming them out of large sums.

Instead of enforcing existing laws or setting up something to enforce better compliance with "remove" requests, we now get the "Do Not Call" list. Hell, I signed up for it myself. I didn't find myself deluged with calls, but I did have a few who refused to honor my "remove" request. It was easy for me to say "no thank you" and hang up. As long as the call was made during local business hours, I really had no objection. Calling me at 8:00pm, which interrupted my personal family activities, did annoy me. A simple restriction on times (IIRC, the cut-off time was set at 9:00pm, which is unreasonable in my opinion) and enforcement of "remove" requests would have sufficed. However, none were forthcoming so we now have a complete "Do Not Call" system (and even that has some holes in it). Here is the registry FAQ which shows the holes. Pay special attention to #3. That's the same type of loophole which will be attacked by the same types who pervert "Opt-In".

How much junk snail mail do you receive? I receive, on average, 5 per week (outside of the usual mailers for the local supermarket, etc.). I find this high, but I realize that my address is associated with a local high-visibility sporting club (which receives much more than I do at my home). This isn't very annoying to me as I can simply drop it in the paper recycling bin.

By the way.. the USPS attributes the majority of its business to the bulk email crowd. These pieces of mail cost approximately 3 cents each. Apparently this cost is not much of an impediment to junk emailers. Their target lists cost more than that.

Where we disagree is your belief that I should have to put up with a billion "one time" offers without complaining. There are a lot of legitimate businesses out there, but they shouldn't email me unless I ask them to. If just one-tenth of 1% of the legitimate businesses in the US sends me one email a year, I'll have to dig through a whole bunch of crap I don't want.

As shown above, the cost of sending bulk post isn't much of an impediment if someone wants to contact you. The cost of a legitimate company sending email is really only slightly less (after all, they pay for bandwidth too, have their own servers to maintain, etc.). If you stripped out all of the "spam" messages you received in a month which are from the "penis enlarg

How about a restraining order

[Brahmastra]

How about a restraining order on spammers where they are ordered not to ever touch a computer again. That's what they do to a lot of crackers.

Re:How about a restraining order

[Mephie]

They're putting restraining orders on white people?

Profiling!!

Re:How about a restraining order

[aardvarkjoe]

Don't be silly. It's only racism if you do it to colored people. Otherwise, we call it "diversity."

Re:How about a restraining order

[sakeneko]

How about a restraining order on spammers where they are ordered not to ever touch a computer again. That's what they do to a lot of crackers.

Yeah, except that times have changed and it's increasingly necessary to touch a computer to perform basic tasks of living and working. I'm not talking about software engineering or other high-tech work; I'm talking about being a clerk at a convenience store.

Even the suspected author of one variant of the MS Blaster worm, Jeffrey Parson, was told by the judge that he could use the Internet to look for work. Judges are increasingly unwilling to place permanent draconian restrictions on computer criminals because that could leave them unemployable, and an unemployable person can be forced back into crime by that very fact.

I agree that aggressive, repeat spammers -- the sort that end up on the SpamHaus.org ROKSO (Register of Known Spam Operations) list -- deserve to be thrown permanently off the Internet. But maybe we should think of some more practical ways to deal with them?

Re:How about a restraining order

[Anonymous Coward]

Or cut off their hands.

It'd be a lot more effective if they fined the hell out of the advertisers; it's much easier to trace them than the spammers.

Re:How about a restraining order

[nightsweat]

Here, here.

or Hear, hear. I'm never sure which.

Hear, here?

Re:How about a restraining order

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the suspected author of one variant of the MS Blaster worm, Jeffrey Parson, was told by the judge that he could use the Internet to look for work. Judges are increasingly unwilling to place permanent draconian restrictions on computer criminals because that could leave them unemployable, and an unemployable person can be forced back into crime by that very fact.

Unfortunately it looks like not all judges got that memo:

Lamo denies $300,000 database hack

Quoting from this article -

After a weekend in hiding, Lamo turned himself in at the federal courthouse in Sacramento, Calif., Tuesday morning. Pursuant to an agreement with prosecutors, he was quickly released on a $250,000 bond secured in part by his parent's house, but was banned from computers, ordered to obtain employment and placed on travel restrictions pending trial

Note that the "no computers" restriction was tacked on by the judge, according to the previous Register article. Like you say this does make employment opportunities somewhat limited.

ManxStef
(posted as AC 'cause I've forgot my login and I'm on my sweet new Linux box - a Gigabyte TA-1)

Re:How about a restraining order

[JamesP]

I agree that aggressive, repeat spammers -- the sort that end up on the SpamHaus.org ROKSO [spamhaus.org] (Register of Known Spam Operations) list -- deserve to be thrown permanently off the Internet. But maybe we should think of some more practical ways to deal with them?

Maybe having their penises enlarged by the methods they advertise, and making them sign to dozens of mortgages

Re:How about a restraining order

[Anonymous Coward]

Even mobile phones could be considered "computers" these days - given that most have WAP or GPRS internet connectivity, and many can run Java programs.

Re:How about a restraining order

[Agent R]

The only practical way on dealing with spammers is to jail them harshly. They don't take court orders seriously and most of these guys were felons to begin with. (See history of Alan Ralksy and Tommy Cowles shown on Spamhaus.)

Re:I WIN FAGS!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I had to reboot my windows box after running that. What kind of idiot are you, huh? With first post comes responsibility!

could be worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Better to be fined up to 5000 pounds in a magistrates court...

...than to be pounded by 5000 magistrates.

...or courted by a 5000 pound magistrate.

Re:could be worse

[sikpig]

...or fined up to 5000 pounds of flesh.
Sorry, had to, but wouldn't that be an even better deterrent?

Re:could be worse

[Trigun]

Naw, Taco'd have to spam just to get back to his fighting weight.

Re:could be worse

[Anonymous Coward]

how about 5000 whips with the cane?

You insensitive clod...

[JLSigman]

... I live in America! ;-)

Re:You insensitive clod...

[swordboy]

I live in America!

North or South?

Re:You insensitive clod...

[Anonymous Coward]

Central!!!

Re:You insensitive clod...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah. Mexican

and. . .

[loraksus]

sadly, nor will being drawn and quartered.
Soon hopefully . . .
Besides, we can always start inflicting pain and death on the spammers where the authorities don't really care about the problem. . .

This is a good start

[chia_monkey]

I noticed they can get jail time in Italy. Cool. So jail time and fines in Italy. Fines in the UK. I wonder what the US will do besides say "spam is bad...don't do it" or "spam is bad. It's not spam if you have an opt-out option". Oh I hope these set good precedents.

Re:This is a good start

[TopShelf]

Fines are OK, but I would have expected much better from the British. Say, something like the end of Braveheart???

Re:This is a good start

[pVoid]

Or endorsing Verisign to go counter a very valuable spam determintation technique.

On a side note though, I'm not too sure about jail time for spam. Heavy fines, yes, jail time... makes me stop and think about it.

Re:This is a good start

[Anonymous Coward]

I too would like to see the end of Braveheart but sadly there are too many copies already out there to make it feasible.

Re:This is a good start

[MasterSLATE]

That would just make spammers into martyrs... Definately not a good thing.. Italy giving jailtime??? Thats a little crazy as well. But fines, as long as they actually work and are COLLECTED, is a good idea.

Re:This is a good start

[gilmour14]

I wonder what the US will do besides say "spam is bad...don't do it"

1. Most likely start charging people to block it.

Re:This is a good start

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

The US will use the anti-spam laws around the world to their advantage, creating a massive subsidised US spam industry, and putting huge tariffs on all the 'unfair' imported spam.

Spam lobbyists will push for further subsidies each year while shutting out foreign spam supplies for their horrible spam dumping trade practices.

The WTO will find in favour of the foreign spam sources time and time again, but the US will continue on because US spam is the only true spam.

had enough?

Re:This is a good start

[jrumney]

I think we should suspend them in glass cages above the Thames so people can throw eggs at them.

Re:This is a good start

[homer_ca]

OK, so maybe not give them martyrdom, but how about some good old public humiliation, like a stock and pillory in Trafalgar Square or that square in London with all the pigeons?

Re:This is a good start

[ncc74656]

Fines are OK, but I would have expected much better from the British. Say, something like the end of Braveheart???

Unfortunately, the Brits did away with the death penalty a while back...now they don't have that option.

Re:This is a good start

[Brainomac]

I agree, but i think that spam will never be completely stopped...it will just be a never ending battle between the spammers and anti-spammers. One persons junk mail is anothers desired viagra email. Just recently I found this site(shadango.com) which allows me to check both my hotmail and yahoo address at the same spot and it uses Spamassassin to filter. So far I've been pretty impressed at it's ability to keep my inbox clean. I don't know if systems like this are the answer but I think it's definitely worth checking out.

Re:This is a good start

[daeley]

in Trafalgar Square or that square in London with all the pigeons?

[raises finger and inhales]

Erm...

[lowers finger and shakes head]

Re:This is a good start

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad thing is that it could very well happen knowing the US government :P

Of course, if the foreign countries try to block or reject incoming US spams, the US will consider those servers as "Weapons of Mass Mailing Destruction" and bomb the fuck out of them... just so that they can liberate those "poor" souls and start flooding them with even more US spam as humanitarian aid. Hormel will be even more rich as they line Bushwhack's and Asscruft's pockets with money.

Oh no!

[Prince_Ali]

Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce of the new law.

Oh no, we need to get these violent people off the streets before they e-mail again!

Re:Oh no!

[swaic]

Oh no, we need to get these violent people off the streets before they e-mail again!

Personally I'd rather see a spammer get some hard time than see the government get 5,000 as a supposed punishment.

It's true that you have to hit people in the pocket to really make it hurt, but I'm against these greedy bastards pocketing the cash. Take the "fine" and disseminate it amongst the victims.

Re:Oh no!

[Nept]

Hey good call. Put them in prison and let the taxpayers bear the cost!

Yeah, I'll bet you really thought that one through, didn't you?

And disseminate the fine amongst the victims? Well let's see. At a conservative million emails per spammer, that would work out to a half-p per "victim".

Great!

Re:Oh no!

[calethix]

Not to mention (unless things work different in the UK) you would then be supporting the spammer with your taxes. It takes money to run a prison and I don't think work release programs generate enough money to make them self sufficient.

Re:Oh no!

[atrader42]

In all seriousness, I think a fine makes a lot more sense here. No human was harmed-the spammer made money and people and companies lost money. Taking money from the spammer seems far more logical than putting it in jail. Maybe taking its computers away would also make sense.

Re:Oh no!

[swaic]

Taxpayers? Man, I don't pay taxes. I'm writing this from the prison library.

Jail time?

[C_Kode]

Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce of the new law.

Jail time? How about death sentence.

Re:Jail time?

[Angst Panzer]

Jail time? How about death sentence.

Not in the UK. No death penalty.

We could force them to become morris dancers or something, I suppose.

Re:Jail time?

[ajs318]

Actually the UK does have the death penalty for certain offences, including

• Treason
• Piracy on the High Seas
• Damaging ships in naval dockyards

Interestingly, any item of snail mail is considered the property of the Queen until it reaches its intended recipient, and it is actually treason to open a letter not addressed to you. I'm not sure if this applies to e-mail though, since ISPs are typically not By Royal Appointment in the same degree as the Royal Mail.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce of the new law.

Prison for sending email? Come on, let's stop with the juvenille, knee-jerk reactions.

Re:Huh?

[spuke4000]

let's stop with the juvenille, knee-jerk reactions

You must be new here.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Prison for sending email? Come on, let's stop with the juvenille, knee-jerk reactions.

Yes, instead of sending individuals who cause damages both monetary and of time to millions of people and businesses, let's instead send to prison an individual caught trying to sell an ounce of pot to another individual.

Seriously, prison time for repeat spammers is perfectly reasonable, and is an eventual inevitability because those people cause others actual damage. The only reason that it's taking so long to get the laws shaped up is because the DMA is a spam lobby with some money.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm not new here. i've been posting ever since they created this AC account.

skip prison...

[ejbst25]

...straight to death sentence!

Seriously...while we all hate spam...someone *really* wants spammers in jail? On the right is the rapist, then murderer, then child molester, then spammer.

Re:skip prison...

[bs_02_06_02]

Yep. I can picture it... Sounds perfect. In fact, it makes me smile.

I wonder if the spammer would be interested in selling penis enlargements to his cellmates?

Re:skip prison...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds about right to me

Re:skip prison...

[Our Man In Redmond]

So the biggest one . . . the biggest, meanest nastiest father-raper . . . he comes over to me and says, "Kid, what'd you get?"

"I didn't get nothin'," I said, "I had to pay $100,000 and help secure a couple dozen open relays."

"What were you in for?"

"Spamming"

. . . and they all moved away from me on the Group W bench and gave me the hairy eyeball and all sorts of mean nasty stuff, until I said "and promoting Viagra and free pr0n" and they all shook my hand and we had a great time playing with the pencils and using the computers on the shelf by the window to strip a couple of mailing lists for addresses.

Re:skip prison...

[mdh-(e)]

From the country that brought you the debtors' prison... now the spammers' prison!

Re:skip prison...

[i.r.id10t]

Well, I guess that beats littering...

You can get anything you want....

Re:skip prison...

[gilmour14]

I bet he could also offer fantastically low interest rates on his anal real estate.

Re:skip prison...

[FroMan]

Wow, good post man. I haven't seen a mod point in quite a while, but I would so give you all of them if I did.

Re:skip prison...

[woodhouse]

I only meant in particularly severe cases. Like, for example, if they email me.

Re:skip prison...

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on... give some credit where it's due:

Alice's Restaurant

Re:skip prison...

[Our Man In Redmond]

Come on... give some credit where it's due:

Sorry, I thought everyone knew that.

Re:skip prison...

[El]

Dude, here in the states, there is a tradition that radio stations play the album en toto every thanksgiving, so we assume everybody has heard it...
"I cannot tell a lie... I put that letter under all that garbage!"

Re:skip prison...

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, how is it different to any other "white-collar crime"?

Re:skip prison...

[TomV]

And then we sent out 24 million 800x600 colour glossy JPEGs with scripts and popups and a paragraph below each one explaining why each one wasn't spam and how to opt out... :-)

Re:skip prison...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, yes we do. Send them to pound-me-in-the-ass prison

Prison should be reserved for violent criminals...

[ivan256]

Why should we waste money keeping these people in prison when they're not a physical threat to anybody, and when we can force them to become productive members of society? Don't spend my money throwing spammers in prison, use their ill-gotten gains to catch other spammers, and then force them to work at a job that helps the economy rather than forcing them to sit behind bars and have gay sex on the taxpayer tab.

Eh...

[Kedisar]

All spammers are going to have to do is just set up their servers in 3rd world countries. The UK isn't going to travel to Zaire to shut down a steamboat. Who spams FROM Britain, anyway?

Still, this does make it a lot harder for the very few spammers in Britain to, well, spam. Moving your servers to Zaire isn't exactly easy.

Re:Eh...

[AndrewRUK]

Well, some people do. There's one fuckwit who I reported to the Advertising Standards Authority (who are a prime example of how useless industry self-regulation can be, but still worth a try) since their code of practice bans spamming, and they have come to the conclusion that the spammers "were not responsible for the recent spate of unsolicated marketing emails that they appeared to have been sending," even though the spammer all but admitted to me on the phone that it was them.

Re:Eh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Who spams FROM Britain, anyway?

Lots of people. I've blocked anything from BT, as I got tons of spam from their netblocks.

Warped world view..

[molo]

You must have a warped world view to advocate having people jailed for costing you time and money. Especially in a world where someone only gets 1 year for a hit-and-run that killed a little girl and maimed another.

-molo

Re:Warped world view..

[trudyscousin]

I live near the community named in the incident coverage to which your link points. It frightens me to think I may someday be sharing the roads again with that sociopathic little p****.

That aside, I think the judge would have given her even more time if the law had permitted it. Laws regarding vehicular manslaughter will evolve as the outrage mounts. So will those with regards to spam.

Re:Warped world view..

[molo]

I live in Palo Alto, but I havn't been following the case. Driving in California is scary enough without people like her on the road.

Is it true that the judge couldn't give her a stronger sentence? I didn't realize that. I thought the judge was being lenient.

I've heard reports that there's some kind of evidence that the girl flipped over the hood of the car. If that is the case, then the prosecutors majorly fucked up. They should have charged her with Manslaughter in the 1st or something.. her claim of not realizing/remembering would be out the window then.

-molo

Re:Warped world view..

[trudyscousin]

(BTW, I'm in Mountain View.)

What I got from among the many news reports I read was that, indeed, she got the maximum jail sentence. Her community service, the exact number of hours I forget, was of unusually large duration because of her apparent lack of remorse.

The most damning thing of all was that, after hitting the girls and arriving at school, she asked her boyfriend if he noticed anything amiss with her car. She knew perfectly well what she had done.

Some links: here, and here.

Re:Warped world view..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because we all know accidents never happen. I think we should tar and feather those who have killed another person shortly before dumping searing hot oil over their bodies.

Re:Warped world view..

[molo]

Leaving that 6-year-old to die on the pavement is no accident.

-molo

Re:Warped world view..

[Anonymous Coward]

A teary-eyed whiteteenager gets a year for killing and maming. How much should the black guy get for stealing pizza?

Re:Warped world view..

[ratamacue]

And the average drug dealer (who conducts his business on the principle of voluntary association) gets more time in jail than the average rapist.

Re:Warped world view..

[_avs_007]

Not to mention you can get in more trouble, get more fines, and face longer jail terms for sharing music on Kazaa then being a pedophile/rapist.

Re:Warped world view..

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have a warped world view to advocate having people jailed for costing you time and money.

So do you advocate ignoring someone who repeatedly causes roughly 1 man-year of lost productivity per mailing? What do you advocate for someone who steals your car, costing you time and money? Do you advocate jail only for things that directly cause death or injury and advocate nothing but fines and community service for fraud, scammers, spammers, and people that steal your parent's retirement funds?

Re:Warped world view..

[Anonymous Coward]

Even so, it is still one year too long. Everyone knows that women are physically incapable of committing crimes, and should not be punished for any that they, due to a male mistake, appear to have committed.

In any case, the "victims" were a Very Young Woman and a Young Woman. It is absolutely inconceivable that any woman would willingly harm her own sisters! This is more prima facie evidence for the defence. Harming one's own kind is known to be practised only by men*, and is a product of the deficient Y-chromosome. Obviously the real perpetrator of this heinous crime was a male "friend", for whom she is now covering up fearing rape or murder.

This has been a gross miscarriage of justice against all women.


* There have been suggestions that ingestion of taurine {a protein found only in the rotting flesh of animal corpses} may induce similar behaviour. So far, our Centre has been unable to locate volunteers for an experiment involving taurine.

Re:Warped world view..

[Grizzlysmit]

You must have a warped world view to advocate having people jailed for costing you time and money. Especially in a world where someone only gets 1 year for a hit-and-run that killed a little girl and maimed another.

And you have a strange form of logic if you think that the fact that other crimes have far too soft sentances means that this one should be proportionately soft. The only correct thing is to make the other punishments suite the crime, boy you brain dead sissies give me the shits. Lucky for you being mentally subnormal isn't a crime.

Laws don't apply to scum

[jafuser]

Unfortunately, this will just drive the scum to spam from other countries or to go further underground by exploiting vulenerable PCs with viruses and such.

Enacting laws is a nice symbolic step, but we need a technical solution if we are to ever to put the brakes on spammers.

Re:Laws don't apply to scum

[mark_space2001]

I disagree. Extradition could be used to get at spamers in other countries. These guys are small potatoes compared to any other industry, I think it's unlikely that a country would try to protect them.

Many people, including many technical people and the US congres, recognize the international nature of spam and are already talking about treaties to prohibit spam. That would put a lot more teeth in an extadition order.

I don't believe that there are any real technical solutions to spam, which is why I don't support them. Filtering seems easy to get around, and it does remove some wanted emails from my inbox. White lists prevent new people from emailing me from an email address on a business card or a website. I don't want to pay per email, and I don't want to encourage ISPs to deliver SPAM by making it profitable for them to do so. Encryption or "CPU cycle tax" is only going to impose overhead on the large number of legitimate emails.

When there is crime, people don't say "Gosh, we need better locks and a redesign of personal transportation discourage theft." They say "Get some more police and increase jail terms" because they know that's what works.

Re:Laws don't apply to scum

[Anonymous Coward]

Hit them where it hurts! Money. Or spamming must be discouraged by technical means.

One of the things that makes anonymous spamming possible is the fact that the sender address can be faked. Could not it be possible to verify the sender by a digital signature in the e-mail header? Of course this must be universal and would need a revision of the e-mail standard.

Another solution is using tokens. Say every e-mail must have a digital token included while travelling through the system. You can buy tokens for $0.01 Once received a token can be reused. This would only have a financial impact on spammers. A normal e-mail conversation would pass the same token up and down. Receiving spam would be a source of free tokens ;-)

Re:I WIN FAGS!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Note to self: Always preview the prepared first post in another topic to perfect it.

Oh, and BTW, I forgot to post anonymously, whatever, I'll get well known!1

Everyone will remember me as the 'First Post Man' of Thursday 18 September 2003.

5000 pounds, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

5000 pounds... I'd say, 2.5 tons is a pretty hefty fine :)

Re:5000 pounds, eh?

[woodhouse]

Bah, it's not my fault the article submission form ignores pound signs.

Re:5000 pounds, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did you learn maths?

5000 / 2240 = 2.23214285714285714285714285714286 tons.

If you were talking pounds and tons in money, rather than slang terms for approximate measures, then 5000 pounds = 50 tons = 10 monkeys = 200 ponies.

Re:Good think I don't live in the UK

[Anonymous Coward]

please elaborate

In abstentia

[grub]

From the article:Under the new law, spammers could be fined 5,000 in a magistrates court or an unlimited penalty from a jury.

and

Earlier this month Italy imposed tough regulations to fine spammers up to 90,000 euros (66,000) and impose a maximum prison term of three years. EU legislation banning unwanted e-mail is due to come into force on 31 October, but correspondents say that, given the global nature of the internet, it may have little effect. Most spam comes from the United States and Asia, and will be outside its reach.

Couldn't the spammers be found guilty in abstentia? Remember how the US snapped up Dmitry Skylarov when he entered that country.

Re:In abstentia

[Anonymous Coward]

That should be "absentia", not "abstentia".

No, spammers cannot be found guilty when they did it outside italian "jurisdiction". Italy is not as arrogant as the USA and thinks their laws apply to citizens inside other nations...

Whoa! 5000 pounds!

[FroMan]

I saw the part about not going to jail and that the UK doesn't have the same laws against cruel and unusual punishment, but 5000 pounds!

I mean, that like having Rossanne Bar sit on you or something. Could anyone live through that?

Oh, nevermind, pounds in UK are currency. My bad, that's right, you guys use metric too, don't you... Carry on, nothing to see here.

register reports otherwise

[deadmongrel]

check out register.co.uk call it a toothless tiger. more like a pussy(oops!) read the article here http://theregister.co.uk/content/6/32914.html

Re:register reports otherwise

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop! your giving pussy a bad name.

Billy Tauzin's Opt-Out spam bill

[bs_02_06_02]

Billy Tauzin continues to promote Opt-out... which means anyone can spam you as much as possible until you complain. Then, they have someone else spam you, and then you complain, and then someone else spams you, and this continues until someone gets killed. Opt-out. What a terrible idea! But, no one in politics knows anything about technology. Most politicians are puppets. Democrats and Republicans both.

Re:Billy Tauzin's Opt-Out spam bill

[bilbobuggins]

sorry, but Opt-In doesn't make it any better

want to register to play card games? fine, you have to agree to recieve 'News Updates' and other crap from us and 'our associates'

guess what, now you have to complain to each of those 'associates' seperately, and technically since to opted in to their 'partner' site (read: list vendor) they're not doing anything wrong

Interesting thought

[VEGETA_GT]

Is there any way I could obtain a english e mail account. I realy like the idea of having a account that after I use it once online, its not spamed all to hell. But also what happens when say this spammer in say japan spams a UK e mail address. Can they still be fined, or possabley baned

Re:Interesting thought

[ajs318]

There are two rules for extradition. Firstly, the offence must be a crime in both countries. Extradition treaty notwithstanding, you can't be tried in one country for something you did in another country where whatever you did was not a crime, even if it would have been a crime at home. Secondly, the country where you committed the offence can refuse to extradite you if their authorities believe that the punishment would be overly severe if you were tried in the other country.

So {and IANAL} this is how I understand it:

• If someone sends spam to the UK from a country where it is legal to send spam, then that country's own sovereignty protects them from anything the UK might try on. In the absence of an international treaty, national laws stop at national boundaries.
• If someone in the UK sends spam to a country where it is legal to send spam, then they might have committed an offence under UK law and therefore be subject to trial in the UK.
• If someone sends spam to the UK from a country where it is illegal to send spam, then they could be extradited to the UK.
• If someone in the UK sends spam to someone in a country where spamming carries a penalty considered significantly harsher than the penalty in the UK - especially imprisonment without parole or death - then they most likely would not be extradited from the UK, but would be tried and serve their sentence in the UK

When spam is punishable by death

[grasshoppa]

That's when the politicians will get my votes.

Re:When spam is punishable by death

[azzy]

Then you won't be voting for many UK politicians. For all intents and purposes we don't have the death penalty here. Though I believe it is still on the books for treason. On an aside, I believe it is also UK policy to not even extradite anyone if they would face the death penalty.

Re:When spam is punishable by death

[Tony Hoyle]

It's not even on the books for treason any more - we had to give it up to be eligibable to sign the human rights treaties.

Re:When spam is punishable by death

[azzy]

Phew!!! I'm safe then!

The folly of law

[ajs]

We all hate spammers, so anti-spam laws are good.

This is the same logic that got us into the situation where someone who gets caught having sex with their boy/girlfriend on lover's lane (especially if you're in Mass. and happen to be in a non-missionary position) can end up having to walk around to all of your neighbors and tell them you're a sex-offender... joy.

Yeah, so the definition of a spammer is what? If you get 1000 messages a day with my name as the return-address, do I get fined? What if the headers are *very* convincing? What if it's "from" someone else, but it came from my network? What if that was someone who I let put thier virus-infected laptop on my wireless network?

This is not an easy problem.

Re:The folly of law

[Anonymous Coward]

what about going after the sponsors of the spam?

Re:The folly of law

[__aagmrb7289]

Excellent point, touching on where most of these laws fail - identifying the spammer, and identifying them correctly. Thanks for hitting the point mostly - saves me a little bit of typing.

Re:The folly of law

[travdaddy]

what about going after the sponsors of the spam?

Same problem, some spammer could really not like you, and send a bunch of spam advertising for your company. So it looks like you are the sponsor, when you really aren't.

BTW, doing this or making the Reply-To address as someone you don't like is referred to as a "Joe Job."

Re:The folly of law

[tsg]

We all hate spammers, so anti-spam laws are good.

We all hate murderers, and anti-murder laws are good.

This is the same logic that got us into the situation where someone who gets caught having sex with their boy/girlfriend on lover's lane (especially if you're in Mass. and happen to be in a non-missionary position) can end up having to walk around to all of your neighbors and tell them you're a sex-offender... joy.

I fail to see how punishing a couples consensual (I'm assuming or you wouldn't be using it as an argument) relationship and punishing behavior that costs many people a lot of money is analagous.

It's not an easy problem and there's no magic bullet. No law, no matter how carefully crafted, is going to solve the spam problem. But it's important to have the law on your side when you're trying to prevent it. A large number of people are under the impression that if it's not illegal, then it's not wrong.

Making spam illegal is just one step in a long path of getting rid of spam, but it's a necessary step.

Yeah, so the definition of a spammer is what? If you get 1000 messages a day with my name as the return-address, do I get fined? What if the headers are *very* convincing? What if it's "from" someone else, but it came from my network?

Obviously you would need good evidence the person actually sent the spam before fining them. But no law enforcement agency is even going to bother looking at it if it's not illegal.

What if that was someone who I let put thier virus-infected laptop on my wireless network?

Access providers should take some responsibility for the people they provide access to. Claiming ignorance of the users on your network is no better than claiming ignorance of the virus on your computer. They're both your responsibility. Clean it up or shut it down.

Re:The folly of law

[Anonymous Coward]

Right on! I hate spam as much as anybody (although after having installed spamassassin on my mail server, I hardly see any spam anymore :), but having the government decide who can send things to my mailbox really annoys me. The internet became the fantastic instrument of communication that it is today partly because it has been very liberated from government and corporate meddling. Spammers are not a threat to this, but legislation is. /Anders

Re:The folly of law

[ajs]

Your logic seems to lead to the tacit acceptance of ultimately, unavoidably crappy laws that inflict penalties on the wrong parties, and of course cannot target the real problem, which simply moves off-shore.

Sorry, I'm just not able to get behind that. Spam is a technical problem which can be solved technically. It is not a legal problem. No one dies. No one is harmed. It costs you money, but only in sofar as you put up a public service accepting bits from anyone in the world, and someone DARED to send you bits you didn't want!

Re:The folly of law

[mfrank]

You could pretty easily convince The Man of your innocence, unless your business involves viagra, penis enlargement, or Nigerian fund transfers.

There are probably laws on the books that could be used to prosecute spammers that do this, and if not, they could be created. Go after the actual spammer, and if they can't display proof that the accused company contracted with them for the spam, nail them to the friggin wall.

Re:The folly of law

[tsg]

Spam is a technical problem which can be solved technically.

And there should be technical solutions to stop it. But when the spammers go out of their way to circumvent the technology, a law making it illegal would go a long way towards stopping it. There are technical solutions to stop people from stealing your car, but it's illegal to do so just the same. You can have both. And both are necessary.

It is not a legal problem.

Theft isn't a legal problem?

but only in sofar as you put up a public service accepting bits from anyone in the world

Where does it say that because I have a computer on the internet that I am required to accept bits from anyone anywhere? That's the same logic that telemarketers are using: because you have a phone, we are allowed to call you whether you want us to or not.

Re:The folly of law

[ajs]

Where does it say that because I have a computer on the internet that I am required to accept bits from anyone anywhere?

None at all! Good lord, I hope you don't think I was suggesting that you should not have every right to refuse anything you like!

What I was saying is that you don't have a right to expect that you can put up a large funnel marked "insert mail-like bits here" (which is what SMTP is) and complain when someone puts mail-like bits in it.

You can block whatever you like. You can put up a firewall that prevents every system on the Net except one from sending you mail. That's all entirely your choice and should always remain so! This is why I get upset whe providers tell me that I shoudl not run my own servers, but rely on thiers. I ask them, "how quickly will you respond to my requests to change mail filtering and install point-to-point encryption software of my choosing?" The answer is predictable, and not terribly interesting.

Feel free to filter however you like. What I have a problem with is when people say, "I don't want to get spam, so spam should be illegal." Well, I'd rather not have all sorts of communication happen in a day, but almost none of it should be illegal.

Here are some laws that would help stop spam, and would actually be useful:

1. Stiff penalties including jail time for using a host (not under your control) to relay mail that it does not advertise an MX for the repient of in batches of more than 1000 in a given day, unless you have an explicit agreement with the owner of that system.

2. A law giving a person explicit rights to collect damages in the event that their name is used as the sender address for unsolicited mail, without explicit consent in volume exceeding 1000 messages per day.

3. Same as #2, but for hosting/site providers whose domain name is used as above by an individual or business which has not been allocated the user-account(s) used in the mailing.

A law making software authors responsible for the use of their software to perform the above (without modification, of course, since you CAN make IE do all of the above using ActiveX controls, but IE should not be penalized for such scripting capabilities).

Notice that none of these address spam directly. What they do is attempt to make it difficult (and financially dangerous) to hide the origin of your mail. Once that is done, your ability to filter whatever you don't like (or accept what you do) becomes much more powerful!

Re:The folly of law

[Spunk]

if you're in Mass. and happen to be in a non-missionary position

You know that's no longer the case, right? The Supreme Court recently overturned all sodomy laws.

Re:The folly of law

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not an easy problem.

Yes, it is an easy problem. Rather, it is no harder than defining any other class of criminal. Think of all your "What if" questions in the same way that you would think of all the things that a murderer might do to cover their tracks. What if they threw the murder weapon in the river? What if they wore gloves? What if they forged the return address? They might try all those things and they might try a bunch of things that you and I haven't even thought about. In the end it's always the same: you look at all the evidence, all the log files, where the email came from and what it tries to get the recipients to do, and you either have enough evidence to identify the spammer beyond a reasonable doubt or you don't.

It's an easy problem with a legal system already in place to tackle it.

Re:The folly of law

[Steve B]

But when the spammers go out of their way to circumvent the technology, a law making it illegal would go a long way towards stopping it.

Do you mean making spam itself illegal, or making filter circumvention illegal?

The latter should definitely be done (or, more precisely, the computer-cracking laws should be clarified to make it unmistakable that this particular type of computer cracking is covered). The former might not be necessary if the latter is prohibited and the prohibition is enforced.

Re:The folly of law

[ajs]

I'd have to read the decision to be sure on that (e.g. how limited is that decision/precident), but the laws remain on the books in Mass. (so either you would not be convicted, or could appeal) and it doesn't change the value of the analogy.

Re:The folly of law

[ajs]

I don't understand why people want to make spammers into criminals. They're no more criminals than people who send me junk fliers at home. What I want is a toold for electronic circumvention of spam, not a set of laws that I might some day run afoul of by accident. In fact, I'd much rather that it be legal to send ANY bits from ANY node on the Internet to ANY other node. Why should some particular bit-pattern or rate do any more than get you in trouble with your ISP (if it utilizes too much bandwidth or tarnishes their reputation) or cause your bits to not be recieved (if someone filters your spam into the bit-bucket).

We can solve the spam problem tomorrow if all of the ISPs in the world just stop waiting for someone else to do it, and start requiring signed TLS sessions that are tracked and assigned a reputation. Then it's easy for software to determine how "reasonable" a given identity is, and filter appropriately. Done. No more spam.

Re:The folly of law

[Spunk]

I seem to recall the Mass laws being voted down before then, regardless.

Re:Good think I don't live in the UK

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

We in the UK are also glad you don't live here.

Re:Whoa! 5000 pounds!

[Neophytus]

road signs and speedos are still in mph :)

It won't help

[krewemaynard]

from article:
"EU legislation banning unwanted e-mail is due to come into force on 31 October, but correspondents say that, given the global nature of the internet, it may have little effect.

Most spam comes from the United States and Asia, and will be outside its reach."

the same goes for any US laws if they come along. it's nice to think that this might do some good, but it'll just create more government jobs and suck tax dollars into another useless program.

"The EU legislation leaves it to each member state how to enforce the legislation, as long as the enforcement is "effective".

too broad...and still ineffective. spammers will just move to other countries with no regulations on this stuff.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[bwaynef]

I agree that me having to support a spammer in the "Big House" repulses me. I like the idea of them paying a fine also. Seems like they could work some community service in with it for an extra touch to help expedite the results of any contributions they may make to society.

enforcement

[jgercken]

A step in the right direction but I'm afraid the problem is too international to be affected much.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[grasshoppa]

Why should we waste money keeping these people in prison when they're not a physical threat to anybody

I don't think you quite understand the motives behind this law.

It's not to prevent them to cause any harm to others, it's to prevent others from causing harm to them.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[Kedisar]

They are a threat, at least somewhat. They clog thousands of emails per day with their rubbish, wasting millions of dollars. However, they shouldn't be executed, or put in jail for life or something exorbitant like that. I mean, you *can* get put in jail for copying movies, and that's not a physical threat to anyone, either.

Re:skip prison?

[YetAnotherDave]

well, maybe the prospect of being locked up with a 300 pound known murderer would keep a few people from spamming...

nothing else tried in the Good Ole USA(tm) has worked...

1800 emails

[Inda]

I sent 1800 spam emails to my MP, Michael Wills. I told him this was a month's worth after deleting the disgusting ones.

I wonder if it helped...

Re:1800 emails

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

I sent 1800 spam emails to my MP, Michael Wills.

What you should have done was send them all printed out, in separate envelopes. }:-)

(For the benefit of the uninitiated, British MPs are legally required to reply to every letter sent to them by one of their constituents.)

5000 pounds you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

What if instead of being fined 5000 pounds, spammers were forced to eat 5000 pounds of SPAM? Just a thought.

Re:5000 pounds you say?

[radja]

printed on high-quality paper..

Re:I WIN FAGS!!

[grub]

Everyone will remember me as the 'First Post Man' of Thursday 18 September 2003

Dear Goatse.cx guy,

Thank you for your valuable input. Unfortunately your writing isn't up to the calibre that the highly focused slashdot readers demand.

Please go back to stretching open your bottom.

Thank you.

Hang them!

[EnterpriseNCC-1701]

Bah! 5000 Pounds is nothing. They should be hung. Electric chair will do fine as well.

Re:Hang them!

[Anonymous Coward]

They should be hung.

I'm a spammer. I am also packing 10 1/2 inches. I'm afraid your law would be too late for me.

Re:Hang them!

[not-folly]

If they use their own products, then they are already hung.

sorry about that

Can sending your resume

[Anonymous Coward]

to an employer who isnt interested in you be considered spamming too?
its gonna be like.. ooh I am unemployed .. to ... ooh I am in prison...
ROFL

Re:Can sending your resume

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah if you want a job where you do nothing but get anally raped by your cell-mate Bubba every day; spam employers!

Re:Can sending your resume

[splorp!]

Yes.

Bernard Shifman

Re:Whoa! 5000 pounds!

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

Actually the US went metric way earlier, in the early 1800's, but you got lazy and stopped after making your money metric.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[bs_02_06_02]

All it would take would be a night in a holding cell... just a short stint with a 300 lb criminal. Then, a few of the stories would get out.

Wait till someone forges your mailadress

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you are in deep trouble, Mr. Triggerhappy. And wait till the next Lovsan-Series, when 80% of UKs Windows Machines will have sent Spam. They have experience in removing thousands of dead cattle from their feet-and-mouth-epidemic, but I surely doubt they could execute 20 Mio. people...

Re:Whoa! 5000 pounds!

[Deflagro]

I know this is a troll but oh well...

Yes the UK uses metric, as does every other advanced nation. It's funny that the USA fought for their independance from the british, yet still cling to the system of measurment even they found was outdated!

OTOH...Roseanne is just nasty, and no I think that would be fatal

Don't hold your breath - need to see it in action

[IIH]

While it sounds great on the surface, just look at the corresponding fine for breaching the UK telephone do not call list - this is also up to 5,000, but no one has ever been fined despite 250 complaints a week being received over the past four years.

Re:blimey!

[lewiz]

> Time to move to the UK I reckon! :)

No, honestly. I wouldn't bother. It's not that good. Besides... how much spam comes from the UK anyway? It's all from (search for real figures) China, etc. This will probably have little/no effect on spam counts.

Re:UK?!?!?! What about the hurricane!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

C'mon. This is North Carolina we're talking about here. I don't think that there's over a billion dollars in assets in all the carolinas.

After all, what's the going rate for a trailer?

Let's think about this...

[El Cubano]

Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce of the new law.

Slashdot seems to me to be the place where people gripe about overly harsh sentences for people who are involved in things like P2P and software "piracy," and then say how it's totally out of whack because you go to prison for 5 years for rape and 25 for copyright infingement.

While agree that spam is a social ill and needs to be curtailed, we need to be careful not to go overboard.

Re:Let's think about this...

[mu-sly]

While I hate spammers, I agree that it's not really practical to put any but the most prolific offenders in jail. (How about Alan Ralsky for a start?)

However, it does seem slightly ridiculous that the RIAA can fine you up to $150,000 per song, yet spammers only get fined 5,000 ($8,000) - something is out of balance there!

Still, this law is likely to have little effect on the real hardcore of spammers - most of whom are not located in the UK anyway.

Once again it's a prime example of the UK government wanting to be seen to do something, when in actual fact it's nothing more than a token gesture spin campaign that will never be enforced and won't make the slightest difference in the long run.

I wonder if governments will ever "get" this Internet thing... somehow, I seriously doubt it. Once again, they're legislating things they don't understand.

Re:Hi Molo! [OT]

[molo]

Hah! What is your native language?

-molo

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[Tackhead]

> All it would take would be a night in a holding cell... just a short stint with a 300 lb criminal. Then, a few of the stories would get out.

Subject: H0T PR1S0N R4P3...........493121742
Subject: R A P E ACTION!
Subject: F|_|CK1NG in Jai1!!1!!1 (ye47fa3d)

You were saying?

Bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you really think the BBC will suffer the Slashdot effect? They won't even notice the extra traffic. They are the biggest and most visited content site (i.e. not Google) on the net and have bandwidth to spare. They have servers on at least two continents and publish their news in 43 languages. Now if the BBC posted a link to Slashdot on it's front page, then we might see the 'BBC effect'.

Re:Bullshit

[isorox]

Indeed, look at their network

A bit extreme

[Follis]

Jail time for spammers? That seems a bit extreme for a few reasons. 1) Cost. It costs a LOT of money to keep someone in jail for a year. I don't want to pay it. I don't think you do either. 2) This is a non-violent offence. I can see locking someone up for assault. But spam? That's like locking someone up for possessing narcotics. 'Ain't hurting nobody. Just fine the hell out of them, which will remove the profit margin.

Re:A bit extreme

[MortyH]

> That's like locking someone up for possessing narcotics. 'Ain't hurting nobody. Just fine the hell out of them,
> which will remove the profit margin.

Ah, but people *are* being locked up for possessing narcotics. Prison sentences for cannabis possession are a kindof stupid.

Locking up people for violent behaviour, that makes sense, but what about fraud? (Defrauding a company out of millions?)

Re:A bit extreme

[Follis]

I was using locking people up for narcotics as an instance of an asinine law. I'm not entirely sure how spammers who actually have something to sell are commiting fraud. Those that don't, fine, they are commiting fraud and should be punished (though not neccisarily with jailtime). I would like to know how "legitimate" spammers are commiting fraud however?

Re:A bit extreme

[Anonymous Coward]

Jail time for spammers? That seems a bit extreme for a few reasons. 1) Cost. It costs a LOT of money to keep someone in jail for a year. I don't want to pay it. I don't think you do either.

Please revise your thinking thus: Jail time for spammers? That seems perfectly logical for a couple reasons. 1) Cost. It costs LESS to keep a spammer in jail for a year than it does to deal with a year of their spam. I want to pay my share of that cost. I think you do too. 2) This is a non-violent offense. Just like repeat car thieves and white collar criminals that destroy people's retirement plans, the perpetrators should go to prison because they cause damage to others, unlike possessing narcotics.

Thanks!

Better punishment idea

[thorgil]

Make them copy each mail...BY HAND!

If the spammer send 10 000 of a specific message:
Punish him by making him write 10 000 copies of the mail sent. With PEN and PAPER.

And of course... the spammer would have to pay for the papers and pens as well.

That ought to teach him/her!!!

And yeah... if the mail contains images or such...
let him/her write the ones and zeroes....

Lawmakers in the UK

[Lord_Dweomer]

Obviously the lawmakers in the UK are not very smart about the financial impact of this decision. It would be so much more cost effective to simply enable people who were spammed to shoot the spammer (cost of bullet and cleaning materials to be paid by spamee).

Re:Lawmakers in the UK

[Angst Panzer]

It would be so much more cost effective to simply enable people who were spammed to shoot the spammer

You'd have to legalise gun ownership first.

No probs with orbital sander ownership, though. Food for thought.

Re:Lawmakers in the UK

[azzy]

Wouldn't that require changing the gun laws to actually allow people to easily obtain guns? Yeah, that'll make everything so much better. Less spam, more murders. What about morons who aren't computer literate enoough to understand faked headers? Hmm.. good solution, I'll start sending spam with faked headers of those very same morons, and as a group they'll exterminate themselves en masse.

Re:Lawmakers in the UK

[Lord_Dweomer]

Do you take everything in life as seriously as you take jokes posted on Slashdot?

Re:Lawmakers in the UK

[azzy]

Life's a joke. Slashdot however is deadly serious!! Isn't it? Don't tell me I've been living everything back to front!??!?

Re:Lawmakers in the UK

[Lord_Dweomer]

Heh, at least you have a sense of humor somewhere under that um......geek meat.

Re:Lawmakers in the UK

[azzy]

No way!! I'm a lean mean skinny weakling!!

Who could clean spam better than a spammer?

[KingDaveRa]

We could have convicted spammers sifting through all the emails we get every day, deleting the spam. It could all work towards better spam filters. That'll teach the sods.

Finable

[holzp]

UK Makes Spamming a Finable Offense
Does this mean we get a free Torvolds with each spam?

Re:Finable

[ThisIsFred]

Wouldn't that be "Finn-able?"

I wonder...

[Its_My_Hair]

Is the fine for each offense? What about repeat offenses? Apparently spam is effective so it well may be worth it to spammers to continue spamming and counting the 5000 pounds as "costs of operation".

Re:I wonder...

[vidarh]

In which case the spammer will likely find himself in front of a crown court with a jury that like spam so much they wish they could have used the death penalty... The unlimited part is what's interesting...

This is why

[bigjnsa500]

This is why there are so many frickin' laws on the books as it is. Somebody pissed off? Call a Congress person or Senator and make a law to prevent you from being pissed off.

Here's Bob. He's not pissed off, he is only fuming. He wants a law to prevent whatever it is that makes him fume. Calls his Senator and gets his law.

What's wrong with this? BOTH ARE THE SAME!! Its coming to a point where there will be a law for not picking your nose, or a law to not cut your fingernails in public.

Man, doesn't anybody get this besides me?

Re:This is why

[mfrank]

Somebody picking their nose is not using my bandwidth, wasting my disk space, and most importantly not exposing my kids to pr0n.

Well, I don't have kids, but hopefully you can see my point.

You can get fined for walking down the street with a megaphone at 2 AM screaming obscenities. There's a point where it's copacetic for the state to mess with people that are being a pain in the ass.

Re:Hi Molo!

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be an american to be such a "molo".

Kinda like that american girl that killed and maime two others.

The terrorists missed when they crashed those planes; They should've hit you.

Prison term/rape

[beta21]

You know if anyone is deserving of prison rape its spammers...

This is a joke. Prison rape is a serious issue and no-one needs to be subjected to it....

ok even sub humans like spammers

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[gorbachev]

I guess the Enron exec, who defrauded millions from their employees and shareholders should walk away free then?

Jail time for spammers is justified, IMHO, when we're talking about the career spamming scum. The ones who illegally hijack foreign servers, illegally hijack unused netblocks, continue spamming despite being terminated from multiple ISPs, continue spamming despite court orders to stop (Sam Khuri comes to mind), etc. etc.

I don't think a first time offender should be jailed, but there is NOTHING else that will stop the career spamming from spamming other than locking him up (with no Internet access). These people are sociopaths, they belong in jail.

Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spammers

A Finable Offense!

[BlackBolt]

UK Makes Spamming a Finable Offense

Oh my god, that means my grandfather's a spammer! He's lived in Finnland for years, they must'a sent him there when he was just young!

Which reminds me of a joke from LaughLab... The New Zealander wants to get into Australia, and at the border, the guard asks him, "Do you have a criminal record?". The New Zealander replies, "Why, do you still need one to get in?"

Ba-da-bump.

A good reason to send spammers to prison

[Skapare]

A good reason to send spammers to prison would be that it creates an even greater incentive for other offenders to stay out of prison.

Re:UK?!?!?! What about the hurricane!?!

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

yes have you all forgotten? the US is the only meaningful spot in the world! Ignore all other stories!

I bet the huge forest fires in western canada this summer caused way more damage than this little category 2 hurricane will.... and that you never heard about the fires.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[nmx]

Subject: F|_|CK1NG in Jai1!!1!!1 (ye47fa3d)

Could someone explain to me what the purpose of those random numbers/letters at the end of so many spams is? I have been wondering about that for some time.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[ivan256]

I guess the Enron exec, who defrauded millions from their employees and shareholders should walk away free then?

No, he shouldn't. But he doesn't give anybody their money back by rotting in a cell.

there is NOTHING else that will stop the career spamming from spamming other than locking him up

Spammers spam for money. If the chances of getting caught are higher than not, and getting caught means you loose all financial rewards from your actions, there will be no incentive to spam.

Would I be in trouble today?

[pragueexpat]

I woke up this morning and checked my inbox, only to see dozens of failed emails, all of which were spam for cheap pharmaceuticals. It was quickly apparent that I was the victim of a "joe job" http://www.techtv.com/news/culture/story/0,24195,3 415219,00.html [techtv.com] where someone uses your domain to send spam. So, my question is this: if I lived in the UK, would I have been arrested today and forced to spend time and money to defend myself in court? Before everyone says 'hey, they can tell by the RECEIVED line in the email that you didn't do it', who do you think is going to check it? Do you think the cops sent to arrest someone are going to check this? Now how many people will have to hire lawyers because these spam assholes are going to get them in trouble? Until we get a secure email system, just forget about trying to find and punish spammers - unfortunately it's not possible.

Re:Would I be in trouble today?

[azzy]

> Before everyone says 'hey, they can tell by the RECEIVED line in the email that you didn't do it', who do you think is going to check it? Do you think the cops sent to arrest someone are going to check this?

Yes. Of course they will check it. Very thoroughly! And they'll need to impound all your computer equiptment for 5 years while they're doing those thorough checks.

Better yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

UK makes spamming an Edible offense. It would be more fitting, considering the name spam...

Re:Better yet.

[Penguinshit]

Well.. a group of guys in the UK are directly responsible for unsolicited mass-email being called "Spam" in the first place...

In a restaurant somewhere a group of disheveled men in Viking costumes are laughing.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[beebware]

To try and bypass filters - if someone blocked email with the subject of "F|_|CK1NG in Jai1!!1!!1" then it's conceviable that "F|_|CK1NG in Jai1!!1!!1 (ye47fa3d) " would get through, and if that's blocked then "F|_|CK1NG in Jai1!!1!!1 (hgkh3hjkj)" may get through.
Of course, the filters are getting more strict and "cleverer" and even my simple regexps in Mailwasher can't be fooled by those basics (as I filter for 'sub phrases' such as "K1NG" or "!1!" - stuff I wouldn't expect to see in proper emails (and combine that with email addresses that were used once over 6 years ago - I can get Mailwasher to slowly educate itself)

I detect sarcasm

[phorm]

You're right... jailing spammers wouldn't be an appropriate solution. Clogging up already-filled prisons for sending email is a bit foolish:

I'm option for the stake-honey-anthill solution instead, but I've heard other good solutions. I've heard that some countries favor slowly lowering one into boiling water.... or maybe cutting off the hand they type with?

Keeps our prisons from overflowing, and the spammers off our internet. I'm still debating on the "sticking viagara spammers in a cell with bubba... who's just been given viagara" solution though.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[CausticWindow]

I just love the way Americans always equate prison with forced anal intercourse. It's an everyday thing, just like going to McDonalds.

Never once heard any of you outraged over this matter. It's just a fact of life, and something you most probably deserve when you go to prison. A good hard pounding in the ass.

It's a good thing that the US legal system is infallible, and that your judges probably take this into account when they pass sentences. Five years imprisonment in most other developed countries probably equates to two years with three brutal ass poundings per day in an American one.

Mighty fine country you're running over there.

Bart Simpson punishment

[twoslice]

I can imagine a spammer who looks a lot like Bart Simpson writing on the blackboard "I will not send spam to people about small penis cures"

Re:Whoa! 5000 pounds!

[FroMan]

Wasn't intended to be a troll. I thought it was kinda tongue in cheek myself. Maybe I should have hinted at that, but I figured the Rossane Bar comment would have made that obvious.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[chia_monkey]

"and when we can force them to become productive members of society?"

We're not going to be able to force anyone to be productive members of society. "Hey, you. Stop spamming. Do good". Won't happen.

I also believe the so called "white collar criminals" that bilk millions of dollars from corporations and investors and such should get jail time too, along with the other criminals. Who knows how many lives they've ruined by their greed. Hell, their negligence probably CAUSED some down-and-out fathers to resort to crime. Just because they didn't use a gun doesn't mean they don't deserve jail time. Perhaps the same is true for spammers. Just because they aren't violent doesn't mean they don't deserve to be punished or have enough of a threat of a nasty punishment to deter them.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[gorbachev]

"If the chances of getting caught are higher than not, and getting caught means you loose all financial rewards from your actions, there will be no incentive to spam"

I'm sure the 5,000 pound penalty will make the UK spammers just quiver in fear. Not.

The career spammer, btw, *will* spam unless he's physically made not to. When faced with a possibility of real financial sanctions, he'll work harder to avoid getting caught instead of stopping spamming. You can count on that.

And he will never get caught. Because he'll hide his tracks by using other illegal methods the violations of which are also not enforced (creating and using trojaned spam networks, illegal open proxy hijacking, illegal netblock hijacking, etc.)

There is no financial penalty high enough to make spammers stop BEFORE getting caught. Actually I even think there are NO penalties that would make them stop before-the-fact.

We need to make an example of one or more of them. Nothing else will help.

Throw the book at them for each and every violation of any laws, domestic or foreign. Let's see them rot in jail in Singapore for a while due to open proxy hijacking.

Proletariat of the world, unite to kill spammers

Right, but think about this...

[msimm]

Slashdot is a community full of people with drastically different ideas about absolutely everything. So don't be too surprised and remember, unlike piracy (a topic which includes an amazing amount of individual debates itself) spam impacts the average slashdot (and internet) user personally.

Good!

[wo1verin3]

>> Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce
>> of the new law."

I'm glad. While I hate spam as much as the next person, the penalty needs to fit the crime.

I don't like the spammers, but should they go to jail for sending e-mail? No.

For those who disagree, do you think those downloading mp3s should be taken to court?

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

For those who disagree, do you think those downloading mp3s should be taken to court?

Well.. one's a crime, one's not. What do YOU think?

Prison time, yeah that'll fix em!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce of the new law.

Yes, because we have seen the wonderful success of the US Prison System. Locking people up in cages for years sure fixes all the social problems there.

Re:Prison time, yeah that'll fix em!

[Anonymous Coward]

"There"? If you are not "Here" then you don't know shit. Say the same about your OWN country next time racist.

Double standard, slashdot?

[Gandhian_Rage]

Yeah, petition prison terms for spammers, but call foul when hackers get the same treatment. Can we say duh-ble-sthan-derd. "But, hacking is..." but hacking is what? Hacking is illegal and it annoys innocent people. And spare the anecdotes--I'm sure spammers have the same stories. To all the people who have "Free Mitnick" stickers: Are you going to buy some "Free Spammer" stickers as well?

Let's take a different view...

[rutledjw]

First things first:

- This law won't solve the problem even in the UK

OK, done, I agree. However, there are ramifications beyond that. What we've done is go from SPAM is a nuisance to SPAM is illegal. Spammers _LOSE_ rights here. We won't have any of this nonsense of spammers suing ISPs preventing them from cutting off service or suing AOL for blocking their trash.

What if the law is expanded? Any company who gleans profits FROM spam forfeits that money?

Hello? Now we're hitting them right where it hurts, in the balls! No wait, that's where _I_ want to hit them, that would hit them in the pocketbook. Close enough for me.

So while this law won't solve the problem, it helps. The only thing if worried about is legislation that encourages gov't monitoring or other Big Brother type activities...

Re:dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

from m-w.com

Main Entry: cal·i·ber
Variant(s): or cal·i·bre /'ka-l&-b&r, British also k&-'lE-/ Function: noun

hope it's not a bumpy start

[jqh1]

Anti spam laws are great, and I hope they keep coming. I get a little jolt, though, when I think of most of the law enforcement professionals and judges I know determining who was responsible for spamming.

I run a free anti-spam service (disposable email) and, probably intentionally, spammers have used disposable addresses from my service as the reply-to or "list removal" address on more than a few spam messages (note: they don't use my server to send the spam -- it's usually some open relay). They generally don't receive any email through these addresses because they get invalidated right away -- either by me or automatically. It really really looks like a simple smear campaign, and certainly has that effect.

The result is that I get angry emails, and even phone calls threatening to sue from the people who receive the spam. They assume that I'm somehow responsible for sending the spam. They almost all chill out as soon as I explain the situation, but after a big spam frenzy from one these ##*$!!#@, I find myself doing a lot of explaining.

I also live in America (*you insensitive clod!*) and I'm definitely not prepared to appear in a British court to explain something like this. Enough about me, though, the "Joe Job" is a fairly frequent occurrence these days (whether it is the intentional use of someone else's address in spam -- the true Joe Job, or the mere incidental use of someone's address that was picked at random). I'm sure the legal system will get smart over time, and hopefully will start out that way -- I can't help thinking there's be bumps, though.

Actually, no...

[schon]

What we've done is go from SPAM is a nuisance to SPAM is illegal

No, actually, what we've done is go from spam in a nuisance to spam is legal, provided you send to corporate email.

It explicitly allows spammers to spam, which is a bad thing.

Re:Actually, no...

[Anonymous Coward]

And now we've gone from idiots who use SPAM (a trademark of the Hormel product) instead of spam. In the future, why not use the contemporary term UBE (unsolicited bulk email) ? Even UCE is incorrect because ommercial does not cover all forms of garbage. Be prepared for the next election(s) - many of the candidates have staffs seeking people who will blast information out to everyone, even if they aren't in the catchment area of the candidate; i.e., be prepared for UBE from Dave running for Dog Catcher in Tempe, AZ, not just the national-level candidates. One California (governor) candidate in the last election hired a spammer who when asked if they could send it just to people in Ca said, "Sure!" and you can guess the results.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[Anonymous Coward]

"A good hard pounding in the ass."
You say that as if it was a bad thing...

Anti-spam needs more structure.

[DuSTman31]

Personally, I think the main thing that would benefit the anti-spam cause now is more structure - in a software sense.

There's already quite a few good, pretty effective techniques of filtering, but a truly best-case scenario would be arrived at using a combination of techniques.

Look at the anti-spam tech available at the moment. There's filters that act as POP3 proxies, filters that run as a plug-in to a specific client (or built-in), and the odd mail server add-in. There's even the case of remote mailboxes (eg using IMAP) which is difficult to deal with any way apart from having the filter on the server.

Spam filtering is best set-up on a client-by-client basis, because people tend to get different types of mail as normal. Also, if we're doing it on a client-by-client basis, end user interface is very important - any manual classification and configuration of such filters would be best done inside the user interface of the client software, in much the same way as client-specific plugins do it. To do this in a way consistent across client packages (necessary if we want to tackle the problem as a whole and not just for some people) would require a standard protocol for querying graphs of mail filters, relaying any corrections and reconfiguring said filter graph.

I'd like to see a protocol built upon Seive (a language in RFC form for notating mail filtering rules) and a standard for mail filter components (standard COM/CORBA interfaces, whatever). The seive language could provide flexibly reconfigurable "plumbing" between the individual filters.

Even if one only uses one filter under such a mechanism, there'd still be benefits from a standardised software interface and ability to control from within any mail client.

Stone the *&^*% spammers

[RealRav]

I'm all for public stoning! I can honestly say I've never spammed and am willing to cast the first.

Dreams are better as dreams than reality.
Rav

Re:Whoa! 5000 pounds!

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't tongue in cheek. It wasn't dry humour either. It was just plain dumb and unimaginative.

I don't know why the story submitters insist on encouraging dumb humour. They shouldn't write "pounds", but "" instead (Alt+Keypad0163 under Windows if you don't have an en_GB keyboard). I don't see them writing "dollars" often, but "$", which is stupid as that is a common currency name and should really be "USD$".

"new UK anti-spamming law "

[kclittle]

Does this mean some of the Monty Python skits are now illegal in their country of origin? Jus'wunnering...

BS alert

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone needs to read things more carefully. I strongly suggest anyone who believes the original Slashdot posting to go read this on SpamHaus. It's fine to post a story, but it's worse to publish the opposite of what it really says.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[rusty0101]

Community service: You will be required to post process the incomming e-mail of the judge or judges of your hearing and will be required to use your own e-mail address to respond to spammers requesting that they remove the judges' e-mail address from their distribution lists. Once the Judges are no longer getting spammed the community service will be expanded to other elected officials for the local government.

Post-processing will be to deal with those items that the judge has already identified as spam.

Repeat offenders will be required to set up a publically available e-mail address, that will be published in the local news paper for the duration of the sentence, at the cost of the offender to receive forwarded spam and have the offender contact the spammer's involved and get the user who has forwarded the spam pulled from the spammer's list of addressees.

If the offender is convicted of installing re-mailers on insecure systems, the offender will also be responsible for identifying the actual source of spam that is comming from other re-mailers or spamingWorms.

Good behaviour points would be awarded for actual successes in removing people from spammers mail listings. No additional penalty for failing to get someone removed so long as the offender can provide good faith evidence that best effort was made to accomplish the task. This evidence may include, but is not limited to message logs on authorized mail servers, phone log records, etc. Failure to provide evidence that meets the above requirements will be considered contempt of court and may be punishable by jail time.

Just an idea.

-Rusty

Enforceability not the point

[DaveAtFraud]

The key is that sending spam becomes illegal. This means that ISPs can take whatever technological countermeasures they wish without worrying that they are infringing on the spammer's supposed right to spam. They still have to be careful to not block legitimate e-mail but at least they now have the law on their side if they can find effective mechanisms for blocking and/or filtering.

Re:Enforceability not the point

[zaphodbblx]

Humbug! how many laws do we have here in the us as a knee jerk reaction to some crisis(patriot act)? How many get passed and are unenforceable or un funded(clean elections law....this might just be a situation endemic to massachuttes,but I doubt it)? The point is without enforceability the law is just window dressing!

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[Zachary Kessin]

Somehow it seems that it is worse to use a gun to stick up a 7/11 for $250 than to use a bunch of accountants to stick up the stock owners for $250,000,000 or at least the courts will give similar sentances for the two. (Depending on what state you are in. It seems wrong to me.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[ad0gg]

Non violent criminals should be forced to do community service, and actually give something back to the community. Nothing like having a bunch spammers picking up garbage along the freeway.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[ivan256]

Actually I even think there are NO penalties that would make them stop before-the-fact.

May as well give up then, huh?

We need to make an example of one or more of them. Nothing else will help.

I thought you said that wouldn't work in the last sentence?

I can't wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope next year to be appointed as a magistrate (ye gods, the process of application and selection is loooooooooooong). I'm looking forward to it even more, now.

On the other hand, magistrates must sentence impartially, and cannot sit on the Bench to hear a case if they have a significant interest in it (eg, if I were a magistrate, I couldn't sit to hear a trial where my brother was in the dock). I wonder if being the recipient of tons of spam every day counts as a 'significant interest', and if it does, will they find any magistrates who aren't disqualified from hearing the case? :)

Re:royal paratroopers!

[bsDaemon]

The English have no business in Eire. What about the last 800 years of occupation? for what? who invited them here? get out and give us back our island.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[Anonymous Coward]

Who said anything about "forced"? Perhaps the original poster is intimating that all spammers enjoy gay sex, and would jump at the chance to practice it at taxpayer expense!

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[Anonymous Coward]

Or eight years if you enjoy that kind of thing.

horse

[golrien]

"Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce of the new law."

Yeah, because Britain's prisons are so empty that they're just crying out for more harmless inmates who pose no danger to the public.

They're dumb money people, not evil people. Make it uneconomical and they'll go away.

fines better than prison for white collar crime

[emptybody]

white collar crime is not a threat against the individual. the miscreant wandering around will not be a greater threat to society than were he behind bars.

the cost of putting a person in the slammer is not negligible.

Fine them for all the money made polus damages plus court costs etc.

Ban them from the use of computers A-La Mitnick.

See just how long they continue their practices.

Leave the prisons for the truly dangerous criminals that we do not want on the streets.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[NerdSlayer]

I'm not prison rape expert, but I found this to an interesting article here explaining a bit why this goes on as much as it does and why the authorities look the other way.

have we forgotten being tarred and feathered?

[kaltkalt]

come on, I realize being tarred and feathered is extreme and can result in death, but same goes with the electric chair. I think tarring and feathering certain people most certainly has its place in the world of punitive measures, and if done publicly (as a good tarring and feathering always is) it really does make an example of the perpetrator. I am of the feeling that only tarring and feathering will truly reduce spam (if we get INTERPOL involved, that is).

Re:Don't hold your breath - need to see it in acti

[Gnavpot]

In Denmark, we have had an antispam law for 3 years, probably similar to the new UK law. And this law is actually enforced.

Recently, a company named Fonn was fined by the Danish Maritime and Commercial Court for sending 156 spam emails to 50 recipients (including me). The fine was DKK 15000, which equals $2280 or GBP 1410 - or GBP 9 per email.

English summary here: http://www.fs.dk/uk/misc/fonn.htm

More cases are under preparation by the Danish Consumer Ombudsman, this time involving a lot more than 156 emails.

Noone knows if future rulings will use the same fine amount per email. But some of us hope that they will. As one of the cases involves more than 50000 emails and SMS messages, this would result in a GBP 450000 fine.

8000 dollars not bad...

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean still a fair wedge...

Individual Action

[andyrut]

Legislation is one way to go about it - I personally think that if a spammer legitimately uses their own mail server to e-mail people, it should be legal...annoying, but legal. For the individual who's fed up with Spam I would stress the importance of spam filtering methods.

The best way of stopping spams from hitting your inbox seems to be using a Bayesian filter such as SpamBayes or a filter-enabled mail client such as Mozilla Thunderbird. I've recently started using the latter and have been quite relieved to see spam floods become a thing of the past.

Sure, it won't reduce the cost that mail servers endure to transfer the spams themselves, but the end user can save the time they would have used to sort through a delete what they find.

Re:Individual Action

[Steve B]

For the individual who's fed up with Spam I would stress the importance of spam filtering methods.

That's a workable solution if the law treats circumvention of spam filters as a form of computer cracking (which it is -- it's a deliberate attempt to gain access to a computer that doesn't belong to you against the express prohibition of the owner).

Buying a lock for your front door and using it is a normal precaution. But it wouldn't do any good if crooks could take all the time they wanted to pick your locks without fear of being interrupted by the police.

What about Offshore Spammers?

[Orion Blastar]

Will they be hit with fines too? Or is it just the Spammers in the UK that get hit with the fines?

I hope that the USA adopts a law like this, unless the donotcall.gov website can be modified to accept email on a Do not Spam list?

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[Excen]

Hell yes!

If there's one deterrent to crime, it's the threat of Paco and Tyrone violating your every crevice every day for the next umpteen years.

"No beer until you finish your tequila!"
-Leela's Dad

No need to feel left out...

[Anonymous Coward]

this is a criminal offence so you could be extradited :)

Re:royal paratroopers!

[Izeickl]

Regardless, the cowardly tactics of the likes of the IRA are amazing. You know N.I will ALWAYS remain part of the UK now, only fools that are holding onto a violent past see it returning one day if enough explosives are used. While the new generations are sick of the deaths that the IRA pretend are for the good of the country.
You just conviently ignore the targeted deaths of innocent people, thinking your true fighters, placing a bomb secretly in a shopping area...wow, big brave men. If you were not so dangerous in your ignorance and lack of brains it would be laughable.

Re:UK?!?!?! What about the hurricane!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet the huge forest fires in in Colorado and California caused more damage than your little camp fire. I bet you never heard about those.

Oh and the hurricane - category 4 or 5, it's right on the line last I heard.

Re:UK?!?!?! What about the hurricane!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, what's the going rate for a trailer?

Three mullets and a chevy on cinder blocks, IIRC.

Fines for spammers

[maddskillz]

It's funny the same people who complain about how the RIAA shouldn't be fining people are all for fining spammers.

The difference

[Gonoff]

My work email address contains my employers domain. My email address contains that of my ISP. It may get more complicated if I decide to host my own domain.

Tha vagueness of this may be related to the fact that the UK, just like th US has a lot of lawyers in government. They do tend to looak after one another!

With around 400 outlook virus mails hitting my

[Anonymous Coward]

inbox, I'm asking when will the usage of Outlook finally be a finable offence!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

National Do Not Receive Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

They should use an encrypted National Do Not Receive Spam Registry where the email addresses are privately kept away from the spammers and where the spammers could go to check the validity of the email addresses they already have in their possessions.

Re:Whoa! 5000 pounds!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's US$, not USDollarsDollars (USD$).

Engage brain before putting mouth in gear.

Won't work

[EmagGeek]

I'm sure the British Spam police are going to go really far out of their way to nab spammers who operate from the Cayman Islands or other places not within the borders of Great Britain...

Re:Won't work

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is just as well really, since the Cayman Islands have sovereignty and it isn't a crime to send spam there. So there is nothing the British could do anyway.

Re:blimey!

[rifter]

No, honestly. I wouldn't bother. It's not that good. Besides... how much spam comes from the UK anyway? It's all from (search for real figures) China, etc. This will probably have little/no effect on spam counts.

Ah, but they are at least doing something about Spam. Well, my country is doing something about spam, too.. it is paying spammers money to spam people more! Ah what a country!

At least the Britons are implementing step 1 in my plan to eliminate spam...

"Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce..."

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce of the new law."

You're a fucking idiot.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[sbranden]

Perhaps we could have a tiered system, where spammers who just send email are fined lots and have all their equipment confiscated. However if a spammer spoofs the From: as coming from someone elses domain then they are jailed for fraud or similar. The same could be done for using open relays, etc. Abusing the innocent like this really shits me.

Punishment For Employees

[pythonisman]

Employees detected sending or soliciting spam like activity will be fired-
Out of a cannon, into the sun.

I wish.

hopefully...

[jlemmerer]

they define exactly what "spam" is, so i can't get sued if one of my mails goes to the wrong recipient. i know that this sounds laughable, but in the u.s. you would surely find a lawyer that wants to make profit out of you.

No prison terms? Damn.

[Channard]

It's a real shame there are no prison terms for spammers in the UK. I had this mental image of a gangly viagra and porn selling spammer explaining to his two hundred and fifty pound drooling bunk-mate just what he's in for.

Re:royal paratroopers!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sinn Fein!" Only opsting as an AC because anyone that speaks against them can be targeted. However they are the real life Anonymous Cowards who kill inocents.

Re:UK?!?!?! What about the hurricane!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what you get from building your house with twigs.

In the UK they are built with bricks. Better in case of hurricane (except for falling chimneypots - ouch) but not so good in case of earthquakes. Lucky we don't have them.

In the south pacific of course the houses are built of straw. That's why they always blow down when a hurricane huffs and puffs.

too many prison terms

[Dewin Cymraeg]

Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce of the new law.

And a good thing too! Spam is annoying - and I get my fair share of it - but the idea of putting someone away for it is absurd.

It would make much more sense to make spammers give something back to the community in a positive way, such as helping educate the under-privileged.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should we waste money keeping these people in prison when they're not a physical threat to anybody

Because of the economics. Spam costs money, just like theft costs money. My share of the tax dollars that I would spend keeping a spammer in prison are LESS than what I lose to lost productivity by having to deal with the goddamned spam. It's that simple. That's why I would support legislation that calls for prison sentences for spammers.

Re:I WIN FAGS!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You won some fags?

Pass 'em around, then! Some of us are choking for a drag!

Prison for wasting time

[Anonymous Coward]

There are already plenty of offences which similarly come down to "wasting the victim's time" that can result in prison.

For example, stealing something from a victim wastes the time he spent earning the money to pay for it.

I don't see why wasting someone's time by making them deal with spam is any different.

Re:dumbass

[Anonymous Coward]

You are the one who needs to learn to spell "calibre".

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[marsu_k]

Why should we waste money keeping these people in prison when they're not a physical threat to anybody

Perhaps because you already waste money keeping recreational pot smokers in prison? After all, the society should be equal, right?

Re:royal paratroopers!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it is time that the Catholics and the Protestants came together .....


..... Preferably on top of a f***ing massive bonfire.

Honestly! The Anglican church is as close to Roman Catholicism as you can get without actually being a Catholic, as evidenced by some of the Reformed churches in other countries. It's like arguing over whether the minus signs on electrons are blue or black.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[ivan256]

Perhaps because you already waste money keeping recreational pot smokers in prison?

<ponders briefly> Hmm... I don't recall ever having thrown anybody in prison... Care to refresh my memory?

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[chaoticset]

Why should we waste money keeping these people in prison when they're not a physical threat to anybody, and when we can force them to become productive members of society?

You cannot force people to become productive members of society. There is a reason for this, and part of it is that your concept of productive may be in diametric opposition to someone else's concept of productive. The other part is that people have the physical right to refuse to do whatever it is you require of them, and you can't really do much except threaten to kill them.

Which is pretty much what a government does.

What I'm saying here is that you might be able to "force" some spammers to do "good" things, but there will also be a percentage of them being payed to do something "good" and actually engaging in criminal activity. Let's not pay for that, huh?

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[ivan256]

You cannot force people to become productive members of society.

Tell that to the people I saw on the highway this morning in orange jumpsuits. I'm not saying they should have any dignity.

The other part is that people have the physical right to refuse to do whatever it is you require of them, and you can't really do much except threaten to kill them.

If they refuse, then throw them in jail, but jail shouldn't be the default.

Prison for sending email today

[Per Abrahamsen]

You can certainly get in prison for sending email today, it is just a matter of the content of the email. It seems perfectly fair to make the number of (unvoluntary) receivers another criteria.

People are thrown in prison for far less damaging actions than what the large scale spammers do.

Spam-apologism

[Per Abrahamsen]

Spammers harm me, quite a lot actually, so they should be punnished. Mail was useful before the spammers took it over. Over the last 10 years I have spend time worth tens of thousand dollars in order to keep mail useful dispite spam. Spam-apologist will probably point out that I "could have done it faster by other means", which is both true and very easy to point out in hindsight. But I had to learn by doing.

So I'm as happy about spammers as I would be about a burgler who had stolen tens of dolars from my home. And I'm as apreciate about people telling me "it is not so bad, and if it is, it is your own fault for not keeping your address a secret" or however the apologists try to may pass the blame to the victim today.

Since the professionel spammers have far more victims than even the most active burgler, he should be punished harder. For the naive first-time spammer "who didn't knew better" however, a fine large enough to make it clear that this is not how to MAKE MONEY FAST is enough.

I find it deeply depressing that /. collectively (especially the moderators) have taken the side of the spammers on this one. Maybe you are to young to remember when the mail system worked.

And no, establishing prof is not the problem of the law, it is the problem of the legal system to prove beying reasonable doubt that you did it. Just like any other crime. And not, it is not actually any harder to solve than other crimes. These profs does not rely entirely on technical evidence, and yes, occationally a really smart criminal will be able to get away with it.

And by the way, people who have voluntary sex, smoke pot, or do other thing that does not harm me or other innocent bystanders, are not in any way comparable to a spammer. I find it amazing that you can draw a connection between the two.

Re:Spam-apologism

[ajs]

Spammers harm me, quite a lot actually, so they should be punnished

No, no they don't at all, and I'd rather that we not throw words like "harm" around and devalue them.

Mail was useful before the spammers took it over

Mail is still useful. Mail was more useful when there were less people on the Net and most of those people had common goals. Letting random idiots into the village means we have village idots. This is not shocking.

Over the last 10 years I have spend time worth tens of thousand dollars in order to keep mail useful dispite spam

And I've spent an equal amount of time cleaning up leaves in my yard. Trees are not harming me, they are costing me time and effort, but I choose to engage in that effort as you choose to involve yourself in the effort of sorting signal from noise in your inbox. You're welcome to do that if you wish. In *fact* I will help you (with tools like SpamAssassin).

Spam-apologist will probably point out that I "could have done it faster by other means"

Well, I'm not a spam appologist, but I'll point out that you could have just accepted mail from your freinds' machines IPs. You could have told everyone who you gave your email address to that they had to call you up first and then you add them to your firewall.

Instead, you've chosen to accept mail from EVERYONE and then complain that some of that mail (quite possibly the majority) is one of several classes of unwanted mail (e.g. commercial spam, religious spam, viruses, bounces from all of the above forged in your name, etc).

So I'm as happy about spammers as I would be about a burgler who had stolen tens of dolars from my home

But in the case of burglers a) you did not invite them in by installing an "everyone can come in" style unlocked door, which is recognized world-wide as a standard invitation to come on in b) you did not choose to lose money as a result of the theft.

The more appropriate annology would be that you opened up your front door and put a sign out saying "come in and talk to me", and then got upset that "it used to be that people just wandering in was useful to me and my business, but now everyone from bums on the street to politicians to salesmen are just coming in my house and costing my thousands of dollars of time to find them and kick them out!"

Solution: close your door or hire someone to run a rope-line outside to filter who gets in.

Not surprisingly spam has the same solutions. Thankfully the rope line can get pretty sophisticated and eventually will automatically invole everyone presenting picture ID before getting in, and your ability to run a background check on their ID to see if you should let them in.

Since the professionel spammers have far more victims than even the most active burgler

Victim is a wildly missused term here. I hate getting spam, but that's my problem, and I'll implement my solution. Just because I don't like what someone sends me doesn't make me a victim!

I find it deeply depressing that /. collectively (especially the moderators) have taken the side of the spammers on this one. Maybe you are to young to remember when the mail system worked.

Actually, I don't take the side of spammers. I take the side of the network. The network is good, and we should keep laws as far away from it as possible. What we need is the tools that let us build reputation in constructive ways and use that reputation to filter our mail on the basis of such.

As to my age... You're speaking to the former UUCP-gateway admin for Fidelity Investments... You can't send me mail at ...!clue!ajs anymore, but, well... you get the idea.

Re:Spam-apologism

[Steve B]

Since the professionel spammers have far more victims than even the most active burgler, he should be punished harder. For the naive first-time spammer "who didn't knew better" however, a fine large enough to make it clear that this is not how to MAKE MONEY FAST is enough.

Spammers should be used to fill potholes.

The naive first-times can be given the more lenient sentence of merely being required to shovel hot asphalt into potholes.

Re:Spam-apologism

[Steve B]

But in the case of burglers a) you did not invite them in by installing an "everyone can come in" style unlocked door, which is recognized world-wide as a standard invitation to come on in

First, I wonder what gave you the notion that Per Abrahamsen has no spam filter on his e-mail. (Whether or not the spam filter is effective is irrelevant -- having one at all is sufficient to establish that the "door" in this analogy is locked, and breaking and entering is a crime whether it's a $3.99 padlock or the vault lock of Fort Knox.)

Second, it is most certainly illegal to "come on in" through an unlocked door without the consent of the property owner.

Re:Spam-apologism

[ajs]

Nope, your annalogy is broken.

First off, I wasn't talking about locks and breaking/entering. I was talking about providing a public space and/or service.

By putting up a port on the Internet that speaks a publicly defined protocol for open exchange of messages (e.g. SMTP) you have done the same thing as opening your front door and putting out a sign saying "Hello, welcome to my front door version 2.8, please follow the 'walk in and leave any package you like' protool". That's hardly the same as "leaving your door unlocked".

I dislike spam, but I'm not going to say that it's WRONG. I just want to stop it coming to me and anyone else who doesn't want it by establishing a technical means of determining who we do and do not want to let through the door, NOT by saying "it's illegal for you to come through my door if you're carrying a 'bad' package" because 'bad' is too vague and subject to abusive enforcement.

His spam filtering, BTW, had nothing to do with it, because no reasonable person can be expected to know that he has spam-filtering or how it works. If you put a dog in the house who chases out "bad package holders" and it fails to chase out someone that you wanted it to chase out, you don't get to blame the package-bearer. You need a dog that will learn to recognize what kinds of packages and what kind of delivery persons you want... such is possible, and not even very hard. We just need to get a critical mass of mail systems to stop accepting unsigned SMTP (e.g. non-TLS) connections.

Re:Spam-apologism

[Steve B]

First off, I wasn't talking about locks and breaking/entering.

You most certainly were, by using an analogy to "an 'everyone can come in' style unlocked door" [emphasis added]

I was talking about providing a public space and/or service.

One's computer is private property, not "a public space".

His spam filtering, BTW, had nothing to do with it, because no reasonable person can be expected to know that he has spam-filtering or how it works.

Irrelevant. Spammers use various techniques that are readily identifiable as means to circumvent spam filters. To illustrate with the analogy between bandwidth property and physical property, poking at somebody else's door with a recognizable lock-pick is illegal even if it turns out to be the wrong kind of pick for the lock.

If you put a dog in the house who chases out "bad package holders" and it fails to chase out someone that you wanted it to chase out, you don't get to blame the package-bearer.

You do if the package-bearer took steps to disguise himself as a legitimate visitor.

You need a dog that will learn to recognize what kinds of packages and what kind of delivery persons you want.

Precisely -- delivery people should be allowed in, and miscreants who disguise themselves as delivery people in order to get in fraudulently should be put in prison.

Really, my bottom-line solution (laws that threat circumvention of spam filters as a form of computer cracking, with the standard penalties for that offense) lets everybody win. People who want to filter their mail will be able to do so accurately without undue difficulty. People who don't care to stop spam can keep getting it. People who want to send spam can continue to do so (they just can't force their way in past other people's locks).

Re:Spam-apologism

[ajs]

You're choosing how to read misquotes quite carefully.

Also, please don't argue with me over what I'm trying to argue... for the time being, the state still considers me competent enough to let me have a keyboard, so let's assume that I do, in fact, know what I'm arguing.

If you feel that someone's public service should be considered a locked door, then please be prepared to be thrown in jail the next time you come into my place of business.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, you need to defend yourself against those forms of noise in the signal that you don't like. Making a law out of a fourier transform is sort of stupid.

Reason

[fasura]

Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce of the new law."

That's because we're not stupid. Why would you pay for someone to be incarcerated for sending spam? It's not cost effective, America might like locking up people for the slightest infringement but here in the UK we have something called freedom.

Re:Reason

[Steve B]

Why would you pay for someone to be incarcerated for sending spam?

A few hundred bricks and some mortar don't really cost that much. Heck, I'll even be generous and throw in a real cask of Amontillado.

Re:Prison should be reserved for violent criminals

[chaoticset]

Those are the people who made the choice to submit. For every 9, or 99, or 999, there is still one that refused and either found some way around it or flat out fought and was either beaten or shot.

Please attempt to understand this. You can present people with plenty of unpleasant choices, but the emphasis there is choice.

There has never been a government that was not at the mercy of its people for butter, milk, and bread, because governments cannot produce these things. Governments produce armies and cops.

what an idiot!

[Anonymous Coward]

(22:15:32) slynneb: who is this?
(22:15:41) myRage atrophied: did you take a look at the url? what do you think?
(22:15:52) slynneb: yes i looked
(22:16:06) slynneb: who am i talking to
(22:16:12) myRage atrophied: the person who posted that
(22:16:15) myRage atrophied: did you like it?
(22:16:19) slynneb: who is tihs
(22:16:32) myRage atrophied: here, tell me what you think of my story...
(22:16:38) slynneb: no
(22:16:44) myRage atrophied: My real name is Clyde Irving. I was born in Reno, NV, in 1906, the son of a cattle rustler and a showgirl. Loving parents, though dumb as bricks. Thankfully, I was part of the generation that was too young to be drafted for World War I, but too old for World War II. Unfortunately, this meant I was also part of the generation that was just trying to establish itself when the great depression hit. Being young and out of work, I wasted 5 years riding the rails or occasionally bumming a ride up the Pacific Coast Highway in a rusty old beater. In 1937, I finally decided to get my act together and went over to Germany as an ensign of the U.S. government to learn a little something about the National Socialist regime. The rest is classified.
(22:17:36) slynneb: thats nice
(22:17:48) myRage atrophied: you seem to be some kind of unemotional robot.
(22:17:49) slynneb: why arent you out at a bar
(22:17:53) slynneb: or out with friends?
(22:17:54) myRage atrophied: i don't drink
(22:18:19) myRage atrophied: i live like a monk
(22:18:24) slynneb: you're not cool
(22:18:32) myRage atrophied: did i ever claim i was?
(22:18:35) slynneb: dont you have better things to do than talk with strangers online?
(22:18:43) slynneb: obviously not...
(22:18:44) myRage atrophied: yeah, but i'm in denial.
(22:19:10) myRage atrophied: people are not rational as you economists would have us believe
(22:19:21) slynneb: ok
(22:19:31) myRage atrophied: maybe you can tell me what i should be doing
(22:19:33) slynneb: well, when you learn how to talk like a normal person, maybe i will waste my time on you
(22:19:50) myRage atrophied: normal people are boring and predictable, i want nothing of the sort.
(22:20:11) myRage atrophied: although i'm also being fairly predictable in my rhetoric at the moment.
(22:20:12) slynneb : i have a life, so i am not at the computer right now
(22:20:19) myRage atrophied: haha, you wish.
(22:20:47) myRage atrophied: i'm against overpopulation, so i try not to have a life. too many lives = bad news