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."
Why the law won't work
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.
-jls
Techno-pagan
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. . .
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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
Oh no, we need to get these violent people off the streets before they e-mail again!
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Sadly, prison terms won't be used to enforce of the new law.
Jail time? How about death sentence.
...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.
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.
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
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,
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
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.
-- No sig for you!
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.
What if instead of being fined 5000 pounds, spammers were forced to eat 5000 pounds of SPAM? Just a thought.
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.
-- No sig for you!
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.
Exigo spamos et dona ferentes
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.
Subject: H0T PR1S0N R4P3...........493121742
Subject: R A P E ACTION!
Subject: F|_|CK1NG in Jai1!!1!!1 (ye47fa3d)
You were saying?
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'.
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.
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....
Warning: This sig contains a small bug. ==> *
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
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.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
"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
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.
Quack, quack.
>> 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 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...
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
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.
who's moderating the meta-moderators?
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.
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
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
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?
"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.
comment directly in my journal
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.
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.