Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
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.
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.
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
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
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.
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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.
Trolling is a art,
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.
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?
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.
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
"A towel is the most astounding Mind-boggleing useful thing in the universe, allways know where your towel is"
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.
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".
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?
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
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
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
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.
"The prohibition will be strongest when the group is nervous." - Paul Graham
"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.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
>> 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?
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.
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
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.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
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 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.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
"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.
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.
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